Premium
Political identity dissimilarity, workplace incivility, and declines in well‐being: A prospective investigation
Author(s) -
He Yimin,
Costa Paula L.,
Walker Jessica M.,
Miner Kathi N.,
Wooderson R. Linden
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
stress and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.009
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1532-2998
pISSN - 1532-3005
DOI - 10.1002/smi.2856
Subject(s) - incivility , social psychology , psychology , politics , identity (music) , interpersonal communication , structural equation modeling , burnout , job satisfaction , psychological distress , distress , clinical psychology , mental health , political science , psychotherapist , statistics , physics , mathematics , acoustics , law
The workplace is an environment where individuals have little choice about with whom they interact. As such, employees may find themselves engaged in conversations with coworkers whose political opinions and perspectives are divergent from their own. In the present study, we examined how coworkers' (dis)similarity in political identity is related to the quality of their interpersonal interactions and subsequent well‐being. We predicted that political identity dissimilarity is associated with experiences of workplace incivility and, in turn, declines in psychological and occupational well‐being. We tested our hypotheses in a four‐wave survey study conducted during the 2012 U.S. presidential election using structural equation modeling. Consistent with our expectations, results indicated that political identity dissimilarity was associated with increased reports of incivility experiences instigated by coworkers, which, in turn, was associated with increased burnout and turnover intentions and diminished job satisfaction. The relationship between incivility and well‐being was mediated by psychological distress. Overall, the findings demonstrate that political identity dissimilarity is detrimentally related to job attitudes and well‐being via triggering workplace incivility, which provides meaningful implications for organizations on how to mitigate the negative influences of identity dissimilarity.