The Role of Optimism in Mitigating Workplace Mistreatment Effects

by Marc Ohana and Marion Fortin

Interpersonal mistreatment is a pervasive issue within organizations, significantly impacting individual wellbeing and potentially triggering or perpetuating a culture of mistreatment among coworkers. More thoroughly understanding mistreatment experiences is therefore crucial for developing interventions across organizational, group, and individual levels of analysis. In contemporary workplaces characterized by teamwork and flattened hierarchies, mistreatment experiences often happen in interactions with peers. One common manifestation of such mistreatment is peer interpersonal injustice, which entails breaches of dignity, respect, and propriety at work. This can range from unfriendly behavior to insulting remarks from colleagues.

To investigate the consequences of and influences on such daily experiences, we conducted a survey with 300 US employees over ten consecutive working days. Our findings reveal that daily perceptions of peer interpersonal injustice can predict the quality of sleep in the night following an unfair event. This happens largely because experiencing daily peer injustice triggers negative affect, a state of general distress encompassing various negative emotions. Indeed, injustice events are typically perceived as threats to moral, group-standing, and instrumental goals, leading to negative affective responses. In turn, negative affect can exacerbate sleep problems due to increased stress and anxiety.

Additionally, our research highlights the role of individuals' expectations and outlook in responding to injustice. While previous studies have explored the impact of negative future expectations, surprisingly little attention has been given to the effects of optimism—believing in positive experiences at work. We found that, on a daily level, optimism acts as a buffer against the negative emotional impact of peer interpersonal injustice perceptions, leading to lower negative affect and then sleep quality. The reason for this finding might be that optimistic individuals tend to employ more effective coping strategies, enabling them to maintain positive beliefs about the future despite experiencing adversities. They can engage in various motivated justice reasoning strategies to maintain their positive beliefs about the future, even in the face of negative events.

Understanding the pivotal role of optimism in employees' reactions to injustice events has significant practical implications. While it is not feasible to fully eradicate and prevent all justice transgressions in organizational contexts (especially as individuals differ in their assessment of what is fair), fostering optimism is an actionable strategy to help individuals cope with daily adversities at work. Optimistic thinking is trainable, and individuals can learn to change their thinking style. The psychology literature suggests various interventions to improve the level of optimism. For example, companies can implement programs to increase mindful awareness in occupational settings to develop optimism. Another particularly effective intervention for increasing optimism appears to be the Best Possible Self intervention. It involves writing about one’s best possible self in the future, once everything has gone as well as it can. Obviously, such strategies should be employed alongside efforts to make organizations and team environments as fair as possible.

In conclusion, enhancing optimism among employees can mitigate the negative impact of interpersonal mistreatment, ultimately fostering healthier workplace environments and improving individual wellbeing. Employers and organizations can leverage these insights to implement targeted interventions aimed at promoting optimism and mitigating the adverse effects of workplace mistreatment.

read the article

Article Details
Half Just or Half Unjust? the Influence of Dispositional Optimism on the Link Between Interpersonal Peer Injustice, Negative Emotions and Sleep Problems
Marc Ohana, Marion Fortin
First published September 5, 2023 Research Article
DOI: 10.1177/10596011231200550
Group & Organization Management

About the Authors

Featured

Marc Ohana is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at KEDGE Business School in France. His research centers on organizational justice, social exchange, social identity, and micro-CSR. His work has been published in journals such as Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Business Ethics, and Group & Organization Management.

Featured

Marion Fortin is Professor of Management at the Université Toulouse Capitole in France and serves as Associate Editor for Group and Organization Management. She holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and has previously worked at the University of Durham, UK. Her main research interests lie in the role of fairness perceptions in the workplace, and how they are linked with morality and social context. Her research has been published in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.