I WOULD HAVE DONE IT DIFFERENTLY: THE EFFECTS OF PERSPECTIVE TAKING AND PAST EXPERIENCE IN MANAGERIAL CONTEXTS By Anna Connors Lennard A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Business Administration – Organization Behavior – Human Resource Management – Doctor of Philosophy 2018 ABSTRACT I WOULD HAVE DONE IT DIFFERENTLY: THE EFFECTS OF PERSPECTIVE TAKING AND PAST EXPERIENCE IN MANAGERIAL CONTEXTS By Anna Connors Lennard When making judgments, determining a response, or simply trying to understand another person’s action, perspective taking acts as a social tool that can help determine the cause of someone’s behavior or decide how one would feel or act if “put into the other person’s shoes” (Batson, 1994; Mead, 1934). Most management research assumes that the act of perspective taking results in a concerted effort to understand the target, and therefore has positive benefits for both the target and the observer. For this reason, perspective taking is often encouraged, especially in decision-making scenarios, negotiations, conflict management or for managers who must distinguish between multiple perspectives before passing judgment. However, with this dissertation I present a more balanced view of perspective taking, using social identity theory to detail a process-oriented model that presents both the possible positive and negative consequences of perspective taking for managers, and identify boundary conditions that may make either outcome more or less likely. More specifically, I argue that an individual’s own perspective and past experiences exert influence on how he or she interprets and passes judgment on other people’s experiences. Copyright by ANNA CONNORS LENNARD 2018 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Though a dissertation has only one author, it is the reflection of the work, encouragement, and dedication of many. I would first and foremost like to thank my advisor, Donald Conlon, for his guidance, support, and mentorship throughout this dissertation process and the last five years at Michigan State University. I also want to thank my committee members, Brent Scott, John Hollenbeck and Russell Johnson for their feedback and advice. Finally, I’d like to thank my mother Lynn Cochran, who has always encouraged me to not turn away from challenges, and my husband Andrew Lennard, the rock on which this dream was built. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 PERSPECTIVE TAKING & EMPATHY ...................................................................................... 8 Perspective Taking ...................................................................................................................... 8 Perspective Taking & Empathy................................................................................................. 14 PERSPECTIVE TAKING & SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY .................................................... 17 PERSPECTIVE TAKING & JUSTICE........................................................................................ 22 HYPOTHESES ............................................................................................................................. 26 Antecedents to Perspective Taking ........................................................................................... 26 Perspective Taking, Empathy, and Personal Distress ............................................................... 30 Perspective Taking Boundary Conditions ................................................................................. 34 Self-Esteem ............................................................................................................................ 34 Similarity of Response Toward Critical Event ...................................................................... 37 Outcomes of Empathic Concern and Personal Distress ............................................................ 43 Justice Outcomes ................................................................................................................... 44 Social Interaction Outcomes .................................................................................................. 46 METHODS & RESULTS: PILOT STUDY ................................................................................. 52 Pilot Study ................................................................................................................................. 52 Critical Events ....................................................................................................................... 52 Past Experience ...................................................................................................................... 53 Similarity of Response........................................................................................................... 53 Perspective Taking ................................................................................................................ 53 Empathic Concern ................................................................................................................. 54 Personal Distress.................................................................................................................... 54 METHODS: PRIMARY STUDY................................................................................................. 56 Sample and Procedure ............................................................................................................... 56 Measures.................................................................................................................................... 57 Critical Events ....................................................................................................................... 57 Perspective Taking ................................................................................................................ 58 Past Experience ...................................................................................................................... 59 Similarity of Response........................................................................................................... 60 Self-Esteem ............................................................................................................................ 60 Empathic Concern ................................................................................................................. 60 v Personal Distress.................................................................................................................... 61 Justice Behaviors ................................................................................................................... 61 Prosocial Behavior ................................................................................................................. 62 Ostracism ............................................................................................................................... 62 Analytic Approach .................................................................................................................... 63 RESULTS ..................................................................................................................................... 65 Tests of Hypotheses .................................................................................................................. 65 Supplementary Analyses ........................................................................................................... 70 CFAs for Created Scales........................................................................................................ 70 Critical Events and Similarity of Past Experience ................................................................. 71 2x2 Interaction between Imagine-Other and Imagine-Self Perspective Taking .................... 72 Ordering of Perspective Taking and Emotions ...................................................................... 73 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................... 76 Implications of Results .............................................................................................................. 76 Critical Events and Similar Past Experience ......................................................................... 77 Perspective Taking and its Emotional Responses ................................................................. 78 Perspective Taking and Response Similarity ........................................................................ 80 Perspective Taking and Self-Esteem ..................................................................................... 82 Outcomes of Perspective Taking ........................................................................................... 84 Limitations and Future Directions ......................................................................................... 87 APPENDICES .............................................................................................................................. 92 Appendix A—Study Training ................................................................................................... 93 Appendix B—Pilot Survey........................................................................................................ 95 Appendix C—One-Time Survey ............................................................................................. 103 Appendix D—Daily Survey 1 (Evening) ................................................................................ 113 Appendix E—Daily Survey 2 (Morning) ................................................................................ 120 Appendix F—Figures and Tables ........................................................................................... 127 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 134 vi LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1: Proportion of Within-person Variance among Study Variables................................131 TABLE 2: Correlation Table.......................................................................................................132 TABLE 3: Moderated Mediation Results (Imagine-Other and Empathic Concern) ..................133 iii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1: Theoretical Model...................................................................................................127 FIGURE 2: Results of Proposed Model.....................................................................................128 FIGURE 3: The Interaction of Self-Esteem and Imagine-Other Perspective Taking on Empathic Concern (Hypothesis 4) ..............................................................................................................129 FIGURE 4: The Interaction of Similarity of Response and Imagine-Self Perspective Taking on Personal Distress (Hypothesis 6b) ..............................................................................................129 FIGURE 5: The Interaction of Imagine-Self and Imagine-Other Perspective Taking on Personal Distress (Supplemental Analysis) ..............................................................................................130 iv INTRODUCTION When employees experience conflict, fall short of performance expectations, make an error, or simply struggle personally or professionally, it is traditionally the role of the manager to make sense of the situation and determine the appropriate response. This is not to say that managers are the only individuals in organizations making judgments. We know that people are hardwired to almost reflexively pass judgment on others—sometimes even unconsciously, as seen with the fundamental attribution error (Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). However, it is managers that are often given the most power and responsibility to respond to these critical events (situations that have relative discontinuity, novelty, and criticality) within organizations. How the manager ends up passing judgment, allocating justice outcomes, and behaving socially toward the employee is important to the target employee, their coworkers or work group, the organization as a whole, and the manager. Therefore, it is important to understand the underlying processes that drive judgments and social responses, and more specifically, the biases and heuristics that come into play and how managers own past experiences with the event in question influence the decisions they make about subordinates. When making judgments, determining a response, or simply trying to understand another person’s behavior, perspective taking plays a unique and important role in the judgment process. It operates as a social tool that can help determine the cause of someone’s behavior or decide how one would feel or act if “put into the other person’s shoes” (Batson, 1994; Mead, 1934). Perspective taking can help individuals move past their own biases and limitations and is therefore encouraged as a way of attempting to get at the root of others’ motivations and actions. “The perspective which is adopted as well as shifts between different perspectives play a crucial role in how the decision maker evaluates the options” (Montgomery, 1994: 176). We also know 1 that perspective taking can affect feelings toward the target, as perspective taking makes “the cognitive structures for the self and the target share more common elements” in the observer’s mind, increasing shared identity and the perception of similarity and self-other overlap (Galinsky & Ku, 2004: 596). Perspective taking is especially salient in organizations, which are becoming increasingly reliant on teams that are diverse in nature and require an understanding among coworkers’ and subordinates’ differing perspectives (Dean & Snell, 1991; Parker & Axtell, 2001). Research in social psychology has shown that perspective taking can engender empathy (Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997), increase helping behaviors while decreasing aggression (Batson, 1991), and reduce stereotyping and prejudice (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). For example, by creating an overlap between another person and oneself through perspective taking, in-group favoritism can be diminished and stereotyping can consequently be suppressed (Galinsky & Ku, 2004). Therefore, as globalization continues to push organizations overseas and encourage multicultural collaborations, perspective taking becomes crucial to understanding motivation and behavior across cultures (Mohrman & Cohen, 1995). Thus, the perspective taking literature has increased our knowledge as a field of how people understand one another, make sense of differing perspectives, and overcome our self-serving biases in decision making and judgment situations. Most management research assumes that the act of perspective taking results in a concerted effort to understand the target, and therefore has positive benefits for both the target and the observer (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). For this reason, perspective taking is often encouraged, especially in decision-making scenarios, negotiations, conflict management or for managers who must distinguish between multiple perspectives before passing judgment 2 (Eiseman, 1978; Montgomery, 1994; Raiffa, 1982; Rubin & Brown, 1975). However, with this dissertation I present a more balanced view of perspective taking, using social identity theory to detail a process-oriented model that presents both the possible positive and negative consequences of perspective taking for managers, and identify boundary conditions that may make either outcome more or less likely. More specifically, I argue that an individual’s own perspective and past experiences exert influence on how he or she interprets and passes judgment on other people’s experiences. Though there are countless situations that may engender managerial perspective taking and decision making, I draw from event system theory (Morgeson, Mitchell, & Liu, 2015) to categorize the most salient of these situations as critical events. Drawing on this work (Morgeson et al., 2015), I define events as situations that that are external to the individual, command attention, impact behavior, and influence subsequent events across time. However, many events are ignored as they are often routine and therefore do not spark any deeper information processing or perspective taking to understand the meaning or response to such an event. Therefore, the strength of an event—and therefore what makes it not just an event but a critical event—is the degree to which it has discontinuity, novelty, and criticality. Discontinuity represents how much the event interrupts organizational routines and changes the current circumstances. Novelty represents the degree to which an event is different from expected behaviors or past events. Criticality represents the importance of the event, how essential it is to the individual, or how much of a priority it is in the given context (Morgeson & DeRue, 2006). Though all three of these dimensions are important to understand what makes a given event important, it is up to the individual to determine how salient a given event is, based on how their own past experiences and perspective shapes their responses to these three factors. Therefore, I 3 predict that managers’ responses to critical events are affected by their own experiences with the critical event—such as the level of similarity between the manager’s past experiences and responses, and those of the subordinate. How one’s own perspective influences the perspective taking process has not been sufficiently explored in the management literature. There is a lack of attention on the perspective taker’s past experiences and how this might shape the conclusions they draw. Most of the recent research is in clinical psychology or law—such as, similar experiences that a therapist might share with a patient, or that a juror might have with a victim or defendant (Devine, Clayton, Dunford, Seying, & Pryce, 2001; Kirk, Best, & Irwin, 1986; Nagao & Davis, 1980). The closest that the management literature typically comes to examining past experience is through self- other similarity. However, even then, self-other similarity is thought to operate positively through the perspective taking process and there is a lack of understanding around how similarity of experience could actually negatively influence decisions and behaviors (Batson, Sager, Garst, Kang, Rubchinsky, & Dawson, 1997b). However, we know from social identity theory that though there is a general trend to favor those with similar experiences, or who are a part of the “ingroup,” there are negative consequences—known as the black sheep effect—that can sometimes occur when passing judgments on similar others (Marques & Paez, 1994; Marques, Yzerbyt, & Leyens, 1988). Though perspective taking and social identity theory draw on many of the same concepts, namely, how ingroup/outgroup membership and self-other overlap affect decision making and behavior, the perspective taking literature has not integrated many of the findings from social identity into its understanding of the perspective taking process. This lack of understanding is problematic because it prevents us from having an integrated and full conception of the biases 4 involved in perspective taking and decision making. Indeed, “through its attempts to secure social bonds, perspective-taking can be an engine of social harmony, but can also reveal a dark side, one full of ironic consequences” which “may impair rather than facilitate social bonds” (Galinsky, Ku, & Wang, 2005: 109, 120). Thus, it is only through understanding both the negative and positive effects that perspective taking exerts that we can have a more balanced representation of its complete effects. Therefore, building on prior research, this dissertation attempts to shift the consensus in the management literature that perspective taking is a wholly positive process and provide a more balanced perspective. I highlight both the positive and negative consequences of perspective taking to demonstrate how it affects justice, judgments, decision making, and social interactions. I predict that the effects of perspective taking in managerial settings are actually more complicated and nuanced than the existing literature would suggest. In fact, I propose that under certain circumstances past experience with a critical event can result in more egoistic and unfair behaviors and social interactions. More specifically, I argue that when attempting to understand a subordinate, managers try to use their own past experiences with a given critical event or situation as a reference point. I propose that if that past experience exists, it may engender greater empathic concern for the target, making the manager more likely to treat them justly, evaluate them favorably, and have positive social interactions through engaging in prosocial behavior. However, I also argue that this shared past experience may also highlight that the manager had or would have “done it differently” making the act of perspective taking more personally distressing, and making them more likely to treat the employee unfairly and have negative social interactions such as engaging in ostracism (a key social distancing mechanism). Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to expand our conception of perspective taking by 5 using social identity theory to reveal a more balanced understanding of perspective taking in managerial settings and its consequences. An overview of my full model is available in Figure 1. Through this process, I make several important theoretical contributions with this dissertation. First, I contribute to the perspective taking literature by demonstrating the influence of one’s own perspective on an individual’s ability to take the perspective of another. More specifically, I demonstrate how past experience can be a double-edged sword, sometimes aiding empathy through increased similarity, other times causing the manager to think “I would have done it differently,” increasing personal distress. Through examining this influence, I provide a more balanced investigation of the variety of effects resulting from the perspective taking process and demonstrate how elements of perspective taking—such as shared experience—that we traditionally think of as positive, can actually reduce self-other overlap and result in unjust behaviors and negative social interactions such as ostracism. Second, most of the perspective taking literature has focused on interactions among strangers, or an individual’s ability to take the perspective of someone that they have never met before (or who may or may not even be a real person, as in scenario studies). I believe this has been a significant limitation of the perspective taking literature, as it has kept most of the studies hypothetical and not allowed researchers to fully examine the perspective taking process or the consequences of that process, such as justice behaviors or social interactions, in context. Therefore, I contribute to the perspective taking literature and the management field by examining actual critical events between managers and their subordinates—allowing me to examine how past experiences with the same situation and similarity among individuals could affect attitudes and behaviors. 6 Third, I answer calls to integrate new social identity mechanisms into organizational behavior (Hogg & Terry, 2000) by demonstrating that applying social identity theory to the perspective taking framework reveals many of the more counterintuitive yet important outcomes that can be associated with taking another person’s perspective. Social identity theory shares many of the basic assumptions of perspective taking—namely, that perceived similarity and closeness with others will increase self-other overlap, and this overlap will guide attitudes and behaviors. However, these two theories often address different contexts and elements of this process. Therefore, this integration reveals that understanding how individuals view themselves in relation to relevant groups and other individuals (the crux of social identity theory) helps to explain the complex outcomes of perspective taking, particularly in managerial contexts. Finally, understanding what motivates managerial enactment of just and unjust behavior and social distancing behaviors such as ostracism has not been well established in the literature. The majority of the justice research and social identity research has focused on justice and ostracism as independent variables, and only recently have these literatures called for a greater understanding of when and why leaders do or do not behave justly (Colquitt, LePine, Piccolo, Zapata, & Rich, 2012) or in socially distant ways (Wu, Ferris, Kwan, Chiang, Snape, & Liang, 2015). Additionally, the justice and social identity literatures primarily examine these behaviors at the between-level, while I investigate within-person effects—as it has been demonstrated that justice and social behaviors often vary within person on a day-to-day basis (Scott, Garza, Conlon, & Kim, 2014). 7 PERSPECTIVE TAKING & EMPATHY Perspective Taking The ability to take another person’s perspective, understand their point of view, and imagine what they might be feeling has long been thought to be a part of the root of human social relation and sense-making (Mead, 1934; Parker & Axtell, 2001; Piaget, 1932). Perspective taking is defined as the act of putting oneself in the metaphorical shoes of another to better understand their point of view (Batson, 1994; Mead, 1934). Through this process, perspective taking helps an individual understand how situations appear to others and what their cognitive and emotional response to situations might be (Johnson, 1975). This process is also termed “role taking” in the field of social-cognitive development and research has shown that the act of imagining another’s perspective leads to the development of the idea of the “other” and that the “other” is separate from the “self” (Johnson, 1975; Mead, 1934). In fact, Mead (1934), in a seminal and influential work on perspective taking theory, posits that social meaning and our realization that the “self” and “other” are distinct actually “arises in experience through the individual simulating himself to take the attitude of the other” (8). Despite the considerable advantages that perspective taking gives to organizations, and how increasingly relevant these concepts are becoming in the collaborative, diverse work space, very little research to date has been done to investigate the ways that perspective taking functions in organizations (Parker & Axtell, 2001). Though perspective taking has been underutilized in the management literature, it has had a long history in other fields, and researchers like Piaget (1932) have argued that “theory of mind”—people’s ability to attribute various mental states such as beliefs, feelings, and desires to others—is a developmental process that begins in childhood and becomes more and more complex as we age (Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, & 8 Gilovich, 2004). As we get older it becomes easier to hold conflicting views in our minds at the same time and understand the perspectives of those who are different from us (Bartunek, Gordon, & Weathersby, 1983). This increase in complexity is accompanied by moral development and moral reasoning where we transition from a more egocentric state of morality to one where we can understand multiple perspectives and the differences between them (Kohlberg, 1969, 1976). As previously mentioned, most current research presents perspective taking as being a wholly positive process that increases outcomes such as help-giving, (Batson, 1994), empathy (Cialdini et al., 1997), pro-social behavior (Galinsky & Ku, 2004), negotiation effectiveness (Neale & Bazerman, 1983), conflict resolution (Paese & Yonker, 2001) and reduces stereotypes and in-group favoritism (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). Additionally, the small amount of research that has been done on managerial perspective taking has also found mostly positive outcomes. The overarching theme to that research is that managers with high levels of cognitive complexity—as in, those who are able to hold multiple perspectives within their heads—are more effective in their roles (Fisher & Torbet, 1991; Parker & Axtell, 2001). They will be able to understand the organization, the various individuals within the organization, and the environment surrounding it more clearly than if they were approaching it from a single perspective (Parker & Axtell, 2001). This research in cognitive complexity has also been applied to transformational leadership, with similarly positive effects (Turner, Barling, Epitropaki, Butcher, & Milner, 2002). However, the consequences of taking multiple perspectives are more complex, and at times, more pernicious, than that. Though considering another person’s perspective can lessen one’s focus on self-related concerns and encourage problem solving behaviors, work by Epley, Caruso, and Bazerman (2006) show how perspective taking can also increase egocentric and uncooperative behavior. 9 The authors acknowledge that considering other person’s perspective can reduce egocentric judgments, making it more likely that an individual will acknowledge another member’s right to available resources. However, they argue that under certain circumstances, “the consideration of others’ thoughts and perspectives actually increases egoistic (selfish) behavior such that people actually take more of available resources” (872). The authors argue that this inconsistency in effects is due to the fact that even though taking the other person’s perspective increases the individual’s awareness of the other’s merits and contribution, in competitive scenarios, this focus on another’s thoughts, interests, and perspective can also highlight possible self-interested motives (Epley et al., 2006). The authors examine this idea in a series of five experiments. The first study used a simulated negotiation exercise where participants represented different fishing companies and were asked to allocate resources among one another. This study found that prompting participants to perspective take increased their awareness that it would be fair to allow the opponent access to resources, but nonetheless, the perspective takers actually gave the opponent fewer resources than the participants who did not perspective take. Continuing this line of research, the second experiment had half of the participants take the perspective of their opponent, and then all the participants predicted how much money the opponent would request from a resource allocation and how much they would, in turn, request. The authors found that those that took the opponent’s perspective both expected that the opponent would request more money, and requested more money themselves, in response. Therefore, Epley et al. (2006) predict, and find support, for how “reducing an egocentric focus on one’s own concerns and interests by considering others’ perspectives in social interaction may … lead to reactive egoism in behavior” (873). The authors also find that this effect is somewhat attenuated in cooperative 10 contexts, as opposed to competitive contexts, emphasizing the importance of taking context and threat into consideration when examining perspective taking. Epley and colleagues’ (2006) findings empirically demonstrate how perspective taking can involve the self as much as the target. This egoistic inclination in the observer is in part a result of the fact that though perspective taking’s goal is to gain a better understanding of another’s point of view, the act of considering another person’s point of view makes the individual more self-like (e.g., by increasing shared identity and the expectation of similarity, see Galinsky & Ku, 2004), and people use their own perspective as an anchor to understand others (Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996). Therefore, our own perspective is often the most salient and readily accessible to us, and we must deliberately adjust from it to take the perspective of another person (Epley et al., 2004). However, research has shown that people’s ability to effectively adjust away from their own perspective is insufficient (Epley et al., 2004). “Experience is faster and more reliable than inference,” so it is often used unconsciously as a proxy or default for other’s thoughts (Epley et al., 2004: 873). The preoccupation with one’s own thoughts and experiences can make an observer more likely to make sense of others actions and thoughts with causal attributions that resemble one’s own thought processes (Davis et al., 1996). Therefore, it is important to point out that though perspective taking’s goal is to examine the viewpoint of another, egocentrism is never truly abandoned. In other words, though there is adjustment away from egocentric views as individuals begin to be more aware of others’ differences, the idea of other’s perspectives and feelings still begin by being anchored within the self (Epley et al., 2004). Additionally, diving deeper into the construct, the literature has demonstrated that there are two different forms of perspective taking—imagining how another would feel, which can 11 evoke empathy, and imaging how you would feel, which can evoke empathy and personal distress (Batson, Early, & Salvarani, 1997a). Though different, both forms of perspective taking are important in understanding the ways a decision maker can make sense of another person’s viewpoint or situation. The first method, called “imagine-other” perspective taking, involves trying to understand the target’s unique outlook, thoughts, and feelings without involving the self. This means attempting to put one’s own past experiences aside, and not think about how one would feel or think, or what one would do if in the target’s shoes, but focus on the other person’s unique perspective. Though both forms of perspective taking represent an attempt to leave one’s own perspective behind in order to adopt another’s, ‘imagine-other” perspective taking is the most successful at this task. Research has demonstrated that when taking another person’s perspective, individuals using imagine-other perspective taking remain more objective, detached, and experience less distress when adopting the other person’s perspective (Batson et al., 1997a; Jackson, Brunet, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2006; Lamm, Batson, & Decety, 2007). Therefore, imagine-other perspective taking is a more cognitive than emotional process, as it involves leaving one’s own perspective and emotional responses behind and instead focusing on the unique experience and perspective of the other person (Decety & Lamm, 2009). The other method, called “imagine-self” perspective taking, involves trying to imagine how you would feel, what you would think, and what you would do if you were put in the target’s same situation (Vorauer & Sucharyna, 2013). This form of perspective taking does not require accounting or adjusting for differences between oneself and the subject, as the perspective taker is instead drawing on their own thoughts, feelings, and past experiences to determine what the target must be thinking. Though this may at first seem like an unsuccessful method to use to take another person’s perspective, it is important to realize that many people 12 assume that everyone sees and interprets the world very similarly (Epley et al., 2004). As a result of this heightened level of self-other overlap, research has shown that those who use an imagine- self perspective have more emotional responses (Decety & Lamm, 2009). Though these individuals can also experience increased empathy on the part of the target, they often also experience nervousness and distress, as a result of imaging how they would feel and think in the target’s (sometimes distressing) situation. These subjects have also been shown to exhibit behavioral and neurological effects from this emotional experience such as increased sweating and more activation of emotion centers of the brain associated with fear and distress (Batson et al., 1997a; Jackson et al., 2006; Lamm et al., 2007; Scotland, 1969; Vorauer & Sucharyna, 2013). In other words, this egoistic focus on the self and imagining how one would think or react in another’s situation can actually lead to a similar stress response as really being in that situation. Experiencing these emotions can obviously be an unpleasant experience for the perspective taker, and research has shown that individuals are often motivated to distance themselves from the distressful emotional situation and relieve those feelings, such as distancing themselves from the target and the situation as a way of reassuring themselves that this experience is not and would not happen to them (Batson et al., 1997a). Although the perspective taking literature treats the imagine-other and imagine-self forms of perspective taking as being negatively related (meaning that if you use one form, that automatically means that you do not use another), this assumption has not been tested in the literature. Work on perspective taking has generally argued that an individual uses one form of perspective taking or another, not both. However, the literature does suggest that imagine-self perspective taking is the easier technique to use, as it involves less active adjustment from one’s own perspective. Therefore, though I continue to treat the two forms of perspective taking as 13 negatively related, I also use this dissertation to further examine the nature of the relationship between imagine-other and imagine-self perspective taking. Perspective Taking & Empathy Though perspective taking is a unique construct in the literature, past work has sometimes referred to or confused perspective taking with other related constructs—particularly empathy—failing to appropriately differentiate the two. Because empathy plays an important role in this dissertation as a mediator (through empathic concern), it is important to distinguish it theoretically from perspective taking. Although empathy does have an important relationship with perspective taking, they still remain unique constructs. Empathy, as it is used here, is defined as the emotional “reactions of one individual to the observed experiences of another” (Davis, 1983). Empathy is primarily concerned with the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Though empathy as a construct has been conceptually tied to perspective taking, they remain distinct, as empathy involves sharing emotions instead of simply perspectives, which is more of a cognitive process. “Perspective-taking is a stepping stone to human empathy” (Jackson et al., 2006: 752). Therefore, though both empathy and perspective taking are both important facets that get at the larger understanding of how people react to others’ thoughts, emotions, and experiences, they do this through different—though connected— cognitive and emotional processes (Davis, 1980). Though empathy research has been very influential in psychology and cognitive science, the word ‘empathy’ itself is a surprisingly new term. It was first coined in 1909 by Edward Titchener in an attempt to translate the German word ‘Einfuhlung’—which can be literally interpreted as “feeling with” or “feeling-into.” Thus, the word empathy comes to represent a variety of emotional mechanisms used to understand and react to the affective experiences of 14 others (Decety & Jackson, 2004). Because of the great many facets of empathy, there is arguably no one theory or model that fits all instances. The multitude of theories attempting to encompass empathy only demonstrate how the very idea of empathy is remarkably nuanced, diverse, and difficult to encompass. However, at the root of these various mechanisms is the fundamental idea of shared feelings. Though both perspective taking and empathy require a focus on others and can have similar results, such as reduced interpersonal conflict, perspective taking is generally considered to be at least initiated as a purely intellectual or cognitive process—even if it can have emotional consequences—while empathy is the affective response that can result from taking someone’s perspective (Calnan & Gilin, 2012; Galinsky, Maddux, Gilin, & White, 2008; Parker & Axtell, 2001). After all, “for empathy to occur, the individual experiencing it must know that the arousal is due to an event that is happening to someone else, and they need to some understanding of what the other person is feeling. How people experience empathy, therefore, depends on the level at which they cognize others” (Parker & Axtell, 2001: 1087). This empathy can take many different forms including being concerned and worried about their problems, experiencing happiness about their accomplishments, identifying with their overall experiences and feelings, and in some cases, experiencing anger as a result of injustice they have faced and wanting to seek out revenge (Parker & Axtell, 2001; Vitaglione & Barnett, 2003). There have been three primary approaches to empathy in the literature (Duan & Hill, 1996; Parker & Axtell, 2001). First, empathy has been thought of as a trait-level disposition that varies from individual to individual and is relatively constant over time (Parker & Axtell, 2001; Sawyer, 1975). This perspective assumes that someone’s level of empathy is determined by a combination of genetic predisposition and development. Second, empathy can be examined in 15 multiple stages all leading up to the communication of an empathic state. This approach is relatively unique to the clinical literature and is used the least (Duan & Hill, 1996; Parker & Axtell, 2001). Lastly, empathy has been conceptualized as a state-level cognitive-affective experience that can vary within individuals depending on the situation and the context. It can be a vicarious response to a stimulus or a person, that varies based on an individual’s response to a unique situation rather than the individual’s personal level of trait empathy (Batson & Coke, 1981; Parker & Axtell, 2001). This approach also argues that researchers can manipulate empathy as people can be primed to experience empathy through perspective taking, regardless of disposition (Davis et al., 1996). In this dissertation, empathy is evaluated using this last framework as it is most common in social psychology and “this approach allows for studying the effects of situational factors on empathy” (Parker & Axtell, 2001: 1086). It is also worth noting here that empathy as it is used in this context is very different from sympathy, which involves simply feeling sadness, compassion, or pity for someone (who is often in a bad situation) without actually understanding or identifying with that individual (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989; Parker & Axtell, 2001). Sympathy is more of an automatic response that does not involve deeper knowledge of that person regarding what they are feeling or experiencing. It is best described as feeling sorry for someone. Though sympathy is intimately linked to empathy and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they remain distinct constructs with very different underlying mechanisms. 16 PERSPECTIVE TAKING & SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY Social identity theory was first introduced to the organizational behavior domain by Ashforth and Mael (1989) who posited that “people tend to classify themselves and others into various social categories” and this classification both “cognitively segments and orders the social environment” and also “enables the individual to locate or define him- or herself in the social environment” (20-21). Because of the inherently comparative nature of social relations and social identities, social identity theory argues that individuals use the distinctions and similarities between themselves and various reference groups to get social feedback and establish information about identity (Tajfel, 1981; Tajfel, 1978). A litany of research has demonstrated the power of this social effect, showing that it influences the allocations of rewards among prestigious and less prestigious groups (Branscombe, Spears, Ellemers, & Doosje, 2002), and results in a general bias against individuals identified as being a part of the outgroup (Hinkle & Brown, 1990). Though the majority of research on social identity theory reveals that we tend to favor those that are similar to ourselves (members of our ingroup or those that we perceive as simply being similar), a smaller stream of research within the social identity field has begun to question whether similar others always have the social advantage, revealing the complexity of similarity, group membership, and judgment patterns. Specifically, the black sheep hypothesis (Marques & Paez, 1994; Marques et al., 1988) within social identity theory argues that judgments about in- group members should yield more extreme evaluations from decision makers. In other words, ingroup members (members that are perceived as being similar) end up engendering more polarized and extreme responses—often causing an observer to punish in-group members 17 beyond normal parameters if they behave poorly (Eidelman & Biernat, 2003; Marques & Paez, 1994; Marques et al., 1988). For example, imagine an employee who recently emigrated from South America to the U.S. This employee has a coworker who is also from South America. However, the coworker has made very few efforts to properly learn English, has poor motivation at work, and continually creates problems in interactions with clients. Though this behavior is frustrating for all the employees in the individual’s team, it particularly bothers the fellow South American employee, who works hard and is doing well at the company. This employee feels that because of the perceived similarity between the two South American employees, the failures of this employee will reflect poorly on international employees as a whole, and particularly those from South America. The employee worries that this may result in poorer career prospects within the company and discourage the company from hiring internationally in the future. Therefore, this employee begins to ignore the coworker, ostracizing him or her from social activities, and does not behave fairly toward the coworker when making decisions within the work group. This is an example of the black sheep hypothesis—a situation where similarity or shared membership between group members exacerbates the reaction that a member has to expectancy violations (such as a critical event) or perceived positive or negative behavior. These extreme reactions originate from the similarity (or overlapping identity) perceived between the observer and the target. Because of the similarity or shared group membership, any expectancy violation or negative attributions made about the target are also perceived to be a threat to the observer and the group as a whole, as they may be “associatively miscast” along with the deviant (Cooper & Jones, 1969). According to Neuberg, Smith, Hoffman, and Russell (1994) the negative attitudinal and behavioral reactions generated by the black sheep hypothesis 18 can be an effective and necessary distancing mechanism, as the errors of an individual can be associated with the larger errors of a group or other group members. “The black sheep hypothesis is thus in accordance with Social Identity Theory: The under-evaluation of dislikeable ingroup members may be an acceptable psychological strategy for preserving the group’s overall positivity. Therefore, the black sheep effect should be considered a ‘sophisticated’ form of ingroup favoritism” (Marques et al., 1988: 5). Thus, the goal of the harsh response of group members to unfavorable behavior is to separate the group—and more importantly, oneself (according to Eidelman & Biernat, 2003)—from the deviant group member, therefore alleviating the threat that the expectancy violation generated (Marques & Paez, 1994) The threat generated by the black sheep hypothesis and similar violations of behavioral expectations has been seen to result in a variety of negative social responses, including ostracism (Williams, 2007). For example, Luksyte, Avery, and Yeo (2015) found that coworkers reacted more negatively to employee presenteeism (coming to work even though one is ill)—a behavior perceived as negative at the organization—when there was greater similarity between the sick employee and the coworker. Additionally, (Lewis & Sherman, 2010) argue that the black-sheep effect is particularly robust when the group is high in perceived entitativity, or the degree to which the group is seen as a pure, unified entity. Members that are a part of groups high in entitativity are more likely to be lumped together by outgroup members, losing their perceived status as unique independent individuals, instead being viewed as simply a representative of a larger collective (Campbell, 1958). It is in these groups that the black sheep effect was found to be the strongest, as negative or inconsistent behavior by one group member is more likely to be viewed as representative of the entire collective (Lewis & Sherman, 2010; Sherman, Hamilton, & Lewis, 1999). 19 These polarizing effects of similarity have also been found in the law literature, where we find that juror-defendant similarity leads to greater leniency when the evidence is weak but the reverse when evidence is strong (Kerr, Hymes, Anderson, & Weathers, 1995). This means that jurors are willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt in favorable or uncertain circumstances, but when the violation is clear, the judgment is even harsher. This demonstrates that the unfavorable behavior of a similar other (or ingroup member) is particularly salient and generates more extreme responses. Therefore, research has shown across several contexts that similarity to another can also result in increased levels of altruistic punishment—where altruistic punishment represents the penalization of one group member for what the punisher perceives to be the greater good of the group or simply themselves (Mussweiler & Ockenfels, 2013). Additionally, when it comes to determining a reaction, or the severity of that reaction, research has shown that individuals are judged in light of the decision maker’s active social identity (Mackie & Cooper, 1984; Marques et al., 1988). In other words, if the decision maker is personally involved in the situation (or feel that their identity is tied to the other’s behavior), they are more likely to be biased in a manner that benefits themselves. For example, Mackie and Cooper (1984) found that individuals that strongly identify with their group membership take the norms of the group—and the violation of those norms—significantly more seriously than members that identify with the group less. Additionally, Marques et al. (1988) found that “the black sheep effect arises only when the cues for evaluation are relevant for the subjects’ social identity” (12). Therefore, the degree to which an individual identifies with a particular event, outcome, group, or behavior dictates the extremity of their response to expectancy violations from similar group members In fact, Lewis and Sherman (2010) draw from Social Identity Theory to “argue that individuals should strategically respond to social targets in a manner that 20 helps to maintain a positive social identity, denigrating ingroup member when they pose a significant threat to one’s social identity” (212). It is through this process that past experience on a topic can end up biasing decision making—particularly, I argue, when the decision maker has shared past experience, but behaved differently. Therefore, I use social identity theory to guide theorizing about perspective taking. The past research on perspective taking and empathy has taken a very dyadic view—focusing exclusively on the target and the perspective taker, neglecting the fact that both individuals are a part of a larger social landscape. Indeed, “it is possible…that the origin of a more fully developed empathy lies in social scenes” (Breithaupt, 2012: 3). This context includes a decision maker and target’s social environment, as well as past experiences that a manger might have with the critical event. By using social identity theory, I conduct a more comprehensive analysis of perspective taking and argue that when we encounter someone who supports our past decisions or meets our expectations, this strengthens our overlap with them and results in just behaviors and favorable social interactions such as prosocial behavior. However, when we encounter someone who undermines our past decisions or fails to meet our expectations, this drives us to want to distance ourselves from them and minimize that self-other overlap, which results in unjust behavior and unfavorable social interactions such as ostracism—as this behavior is more threatening to our sense of standing within the group, especially for managers, who bear responsibility for the behavior and performance of their subordinates. 21 PERSPECTIVE TAKING & JUSTICE Organizational justice has become one of the most frequently researched topics within management, organizational psychology, and human resource management (Cropanzano & Greenberg, 1997). Justice matters in the workplace because it serves important psychological needs such as economic needs (instrumental), belonging and esteem needs (relational), and meaningful existence needs (moral virtues) (Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001). Therefore, empirical research on organizational justice has been tied to a wide variety of organizational and wellness outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, withdrawal, organizational citizenship behavior, and strain (for a recent meta-analysis, see Colquitt, Scott, Rodell, Long, Zapata, Conlon et al., 2013) Justice is a socially constructed concept, and is thus based on the perception of fairness on the part of the receiver or justice-enactor (Cropanzano & Greenberg, 1997). More specifically, Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, and Ng (2001) argue that “‘what is fair’ is derived from past research linking objective facets of decision making to subjective perceptions of fairness” (425). In this way, though justice decisions are based in fact, they are also processed and interpreted through a specific individual’s perspective and past experiences. As a result, researchers have found a considerable amount of within-person variance demonstrating how much justice is a function of the interaction between a specific individual and the circumstances surrounding a particular critical event (Scott et al., 2014). Research on organizational justice was first used to explain the cause and outcomes of two forms of justice. The first form of justice to be introduced, distributive justice, represented the fairness of the allocation of outcomes (Adams, 1965; Homans, 1961; Leventhal, 1976). The second form of justice to be introduced, procedural justice, represented the fairness of the 22 procedures and rules surrounding how outcomes are allocated or distributed (Leventhal, 1980; Thibaut & Walker, 1975). As justice began to gain in interest, more approaches to conceptualizing and measuring facets of justice arose. Bies and Moag (1986) introduced the concept of interactional justice as a way to separate the more interpersonal justice components from procedural and distributive justice. Bies and Moag (1986) explained that interpersonal treatment is conceptually distinct from the structuring of procedures and the other justice dimensions. The authors propose that there are four rules governing the fairness of interactions: truthfulness, justification, respect, and propriety. However, later research separated these four rules to generate two separate forms of interpersonal treatment (Greenberg, 1993). The first of these forms of justice, interpersonal justice, represents the degree that an individual is treated with dignity and respect—this captures the respect and propriety rules of interactional justice. Conversely, informational justice represents the fairness inherent in how information is conveyed about the allocation of outcomes or the processes used to make justice decisions—this captures the truthfulness and justification rules of interactional justice (Greenberg, 1993). Although there has been discussion within the organizational justice literature about the inherent complexity and potential messiness of conceptualizing justice with a variety of dimensions, research by Colquitt (2001) suggests that organizational justice is best conceptualized as four distinct dimensions. In support of this idea, Colquitt et al. (2001) demonstrate that though the different justice dimensions are moderately to highly related, they contribute incremental variance explained in fairness perceptions. Therefore, there are both overall and unique relationships among distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and information justice and some of the most commonly examined organizational outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, evaluation of authority, organizational citizenship behavior, 23 withdrawal, and performance). Therefore, in this dissertation, justice is measured as four distinct dimensions. However, despite the considerable interest taken in examining organizational justice, there are still areas of research within justice that need to be further developed. For example, (Colquitt et al., 2012) discusses several “path-breaking contributions” that should be made to the justice literature to expand our understanding of its role in the workplace. For example, the vast majority of justice research has focused on the consequences of justice for managers and employees. Considerably less research has been dedicated to identifying the predictors of justice. This is a problem because by primarily focusing on the receivers of just and unjust treatment, little is known about why managers adhere to or violate rules of justice in the first place (Scott, Colquitt, & Paddock, 2009). Scott et al. (2014) examine this issue further, proposing a conceptual framework of justice motives, identifying both “cold” (cognitive) and “hot” (affective) motives that might drive justice behaviors. The authors describe these more cognitive motives to be based primarily on compliance concerns, identity maintenance, and establishing fairness through belief in a just world. On the other hand, the authors describe the more affective motives of adhering to justice to be based on the emotions of the manager. The identification of these “cold” and “hot” motives for engaging in justice behavior is in theoretical alignment with the descriptions of “imagine-other” and “imagine-self” perspective taking, which, as previously mentioned, can also be described as the “cold” (the more cognitive, imagine-other path) and “hot” (the more affective, imagine-self path) methods of taking another person’s view point. Therefore, by examining critical events and manager’s propensity to engage in imagine-other or imagine- self perspective taking, this dissertation increases understanding of when and why justice occurs in response to a given critical event. 24 Additionally, Colquitt et al. (2012) raises the call to focus more on the role of affect in justice. To date, justice has primarily been examined from a cognitive point of view, even though the literature has acknowledged how subjective justice judgments are. Therefore, by examining both the cognitive and affective perspective taking paths (imagine-other and imagine-self, respectively)—which can evoke the emotional responses of empathic concern and personal distress—I will examine the role of both emotion and cognition in enacting just or unjust behaviors. Finally, the majority of the research on justice has taken a between-person perspective, investigating the differences between managers and employees in how they enact or are affected by justice. However, because this dissertation is investigating the antecedents to justice behavior, I am examining justice from a within-person perspective, as “it may be the case that justice rule adherence is more of a within-manager phenomenon than a between-manager phenomenon, with rule adherence driven primarily by transitory motives operating at the time” (Scott et al., 2014: 1572). In fact, in their investigation of justice rule adherence, Scott et al. (2014) found that between 68% and 80% of variance in daily justice adherence was within managers. I therefore believe that examining justice at the daily level is the appropriate level of analysis for the research questions this dissertation explores. 25 Antecedents to Perspective Taking HYPOTHESES Though managers respond to a wide variety of situations in the workplace—using perspective taking to better understand employee’s attitudes and behavior—I draw from event system theory to categorize the most salient of these situations as critical events. Taking an event-oriented perspective allows this research to examine both the process and contextual elements of perspective taking, as this characterization of the situation hones in on the mechanisms driving the response to the event, as well as the context surrounding it. Drawing from work by Morgeson et al. (2015), I define events as situations that that are negative, external to the individual, command attention, and impact behavior and subsequent events across time. However, this definition is very general, which has limitations, as almost anything could be considered an event following this definition. Indeed, employees and managers “encounter numerous events on a day-to-day basis, yet not all events are salient or command attention” (Morgeson et al., 2015: 520). Therefore, the strength of an event—and therefore what makes it not just an event but a critical event—is the degree to which it represents discontinuity, novelty, and criticality. Discontinuity represents how much the event deviated from routine and changes the current circumstances. Therefore, events that are unexpected and commanding of attention are discontinuous (Morgeson et al., 2015). An example of a discontinuous event would be a disruptive conflict between employees or a substantial change in expected processes for a project. Novelty represents “the extent to which an event is different or varies from current and past behaviors, features, and events, thus representing a new or unexpected phenomenon” (Morgeson et al., 2015: 520). In this way, novel events trigger information processing and sense making 26 because they deviate from what the individual is used to experiencing. An example of a novel event would be a new employee joining a work group or a unique performance problem arising with an employee. Finally, criticality represents the importance of the event, how essential it is to the individual, or how much of a priority it is in the given context. The criticality of a situation often dictates the salience of that event to the individual, at it demands attention because of its importance. Additionally, many events high in criticality often involve performance implications (Morgeson & DeRue, 2006). An example of an event high in criticality would be losing an important client or an employee neglecting to effectively communicate vital information to another department. Though all three dimensions of critical events are important to understanding what makes a given event important to an employee, “it is clear that all three are present in varying amounts in every event” (Morgeson et al., 2015: 522). Therefore, it is through the additive weight of these three factors that the strength of an event is determined. In other words, two events could be drastically different in terms of discontinuity, novelty, and criticality, while still being relatively similar in terms of event strength. Therefore, it is up to the employee to determine how salient a given event is, depending on these three factors. Some employees maybe more affected by some types of critical events than by others (Morgeson et al., 2015). Additionally, though critical events could conceivably be either positive or negative—for example, a low performer could attract a manager’s attention, but so could a rate busting high performer—I only focus on negative critical events. I did this because even though managers could react to either form of event, I believe that negative critical events will stand out more in managers’ minds (and be easier to recall), command more attention, and occur more frequently than positive events (Fredrickson, 1998). Additionally, perspective taking and empathy are most often used to 27 understand negative behavior and situations, as less sense making is generally necessary to understand positive behavior and situations (Davis, 1980). Events high in novelty, criticality, and discontinuity have been previously examined in the literature. Hoffman and Lord (2013) advocate for the examination of leader intervention and general behaviors at the event level, as this is where “adaptive leader responses and their variable influence on subsequent outcomes can be better assessed” (558). Morgeson (2005) found that the success of team leader intervention depends on the context of the event the team is facing. Specifically, interventions were more successful when events were novel but interventions were negatively related to satisfaction with leadership when events were disruptive. Similarly, Morgeson and DeRue (2006) “revealed that the impact of events on team functioning and leaders intervention varied according to the type of event encountered” (271). Therefore, I use critical events to describe the kind of discontinuous, novel and critical situations that would be salient to managers and require deeper information processing than simply an automatic response. It is this deeper information processing that triggers perspective taking, as the observer must put themselves in the other person’s shoes to determine the motivation behind the response. Though the deeper processing required by critical events would imply that it is positively related to perspective taking, it does not imply clear direct effects between critical events and a particular form of perspective taking, as there has been no past work linking critical events to perspective taking. What dictates the form of perspective taking that a manger takes depends on the context of the situation and the connection between the manager’s own past experiences and the critical event. This is in part due to the fact that when making evaluations of an “other,” we are really making comparisons, so you have to take the context of the comparisons (past experiences, expectation of behaviors) into account as well. 28 Therefore, instead of arguing for direct effects between critical events and a specific form of perspective taking, I instead argue that which form of perspective taking a manager uses to process and interpret a critical event will depend on their prior experience with that critical event. It is only through the interaction that we have a more complete understanding of which path might be more dominant. When an individual does not have past experiences that line up with the critical event, drawing on the self to understand the target’s perspective makes less sense. Though all forms of perspective taking draw on the self in some capacity, the imagine-other mechanism allows the observer to be more successful in leaving the self behind to try to truly understand the other person’s perspective (Leiberg & Anders, 2006). In this way, “well-developed perspective taking allows us to overcome our usual egocentrism” and actually attempt to understand another person’s unique point of view (Davis et al., 1996: 713). Imagine-other perspective taking therefore relies less on past knowledge of the situation and is more about trying to accurately predict what the person might be uniquely feeling or thinking, or why they might have responded a specific way in the critical event (Leiberg & Anders, 2006). Therefore, I propose that when a manager has little to no past experience with a situation, they are more likely to try to simply imagine what the other person must be experiencing without attempting to draw on their own schemas. This will increase the likelihood that the manager will use imagine-other perspective taking—the more cognitive and less emotional self-focused form of perspective taking—as opposed to imagine-self perspective taking. Hypothesis 1a: Past experience moderates the relationship between critical events and imagine- other perspective taking such that the relationship is positive when past experience is low and there is no relationship when past experience is high. 29 Alternatively, when an individual has relevant past experience with the critical event, these experiences are likely to be activated because they are highly available in the manager’s memory (availability heuristic, see Ross & Sicoly, 1979). “Specifically memories of past occurrences in which the self served as a target are more accessible than are memories about others as targets” (Zuckerman, Kernis, Guarnera, Murphy, & Rappoport, 1983: 628). A large body of research has demonstrated how central the self is to our perceptions (Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985). Therefore, it is much easier for observers to use their own past experiences with a critical event when trying to understand another person’s feeling, thoughts, or actions. Therefore, in this case I propose that because the self and those similar experiences are activated, the manager is more likely to engage in imagine-self perspective taking, as the manager can actually imagine what they might have (or have already) done in this situation. Imagine-self perspective taking does not require the same adjustments for differences between oneself and the target, as the manager is instead drawing on their own thoughts, feelings, and past experiences to determine what the target must be thinking or feeling. Therefore, this shared experience increases the likelihood that the manager will use imagine-self perspective taking, the more emotional self-focused and less cognitive form of perspective taking. Hypothesis 1b: Past experience moderates the relationship between critical events and imagine- self perspective taking such that the relationship is positive when past experience is high and there is no relationship when past experience is low. Perspective Taking, Empathy, and Personal Distress Research from the perspective taking literature has long been interested in this split between imagine-other and imagine-self forms of perspective taking, attempting to tease apart their differences and discover the different “emotional and motivational consequences of the two 30 perspectives” (Batson et al., 1997a; Decety & Lamm, 2009: 7). One of the biggest differences discovered between the two processes is that imagine-other perspective taking—or attempting to understand another’s mind without drawing on yourself or your own past experiences—has been found to be associated with experiencing empathic concern for that individual, as opposed to experiencing both empathic concern and personal distress (Decety & Lamm, 2009). Researchers have argued that these different responses happen because imagine-other perspective taking leads to a weaker focus on the self, dissuading self-oriented emotional responses such as personal distress and instead increasing other-oriented emotional responses such as empathic concern (Davis, Soderlund, Cole, Gadol, Kute, Myers et al., 2004). Empathic concern is generally defined as “an emotional reaction characterized by such feelings as compassion, softheartedness, and sympathy” and is “brought about by the act of perspective taking” (Cialdini et al., 1997: 481). According to Breithaupt (2012), this empathic concern can be generated through a variety of mechanisms such as mimicry, “theory of mind,” and social intelligence. However, the underlying neurological answer is that our autonomic nervous systems are specifically designed to respond that way. The sensory-motor neurons (also referred to as mirror neurons) in the parietal cortex fire the same way when witnessing a given action as when performing or experiencing the action ourselves (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2005; Ruby & Decety, 2004). In other words, under certain circumstances—like attempting to understand another’s behavior through perspective taking—an expression of emotion by another person (like one’s subordinate) can trigger a similar empathic response on the part of the observer. This process may seem like something out of a bad science fiction movie, but it has been demonstrated over and over in neuroscience research (Fogassi, Ferrari, Gesierich, Rozzi, Chersi, & Rizzolatti, 2005; Gallese, 31 2001; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2005; Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2008). It is important to clarify that when witnessing someone hit their head or stub their toe, an observer won’t literally feel their head or toe hurt, however similar emotional and reaction responses in the brain occur and the observer may still wince (Cialdini et al., 1997). This helps to explain the findings that all forms of perspective taking are associated with the activation of empathic concern (Batson et al., 1997a). However, neuroscience research has demonstrated that adopting another person’s perspective also activates parts of the brain associated with inhibitory control, which not only helps distinguish between one’s own perspective and that of another, but also helps to inhibit the influence of one’s own perspective when trying to understand the other person (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Ruby & Decety, 2003, 2004). In this way, though empathic concern is activated with imagine-other perspective taking, the self is kept at bay, inhibiting effects like personal distress that might otherwise interfere. Therefore, though both forms of perspective taking are associated with empathic concern, only imagine-self perspective taking results in personal distress. Thus, I predict that imagine-other perspective taking is positively related to empathic concern and not related to personal distress. Hypothesis 2ab: Imagine-other perspective taking is (a) positively related to empathic concern, and (b) not related to personal distress. Diverging from imagine-other forms of perspective taking, the imagine-self path implicitly relies on the self and one’s own perspective when trying to understand another person. While this changes certain elements of the cognitive processes underlying how the observer relates to the target, there is still a level of empathic concern generated through imagine-self perspective taking (Decety & Lamm, 2009). Just as neuroscience research has demonstrated the activation of mirror neurons and areas of the brain associated with empathic emotion, the same 32 effects have been found for imagine-self perspective taking (Cialdini et al., 1997). Indeed, perhaps the shared experience with the target may make it even easier for the manager to feel empathic concern with their situation (Batson, Sympson, Hindman, Decruz, Todd, Weeks et al., 1996). However, this overlap between the self and the target inherent in imagine-self perspective taking also poses a degree of threat that can lead to personal distress (Decety & Lamm, 2009). “Investigations that have focused on unpacking the cognitive processes set in motion by perspective-taking effort suggest the potential for adverse effects on outcomes not directly related to positivity” (Vorauer & Sucharyna, 2013). Just as having shared experience might make it easier to empathize, it also might make it easier to be reminded of your own previous distress or pain associated with the event (Batson et al., 1996). From a neuroscience perspective, because the neural mechanisms involved in perspective taking generate similar responses in the observer’s brain, witnessing another person in a painful situation can simulate a similar painful response in the observer. However, unlike in imagine-other perspective taking—where there was activation of parts of the parietal cortex involved in inhibitory control—imagine-self perspective taking involves more of an intertwining and merging of perspectives, prohibiting a more explicit distinction between self and other (Ruby & Decety, 2004). Additionally, imagining oneself in a difficult situation also activates areas of the brain involved in pain reception and action control, such as the amygdala, which plays an important role in fear-related perceptions and behaviors. Therefore, “imagining oneself to be in a painful and potentially dangerous situation might therefore have triggered a stronger fearful and/or aversive response than imagining someone else to be in the same situation” (Decety & Lamm, 2009: 9). For example, Batson et al. (1997a) 33 explored the different neurological reactions involved using imagine-other versus imagine-self perspective taking to understand the negative experiences of a college student, Katie. Those that imagined that they were explicitly in Katie’s position exhibited greater signs of discomfort and experiences of personal distress than those that were only asked to engage in imagine-other perspective taking. Therefore, though this self-other merging can produce increased empathic concern for the similar individual, it can also produce genuine personal distress on the part of the self, as a result of this simulated shared experience (Batson et al., 1997a). Though it may seem that empathic concern and personal distress are very distinct responses that would be difficult to co- occur as a result of a single experience, research on perspective taking has demonstrated that these emotions often co-occur in imagine-self situations (Batson, O'Quin, Fultz, Vanderplas, & Isen, 1983). Both emotions are generated by experiencing someone in need, or in a critical situation, so the intensity of the situation will affect both personal distress and empathic concern. Additionally, both of these responses should be affected by individual differences such as self- esteem (Batson et al., 1983). Therefore, I propose that imagine-self perspective taking will result in both empathic concern and personal distress. Hypothesis 3ab: Imagine-self perspective taking is positively related to (a) empathic concern and (b) personal distress. Perspective Taking Boundary Conditions Self-Esteem Although the relationships between perspective taking and empathy and personal distress have been widely discussed in the literature, there are still individual differences that can affect a manager’s predisposition to become more empathic versus distressed when attempting to 34 understand a subordinate’s perspective. Though a variety of these individual differences have been explored in the perspective taking literature—including power, trait empathy and self- esteem—self-esteem is a particularly important boundary condition to this model because it is explicitly connected to both the literature on perspective taking and social identity theory. Self- esteem is defined here as an individual’s global assessment of self-worth (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001), and has been shown to affect a wide variety of aspects of an individual’s day-to-day life, including positive affect (Brockner, Gardner, Bierman, Mahan, Thomas, Weis et al., 1983), anxiety (Brockner, 1984) and life satisfaction (Diener, 1984). Though self-esteem can be referenced at both a state and trait level, I am referencing the trait level of self-esteem in this dissertation. Capturing trait self-esteem helps to understand how self-esteem affects thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and suggests how it might influence social problems, instead of simply being a consequence of them (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001). Trait self-esteem tends to be stable over time (Blascovich & Tomaka, 1991; Brandtstädter & Greve, 1994), and is tied to both biological and environmental based factors, making it particularly appropriate for the contextual elements of this investigation. Trait level self-esteem has been tied to the self-regulation of behavior, an important component in the enactment of fair behavior and social interactions (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001). Additionally, examining trait self-esteem in the context of social identity theory and justice and social behaviors would answer calls to examine the construct as not just a symptom but a cause of social problems (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001). According to Ashforth and Mael (1989), self-esteem is central to social identity theory, as “SIT maintains that the individual identifies with social categories partly to enhance self-esteem” (22). In this way, trait level self-esteem not only represents a strictly internal measure of one’s self-worth but also inherently involves some level of comparison between oneself and others. 35 However, individuals do not only draw on their group affiliations and social identity in establishing their self-esteem, but self-esteem can drive their socially guided behaviors. For example, it has been shown that people with lowered self-esteem may judge individuals more harshly as a way of attempting to elevate themselves and their group as a whole (Abrams & Hogg, 1988). Just as self-esteem is inherent to social identity theory, according to Davis (1983), self- esteem is also a construct related to empathy and perspective taking. As perspective taking involves the merging of self-representation and other-representation, it is theoretically important to understand how positive or negative an individual’s self-representation is. Accounting for the observer’s self-esteem helps to determine whether positive or negative feelings are ascribed to the target during the merging of self and other. For example, Galinsky and Ku (2004) found that self-esteem has considerable effects on an individual’s prejudice reduction through perspective taking. The researchers found that prejudiced feelings toward outgroup members were only alleviated through perspective taking when the observers had high levels of self-esteem. Galinsky et al. (2005) later explains “when perspective-takers feel positively about themselves, their positive self-concepts are activated and applied, elevating opinions of the target group. However, when individuals suffer from low self-esteem, no reduction in prejudice occurs” (118). Though these findings have not been extended to social identity theory or ingroup bias specifically, the fundamental argument surrounding self-esteem research in the perspective taking domain is that having a high level of self-esteem helps ascribe positive feelings toward the perspective taking target, as well as shield the observer from increased feelings of threat or distress. Indeed, “high self-esteem provides individuals with a reservoir of resources from which to draw from psychologically threatened” (Galinsky & Ku, 2004: 595). While on the other hand, 36 negative feelings about the self are often projected onto the target during perspective taking, in addition to exacerbating any feelings of threat or distress that the perspective taker may experiences (Galinsky & Ku, 2004). Therefore, I argue that self-esteem is an important boundary condition to help explain variance in observers’ empathic concern and personal distress in response to perspective taking. Thus, I predict that that when self-esteem is high the pathways between perspective taking and empathic concern are strengthened and the pathway between perspective taking and personal distress is weakened. On the other hand, I believe the reverse effects will take place if an individual has low self-esteem—the relationships between perspective taking and empathic concern are weakened and the relationship with personal distress is strengthened. Hypothesis 4: Self-esteem moderates the relationship between imagine-other perspective taking and empathy, such that the relationship is stronger when self-esteem is high. Hypothesis 5ab: Self-esteem moderates the relationships between imagine-self perspective taking and empathy and personal distress, such that the relationship between (a) perspective taking and empathy is stronger when self-esteem is high, and (b) the relationship between perspective taking and personal distress is stronger when self-esteem is low. Similarity of Response Toward Critical Event Another important boundary condition to discuss in relation to perspective taking and empathy and personal distress, is the level of similarity of response toward the critical event between the perspective taker and the target. As previously discussed, when attempting to make sense of another person’s decisions or perspective, we try to draw on our own history as much as possible (Davis et al., 1996; Epley et al., 2004). If we have no past experiences that apply to the critical event we are more likely to use imagine-other perspective taking, while if the critical 37 event activates past experiences of our own, imagine-self perspective taking is used. However, just because a past experience is activated does not mean that the observer and the target behaved similarly toward the critical event. For example, imagine that a subordinate submits a bid document incorrectly, causing the company to miss out on the opportunity to get a new project. This constitutes a critical event for the manager, as it had the potential to bring the company a lot of money, and the manager needs to speak to the subordinate about it. The manager has had past experience submitting bids before, so s/he uses imagine-self perspective taking when interpreting what went wrong with the subordinate. Now, let’s imagine that the manager behaved very similarly to the subordinate in their past experience with the bid process—perhaps even messing up a bid document for an important client at a previous time earlier in his or her career because it was high in complexity. In this circumstance, the level of similarly of response is very high and I propose it results in the manager increasing their empathic concern toward the target and decreasing their personal distress. The manager may feel for the employee and excuse the employee’s behavior as a way of excusing the manager’s own past mistake. Additionally, perhaps the manager also has confidence that the employee won’t make the same mistake again as the manager understands how upsetting a situation this mistake can be, resulting in lower levels of personal distress. However, now let’s imagine that the manager has past experience with bid documents, but has generally found the process to be simple and has not made a mistake of the same magnitude. In this particular case, the manager may still feel that they are justified in passing judgment on the employee (after all, they also have experience with the process), but they cannot understand why the employee would be so incompetent as to mess this up. Therefore, I propose that the manager’s lower level of shared response to this similar situation decreases his/her 38 empathic concern for the target. The manager will also be more likely to blame the individual for the failure, as opposed to external forces, as the manager has been in the employees shoes and been able to perform better. I argue that this low level of shared response also increases the manager’s personal distress in response to the critical event, as this seemingly incompetent or unmotivated employee may reflect poorly on the manager, possibly affecting the manager’s social standing and perceived competency. Additionally, because the manager behaved differently and believes the bid process to be simple, the manager may believe that the employee’s problems could continue and may be indicative of a greater competency problem or lack of attention that could extend to future problems. Though in both of the above examples the manger had some level of past experience with the critical event, the perspectives and responses to the employee were quite different depending on the similarity of response with the critical event. One might expect that this difference in similarity of response or possible inaccuracy of perspective taking might register to the manager, minimizing the influence of their past experiences when reacting emotionally to the employee and passing judgment. However, research has demonstrated that people tend to arrive at judgments of what is fair or right that are biased in the direction of their own self-interests and past experiences (Babcock & Loewenstein, 1997). There is evidence from the negotiation and justice literatures that egocentric interpretations of fairness are common, and that self-serving biases dictate that we tend to seek out and anticipate perspectives that support our own (Dawson, Gilovich, & Regan, 2002; Ditto & Lopez, 1992). However, past research has demonstrated that though past experience with a situation makes an individual feel confident in offering advice or passing judgment (and makes it more likely that the advice or judgment is taken seriously by the target), it does not necessarily mean 39 the observer is more accurate in evaluating the situation or predicting the other’s thoughts/feelings (Hodges, Kiel, Kramer, Veach, & Villanueva, 2010). In other words, having past experience with a situation makes us feel justified in assuming we understand what another person is going through and makes us overconfident in our ability to understand (and judge) their perspective. Additionally, research has shown that decision makers tend to behave as if others have access to their privileged information about a certain situation or subject (Camerer, Loewenstein, & Weber, 1989; Keysar & Bly, 1995; Keysar, Ginzel, & Bazerman, 1995). We assume that others have the same knowledge that we do, especially people that we perceive to be similar to ourselves or who are facing a situation we relate to. For example, “if another’s behavior is highly salient and that behavior proves to be unpleasant, then that other’s behavior should be evaluated more negatively and produce more dislike than if it has little meaning for the person” (Taylor & Mettee, 1971: 76). This might suggest to a manager that if he or she were able to overcome a challenge or succeed in a way that a subordinate was not (like in the provided example), the manager would assume that the subordinate had access to the same advantages so it is reprehensible that they not succeed in the same way. We know from the literature that “individuals are less likely to feel empathy for targets to which they have attributed blame for their predicament, and conversely, more empathy for targets they perceive as innocent” (Pizarro, 2000). Therefore, though past experience may make decision makers feel that they are more accurate in understanding what should have happened in a situation, this represents an overconfidence bias and this perceived blame (or excusal of behavior) can contribute to feeling more or less empathic toward the subordinate. Additionally, research has demonstrated that when someone does not react the way that one thinks they should (or that one has in the past), it makes reactions to this violation even 40 harsher than it would be otherwise (Jussim, Coleman, & Lerch, 1987; Mussweiler & Ockenfels, 2013). We often view responses that are different from our own as being deviant, indicative of something amiss with the individual (Ross et al., 1977). For example, expectancy-violation theory argues that we form expectations about individuals and what their subsequent behaviors should be, so if they violate these expectations, results are more extreme than they would be otherwise (Jussim et al., 1987). Therefore, it can be threatening when someone has a different reaction to a situation than you necessarily have or would. Research has demonstrated several biases such as the “false consensus effect” that point to the fact that people are generally threatened by perspectives or positions that are different from their own, especially when they come from people who are supposed to be similar to them (having had past experiences that are similar or assessing that the individual is in the ingroup— or in the organization that they feel embedded in) (Ross et al., 1977). This can activate threat to self and other negative outcomes that could result in more egotistic behaviors and less adherence to justice rules (Epley et al., 2006). The emotions that arise with similar others or threatening situations have also been shown to speed up the decision making process and intensify reactions, therefore making individuals arrive at a harsher judgment even sooner than they would otherwise (Lewis & Sherman, 2010; Mussweiler & Ockenfels, 2013; Otten & Epstude, 2006). Additionally, people with higher status or more favorable ingroup expectations—such as managers—may not only expect more because their subordinates’ performance can be seen as reflections on them, but they have also been shown to have lower levels of empathy (Handgraaf, Van Dijk, Vermunt, Wilke, & De Dreu, 2008). However, the ability to “see,” and probably more importantly, understand, all viewpoints is key to arriving at appropriate judgments. 41 Therefore, I argue that the level of similarity of experience between the manager and the employee is a very important boundary condition in understanding whether the manager experiences more empathic concern or personal distress in response to taking the subordinate’s perspective. I believe that when individuals are put in a position to judge someone’s responsibility or attribute blame, they simulate themselves into the situation. However, this simulation takes place not simply to empathize with another, but to gauge their responsibility in such a way that that draws on the observer’s past behaviors, setting up similar behavioral expectations. Taking a step back, I argue that projecting oneself into another’s similar situation when you have shared experience (the imagine-self path) can have one of two results. First, if the manager realizes an individual has made a mistake (or been in a situation) that he or she has reacted similarly to, the manager is more likely to excuse the bad results as a way of excusing his or her own past behavior. Here, social identity theory would argue that the manager has less threat to self and more increased overlap with the other person. This results in increased empathic concern and decreased personal distress. Second, if the manager has been in a similar situation and behaved differently or more effectively—for example, had more control, been less susceptible to environmental circumstances, been ‘stronger,’—the manager is more likely to attribute bad results to the failings of the individual as the manager could imagine that he or she could have done better. Here, social identity theory would argue that managers has more threat to self and is therefore motivated to decrease the overlap with the other person. This results in decreased empathic concern and increased personal distress. Hypothesis 6ab: Similarity of response moderates the relationship between imagine-self perspective taking and empathic concern and personal distress, such that the relationship between (a) perspective taking and empathic concern is stronger when similarity of response is 42 high and weaker when similarity is low, and (b) the relationship between perspective taking and personal distress is stronger when similarity of response is low and weaker when similarity is high. Outcomes of Empathic Concern and Personal Distress Though the majority of research has focused on the positive effects of managerial perspective taking and empathy—such as improved employee affect, social support, wellness and better managerial contextual performance (Parker & Axtell, 2001; Scott, Colquitt, Paddock, & Judge, 2010)—research has begun to reveal a more balanced view of perspective taking, tying it to increased egoistic behavior under certain circumstances. Particularly, research has shown that people in positions of power (like managers) are generally worse at perspective taking and behave more selfishly (Epley et al., 2006; Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006). For example, taking someone’s perspective could make them apprehensive about someone’s ability to take away their power. This could therefore make them act out and behave more egoistically (Galinsky et al., 2006). Therefore, I propose that perspective taking can have both positive and negative effects on managerial decision making and more specifically, the allocation of justice and social interaction outcomes. Though the work on justice behaviors and social interactions come from separate literatures, they are implicitly linked as both behaviors aim to motivate subordinates through various social influence processes. Just and unjust behaviors represent managerial attempts to motivate, help or punish subordinates across a wide variety of justice-related situations. In a similar way, prosocial behavior and ostracism also represent attempts to motivate, help or punish subordinates through engaging in socially positive behavior, or attempting to distance the subordinate from one’s group. 43 Justice Outcomes When confronted with a critical event, managers are the ones with the power and responsibility to respond to the event and behave either justly or unjustly toward the subordinate. These are an important set of behaviors to examine as justice outcomes deeply matter to both employees and the managers who enact them (for a recent meta-analysis, see Colquitt et al., 2013). However, as mentioned previously, “far less research has taken a proactive approach, seeking to identify factors that foster justice rule adherence” (Scott et al., 2014: 1571). There have been calls in the literature to examine justice adherence at a within-person level, stemming from arguments that a given manager has considerable variance in their level of just and unjust behavior, as rule adherence is often “driven primarily by transitory motives operating at a given time” (Scott et al., 2014: 1572). Therefore, understanding when and why managers respond to critical events in a just versus unjust manner is important to both the literature on justice, and to the literature on perspective taking. We know from past research that not only are people tied to their own perspective when trying to understand another person’s point of view, but people’s assessments of fairness also tend to be egoistically motivated (Babcock & Loewenstein, 1997; Paese & Yonker, 2001). Research has found that particularly when faced with ambiguity, which is often inherent in justice situations, judgments tend to be egocentrically centered in such a way as to favor the decision maker (Thompson & Loewenstein, 1992). Additionally, fairness judgments are often sustained through cognitive biases such as the confirmation bias, whereby individuals selectively seek out information that supports their own beliefs and perspectives and ignore information that would disconfirm them or support the other person (Bazerman & Moore, 2009; Dawson et al., 44 2002; Ditto & Lopez, 1992; Ross & Sicoly, 1979). In the words of Mead (1934), “We always present ourselves to ourselves in the most favorable light possible” (307). Therefore, when managers have high levels of empathic concern for an employee, they are likely to engage in just behaviors, adhering to justice rules with the target. Several studies have demonstrated that empathic managers are more likely to adhere to justice rules and less likely to engage in deviant behaviors (Patient & Skarlicki, 2010; Scott et al., 2010). Additionally, employees with empathic managers make better goal progress throughout the day and experience lower levels of somatic complaints (Scott et al., 2010). Thus, I predict that managers high in empathic concern are more likely to adhere to organizational justice rules. Though prior research on empathy and justice have attempted to tease apart some of the differential effects of empathy on the facets of justice, this has had mixed results as some of these justice rules are inherently more difficult to engage in on a daily basis (Scott et al., 2014). For example, distributive justice situations—such as allocating raises or distributing other resources—do not occur frequently and do not involve a great deal of discretion on the part of the manager. On the other hand, facets of justice like interpersonal and informational justice are more interactional in nature and are therefore more likely to occur frequently and offer more discretion for the manager (Scott et al., 2014). Therefore, though I do not make differential prediction based on the different facets, I measure all four facets of justice in order to capture the widest possible range of justice behaviors. Hypothesis 7: Empathic concern is positively related to justice behaviors. On the other hand, managers can also experience personal distress as a result of perspective taking. Research on perspective taking and empathy have demonstrated that feelings of distress are a sign of egoistic motivation, focusing an individual on their own needs, and 45 blocking consideration toward the subordinate (Decety & Lamm, 2009). Past research has demonstrated that empathy and personal distress are related to perceptions of fairness on the part of the target, as individuals are egoistically motivated to perceive fairness in ways that substantiate their own beliefs and needs (Lamm et al., 2007; Singer, Seymour, O'Doherty, Stephan, Dolan, & Frith, 2006). Additionally, the parts of the brain that are activated by experiencing personal distress are also related to aversion toward the source and withdrawal, which can affect behaviors like fair treatment toward others (Decety & Lamm, 2009). In this way, egoistic motivation through personal distress shifts an individual’s attention toward reducing the threat to self or distance oneself from the stressor (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Jackson et al., 2006). These egoistic motivations reduce altruistic motivations toward subordinates, minimizing the motivation to engage in just behavior and fair treatment (Batson et al., 1983; Cialdini et al., 1997). For example, Luksyte et al. (2015) demonstrated that when members of the ingroup behaved unfavorably it led the fellow members to engage in more interpersonal deviance—such as acting rudely toward them. Therefore, just as perspective taking and empathic concern can award subordinates favored status, preferential treatment and increased adherence to justice rules, personal distress can reverse these positive effects and negatively affect justice behaviors (Batson, Klein, Highberger, & Shaw, 1995). Therefore, I predict that when managers experience high levels of personal distress this will lead to lower levels of justice behaviors. Hypothesis 8: Personal distress is negatively related to justice behaviors. Social Interaction Outcomes Individuals belong to a variety of different groups—their sociodemographic group, profession, organization, department, work group—all with the capability of affecting an 46 individual’s social identity and the potential to inform the literature’s understanding of organizational behavior (Hogg & Terry, 2000). In this particular study, I am looking at the connection between manager and subordinate, as this often falls under one’s organization, department, and work group social identities. This implies that even if a manager and subordinate are not close friends or even of the same demographic group, the two are connected and are considered a part of the same social group, as their behaviors and outcomes are connected. Social identity research has acknowledged “the importance of work-related identities to people’s sense of self” and therefore “a social identity perspective adds to our understanding of organizational attitudes and behavior” (Hogg & Terry, 2000: 135). The social identity outcomes this dissertation examines revolve around the idea of belonging, which is a fundamental need historically and biologically linked to physical security, psychological health and wellness, and reproductive success (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). When an individual is accepted by their group and has positive relationships with other members, they are often viewed favorably and group members engage in positive social interactions such as prosocial behavior (for an overview of prosocial organizational behaviors, see Brief & Motowidlo, 1986). However, when an individual is not accepted by their social group—or is regarded as a black sheep—they are often viewed unfavorably and group members engage in negative social interactions such as ostracism and rejection (Williams, 2007). Therefore, this dissertation will examine both the possible positive and negative social outcomes associated with managers’ cognitive and emotional response to critical events. The self-other similarity generated through perspective taking and empathic concern with an ingroup member has been shown to increase compassion-related responses (Batson, Lishner, Cook, & Sawyer, 2005; Dovidio, Piliavin, Schroeder, & Penner, 2006; Loewenstein & Small, 47 2007; Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin, & Schroeder, 2005; Piliavin & Charng, 1990). Empathic concern has been linked to the identification of needs (Davis, 1996) and the motivation to respond to those needs and engage positively with the target (Cornelis, Van Hiel, De Cremer, & Mayer, 2013). In this way, Cornelis et al. (2013) argues that “empathy is recognized as a pivotal element in successful leadership” and the authors “propose that empathic leaders adapt their behavior in response to the correct detection of followers’ needs” (606). More specifically, there has been a considerable amount of evidence linking empathic concern with prosocial behavior (Batson, 1991; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989). Therefore, it is not through perspective taking alone that the desire for prosocial behavior emerges. It is through the more emotional empathic response that a cognitive appraisal becomes a motivation to engage in prosocial behaviors (Cornelis et al., 2013; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987). “Empathic concern in particular is proposed to invoke altruistic motivations to satisfy the needs of another, often resulting in prosocial actions taken on behalf of others” (Cornelis et al., 2013: 606). Additionally, social identity theory argues that positive forms of social identification with one’s ingroup can also increase intragroup cohesion, altruism and positive evaluations of group members (Ashforth & Mael, 1989), strengthening the already positive effects of empathic concern on prosocial behavior. Therefore, I propose that empathic concern is positively related to prosocial behavior and negatively related to ostracism. Hypothesis 9ab: Empathic concern is positively related to (a) prosocial behaviors, and (b) negatively related to ostracism. As stated above, leaders that are high in empathic concern are known to take subordinate’s needs into account and engage in positive social interactions like prosocial behavior, whereas managers that are guided more by egoistic motivation are more concerned 48 with their own social standing and belongingness needs (Cornelis et al., 2013). Instead of attending to the needs of the subordinate, a manager “faced with a threat from an ingroup member should act in a manner to neutralize that threat” (Lewis & Sherman, 2010). When a member of one’s group violates expectations and elicits a negative emotional response like personal distress, the manager may engage in social ostracism, as “threatened individuals attempt to weaken the psychological link between themselves and similar but unfavorable others” (Eidelman & Biernat, 2003: 607), and the “offending member is very likely to be rejected (Kerr et al., 1995). In these cases, social identity theory supports the idea that the manager might distance themself from the target socially in order to avoid a threat to self. By experiencing personal distress and regarding the subordinate as a black sheep, this allows the manager to justify the exclusion of the member from the social group in order to mitigate the negative effects of the subordinate on the group (Lewis & Sherman, 2010). This distancing and motivation toward social exclusion can therefore result in social ostracism and other negative outcomes associated with ingroup and outgroup effects. Ostracism “is a universal experience” and has been consistently witnessed and experienced by employees in work settings as past research has found that about 66% of employees had experienced it (Ferris, Brown, Berry, & Lian, 2008; Fox & Stallworth, 2005; Hitlan, Kelly, Schepman, Schneider, & Zárate, 2006). Ostracism is defined as being socially ignored or excluded and is associated with a variety of negative outcomes for the person being ostracized including negative affect and decreasing four fundamental needs--self-esteem, belonging, control and meaningful existence (Warburton, Williams, & Cairns, 2006; Williams & Sommer, 1997; Williams & Zadro, 2005). Consequently, ostracism is often used as a tool to change unfavorable behaviors as it is an 49 incredibly negative experience for individuals and therefore easy to detect, and very motivating (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005; Gruter & Masters, 1986; van Beest & Williams, 2006). Ostracism is in part defined by what is considered socially acceptable and unacceptable for the context, therefore examining ostracism in context is necessary (Robinson, O'Reilly, & Wang, 2013). Consequently, ostracism can also take many forms including giving the silent treatment or failing to greet or respond to someone. In this way, ostracism can be similar to other forms of interpersonal deviance but is distinct in an important way. Ostracism “is defined by acts of omission rather than commission,” and therefore involves the “failure to act in ways that socially engage another (Robinson et al., 2013: 208). Distinguishing omission and commission is important because omission actually “poses a greater threat to one’s self of belonging, which in turn may explain much of ostracism’s psychological impact” (Robinson et al., 2013: 208-209). Additionally ostracism also creates a sense of ambiguity around whether the behavior was intentional or not, making it difficult to respond to or understand how to cope. In this way, responding to covert forms of aggression can be much more straightforward (Robinson et al., 2013). Therefore, ostracism is a very harmful and stressful social behavior that negatively affects both the target and the actor, as past research has also demonstrated that engaging in ostracism can result in negative affect, guilt, stress, and feelings of discomfort (Ciarocco, Sommer, & Baumeister, 2001; Williams & Sommer, 1997). Hypothesis 10ab: Personal distress is negatively related to (a) prosocial behavior, and (b) positively related to ostracism. Therefore, across these examples, these instances of perspective taking may appear to be empathetic in nature—as they involve projecting oneself into another’s situation—but I argue they are not simple mechanisms used to understand another. These seemingly prosocial 50 mechanisms also act as egoistic blocking mechanisms that protect an individual’s sense of self and feelings about their own past decisions by either blaming an individual who reacted differently, or excusing one who made the same mistake. Therefore, taking the entire micro- mediation model into consideration proposes a more balanced view of perspective taking, demonstrating both the possible positive and negative consequences through applying social identity theory to perspective taking situations. Thus, the below hypotheses present the full micro-mediated model. Hypothesis 11: Imagine-other perspective taking has a positive indirect effect on justice behavior and prosocial behavior, and a negative indirect effect on ostracism, through empathic concern, which is moderated by self-esteem such that the relationships are accentuated when self-esteem is high, and attenuated when self-esteem is low. Hypothesis 12: Imagine-self perspective taking has a positive indirect effect on justice behavior and prosocial behavior, and a negative indirect effect on ostracism, through empathic concern, which is moderated by self-esteem such that the relationships are accentuated when self-esteem is high, and attenuated when self-esteem is low, and also moderated by similarity of response such that the relationships are accentuated when similarity of response is high and attenuated when similarity of response is low. Hypothesis 13: Imagine-self perspective taking has a negative indirect effect on justice behaviors and prosocial behavior, and a positive indirect effect on ostracism, through personal distress, which is moderated by self-esteem such that the relationships are attenuated when self- esteem is high, and accentuated when self-esteem is low, and also moderated by similarity of response such that the relationships are attenuated when similarity of response is high and accentuated when similarity of response is low. 51 METHODS & RESULTS: PILOT STUDY Pilot Study Prior to the main dissertation data collection, a pilot study was run in order to test the reliability of several focal measures. Two hundred and twenty-seven managers were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk and asked to recount a critical event that happened at work that was caused by an employee that they manage or oversee. The managers then went on to rate the criticality of the event, and describe their past experience with the event, the perspective taking they used during the event, and their emotional responses to it. The reliability of these measures is discussed below. Critical Events Managers were instructed to “describe a critical event you recently experienced at work that involved one of your employees. By ‘critical event,’ we mean a negative situation that is demanding of attention and involved an employee (or employees) you manage. The significance of a particular critical event depends on the extent that it is disruptive (affects the employee’s ability to get work done or interrupts routines), novel (it is not a normal occurrence), or critical (the outcome of the event is important to you). It is important that the event not explicitly involve you (the manager), but be a problem that an employee (or several employees) were involved in. You will be asked to recall the event that was the most disruptive, novel and critical that occurred today and describe it in detail.” They then recalled the critical event and rated the extent that the event was negative, critical, disruptive and novel (1 = “Not at all” to 5 = “A great deal”). These items were taken from work by Morgeson and colleagues (2015). Example items are “To what extent was the event critical (the outcome was important to you)?” and “To what extent was the event disruptive (affects individual's ability to get work done or 52 interrupts routines)?” The coefficient alpha for critical events was acceptable for this scale (.85). Past Experience Participants were asked to indicate their level of past experience with the critical event (1 = “Not at all” to 5 = “A great deal”). The scale included three items that were developed for this dissertation. Example items are “To what extent do you feel you have personal experience with the task the employee was engaging in during the critical event?” and “How much past experience with tasks like this do you have?” This measure demonstrated acceptable coefficient alpha levels in the pilot study (.79). Similarity of Response Participants were asked to indicate the extent they behaved similarly to the employee when they faced a similar situation in the past (1 = “Not at all” to 5 = “A great deal”). The scale included three items that were developed for this dissertation. Example items are “To what extent do you feel like you behaved similarly to the employee, when you faced a similar situation in the past?” and “In this situation, how similar was the employee’s behavior to your behavior in a similar situation in the past?” This measure demonstrated acceptable coefficient alpha levels in the pilot study (.90). Perspective Taking Managers were asked to consider the form of perspective taking they used to understand and respond to the critical event (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). They were told to “Think about the critical event you just described and please answer the following questions in reference to your immediate reaction to the event you described. In thinking about this situation…” (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). The pilot study demonstrated that the two forms of perspective taking had acceptable coefficient alpha levels (.82 and .74, 53 respectively) and were orthogonal and not significantly related to one another (-.067, ns). The perspective taking items were developed directly from the original definitions by Batson (1994) and Parker and Axtell (2001), and each scale included four items. Example items for imagine- other perspective taking are “I put my own thoughts and feelings aside and thought only about how the employee might be thinking and feeling.” and “I thought about the employee's perspective, leaving my own perspective behind.” On the other hand, example items for imagine- self perspective taking are “I thought about my own perspective, leaving the employee’s perspective behind.” and “I put aside how the employee would think and feel and focused instead on how I would think and feel in this situation.” An additional measure was also collected that asks the employee to “indicate what degree you used imagine-self versus imagine-other perspective taking when trying to understand the subordinate's perspective” on a 1-10 scale. Empathic Concern I measured empathic concern in two different forms. The first measure was adapted from Davis (1983), one of the most accepted measures of empathic concern in the management field. This measure was cut down to four items, while retaining acceptable coefficient alpha levels in the pilot (.92), (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). Items include “Compassionate” and “Warm.” The second measure was adapted from Lazarus’s (1991) definition of empathic concern and was pilot tested and found to have acceptable coefficient alpha levels (.86). Items include “I felt what the other employee was feeling,” and “I was moved by the other employee's emotion.” Personal Distress Similar to empathic concern, I measured personal distress in two different forms. The first measure was adapted from Davis (1983), one of the most accepted measures of personal 54 distress in the management field. This measure was cut down to four items, while retaining acceptable coefficient alpha levels in the pilot (.84), (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). Items include “Worried” and “Upset.” The second measure was adapted from the definition of personal distress (Batson et al., 1997a) and was pilot tested and found to have acceptable levels of coefficient alpha (.89). Items include “I was worried about what would happen to me,” and “I was distressed by what might happen to me.” The results of the pilot study demonstrated that the measures were reliable and could subsequently be used in the primary dissertation study. 55 METHODS: PRIMARY STUDY Sample and Procedure Data were collected from a broad range of occupations and industries all from full-time employees who manage at least one subordinate who reports to them. These managers were recruited through students at a large Midwestern university. These students were asked to recruit managers who work at least 30 hours a week to participate in the research study. This sample and method of recruiting participants is appropriate because this study was designed to understand how managers respond to critical, novel and disruptive events at work with subordinates. More specifically, I wanted to learn how managers use perspective taking (or not) and their own past experiences to address problems with subordinates (for example, a subordinate making a performance error). This study was anonymous and no managers or subordinates were named in the final data. Data was collected through online surveys. There were 175 managers that completed the initial signup survey and therefore met the requirements to be included in the analyses. Of those participants, 54% were male, 46% were female, 81% were white, .03% were black and 14% were Asian. These participants were also in their current position at their company for an average of 9.5 years. The study took place over three weeks. Participants took one initial longer (15 minute on average) survey where I collected demographic and personality data. This survey also provided information about what critical events are and how to identify them (further details are provided in Appendix A). Additionally, this survey also explained the difference between imagine-self and imagine-other perspective taking and provided a brief training quiz where the participants were presented with items from the two perspective taking scales and they must give the item the correct label (imagine-other versus imagine-self). The quiz also provided feedback about which 56 answers were correct and which answers were wrong (further details are provided in Appendix A). After the initial survey, participants received two brief surveys a day. The first survey arrived right at the end of the work day and asked them to report on the most significant critical event (as described above) that day. The manager then described the critical event they experienced and answered several questions about the event (this took around 5 minutes), and their immediate emotional and cognitive reactions to it. This took approximately 5 minutes to complete. The second daily survey arrived the next morning and asked them to reflect on their behaviors over the last day. This survey took approximately 5 minutes to complete. Respondents were required to complete the initial one-time survey before continuing with the study. This allowed this dissertation to assess the within-person variance in perspective taking and associated behaviors. In terms of compensation, we provided raffles of $50 to 20 managers who participated in the study, where every completed survey provided a participant an additional entry into the raffle. Measures Due to the repeated-measures nature of the study, I used shortened versions of some of the established measures for the constructs. This is a commonly used method for repeated- measures studies at the daily level (Gabriel, Diefendorff, Chandler, Moran, & Gregarus, 2014; Trougakos, Hideg, Cheng, & Beal, 2014), and particularly for organizational justice studies for daily studies (Johnson, Lanaj, & Barnes, 2014; Scott et al., 2014). In these studies, the shorter modified scales helped to minimize participant fatigue (Beal, 2015; Uy, Foo, & Aguinis, 2010). Critical Events Each day, managers were instructed to think about the most significant critical event they 57 encountered that day. Specifically, they were asked “about a ‘critical event’ at work today that was caused by an employee that you manage or oversee. By ‘critical event,’ we mean a negative situation that is demanding of attention and involved an employee (or employees) you manage. The significance of a particular critical event depends on the extent that it is disruptive (affects the employee’s ability to get work done or interrupts routines), novel (it is not a normal occurrence), or critical (the outcome of the event is important to you). It is important that the event not explicitly involve you (the manager), but be a problem that an employee (or several employees) were involved in. You will be asked to recall the event that was the most disruptive, novel and critical that occurred today and describe it in detail.” They then recalled the critical event and rated the extent that the event was negative, critical, disruptive and novel (1 = “Not at all” to 5 = “A great deal”). These items were taken from work by Morgeson and colleagues (2015). Example items are “To what extent was the event critical (the outcome was important to you)?” and “To what extent was the event disruptive (affects individual's ability to get work done or interrupts routines)?” The coefficient alpha for critical events was acceptable for this scale (.85). Perspective Taking When evaluating the state level of perspective taking—first, managers were asked whether or not they engaged in perspective taking during the critical event. If managers responded “yes,” they proceeded to the measures of perspective taking. If managers responded “no,” they still answered questions regarding imagine-self and imagine-other perspective taking, but they did not complete the final question where they indicate the degree to which they used imagine-self versus imagine-other perspective taking. Managers were asked to consider the form of perspective taking they used to understand and respond to the critical event (1 = “Strongly 58 disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). They were told to “Think about the critical event you just described and please answer the following questions in reference to your immediate reaction to the event you described. In thinking about this situation…” The perspective taking items were developed directly from the original definitions by Batson (1994) and Parker and Axtell (2001), and each scale included four items. Example items for imagine-other perspective taking are “I put my own thoughts and feelings aside and thought only about how the employee might be thinking and feeling.” and “I thought about the employee's perspective, leaving my own perspective behind” (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). On the other hand, example items for imagine-self perspective taking are “I thought about my own perspective, leaving the employee’s perspective behind.” and “I put aside how the employee would think and feel and focused instead on how I would think and feel in this situation” (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). The coefficient alpha for imagine-other perspective taking was .89, while the coefficient alpha for imagine-self perspective taking was .79. An additional measure was also collected (if the manager responded “yes” to the initial perspective taking question) that asked the employee to “indicate what degree you used imagine-self versus imagine-other perspective taking when trying to understand the subordinate's perspective.” Past Experience Participants were asked to indicate their level of past experience with the critical event (1 = “Not at all” to 5 = “A great deal”). The scale included three items and was adapted for this survey. Example items are “To what extent do you feel you have personal experience with the task the employee was engaging in during the critical event?” and “How much past experience with tasks like this do you have?” The coefficient alpha met acceptable levels at .94. 59 Similarity of Response Participants were asked to indicate the extent they behaved similarly to the employee when they faced a similar situation in the past (1 = “Not at all” to 5 = “A great deal”). The scale included three items and was adapted for this survey. It demonstrated acceptable coefficient alpha levels (.92). Example items are “To what extent do you feel like you behaved similarly to the employee, when you faced a similar situation in the past?” and “In this situation, how similar was the employee’s behavior to your behavior in a similar situation in the past?” Self-Esteem Self-esteem was assessed using Rosenberg’s (1965) scale of global trait-level self- esteem. This measure was given to participants on the one time survey. This is a between-person measure and participants were asked to indicate their overall agreement with the below statements. The scale consisted of ten items and used a five point Likert scale (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). Example items included “on the whole, I am satisfied with myself,” “At times I think I am no good at all,” and “I take a positive attitude toward myself.” The coefficient alpha was .79. Empathic Concern I measured empathic concern in two different forms. The first measure was adapted from Davis (1983), one of the most accepted measures of empathic concern in the management field. This measure was cut down to four items and items include “Compassionate” and “Warm” (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). The coefficient alpha for this measure was .93. The second measure was adapted from Lazarus’s (1991) definition of empathic concern and items include “I felt what the other employee was feeling,” and “I was moved by the other employee's emotion.” The coefficient alpha for this measure was .88. The Davis measure was the primary 60 measure used in this dissertation, as it is the most theoretically appropriate, given my conceptualization of empathic concern. Personal Distress Similar to empathic concern, I measured personal distress in two different forms. The first measure was adapted from Davis (1983), one of the most accepted measures of personal distress in the management field. This measure was cut down to four items and items include “Worried” and “Upset” (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). The coefficient alpha for this measure was .89. The second measure was adapted from the definition of personal distress (Batson et al., 1997a). Items include “I was worried about what would happen to me,” and “I was distressed by what might happen to me.” The coefficient alpha for this measure was .90. Just as the Davis measure of empathic concern was the primary measure used in this dissertation, the Davis measure of personal distress was also the primary measure. Justice Behaviors Justice behaviors were measured for distributive, procedural, informational and interpersonal justice. Managers reported on their justice behaviors over the last day using a five- pint Likert scale (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree). Distributive Justice was measured using items adapted from scales by Colquitt (2001). Participants were asked “In response to the critical event, over the last day, I …” The scale consists of three items and example items are “…gave the employee an outcome that was justified, given their performance,” and “…gave them an outcome that was appropriate for the work the employee has completed.” The coefficient alpha for this measure was .94. Procedural Justice was measured using items adapted from scales by Colquitt (2001). Participants were asked “In response to the critical event, over the last day, I …” The scale 61 consisted of three items and example items are “…gave the employee the opportunity to express their views and feelings about a work decision or action,” and “…gave the employee the opportunity to exert influence over a work decision or action.” The coefficient alpha for this measure was .87. Informational Justice was measured using items adapted from scales by Colquitt (2001). Participants were asked “In response to the critical event, over the last day, I …” The scale consists of three items and example items are “…was candid in communications with the employee,” and “…was thorough when explaining procedures to the employee.” The coefficient alpha for this measure was .93. Interpersonal Justice was measured using items adapted from scales by Colquitt (2001). Participants were asked “In response to the critical event, over the last day, I …” The scale consisted of three items and example items are “…treated the employee in a polite manner,” and “…treated the employee with respect.” The coefficient alpha for this measure was .95. Prosocial Behavior Prosocial behavior was assessed using a scale adapted from Williams and Anderson’ (1991) organizational citizenship behavior. Participants were asked “In response to the critical event, over the last day …” The scale consisted of three items and used a five point Likert scale (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). Example items include “...assisted the employee with his/her work (when not asked),” and “...went out of the way to help the employee.” The coefficient alpha for this measure was .90. Ostracism Ostracism was assessed using a scale adapted from Ferris et al., (2008). Participants were asked “In response to the critical event, over the last day …” The scale consists of four items 62 and uses a five point Likert scale (1 = “Strongly disagree” to 5 = “Strongly agree”). Example items included “…ignored the employee at work,” and “…avoided the employee at work.” The coefficient alpha for this measure was .97. Analytic Approach Due to the multilevel, nested nature of the data (daily, repeated measures), it is appropriate to test the hypotheses with multilevel path analysis using Mplus 7.11 (Muthén & Muthén, 2016). This is the appropriate analysis because it accounts for the non-independence inherent in multilevel data and allows for the hypotheses to be analyzed and estimated simultaneously. The critical events, perspective taking, empathic concern, personal distress, and outcomes were all modeled as level 1 variables using random slopes analysis. All level 1 variables were group mean centered around the individual (Bliese, 2000; Enders & Tofighi, 2007). This is the appropriate method for level 1 variables because it accounts for within-person changes and fluctuations while also controlling for between-person variance and possible confounds. Self- esteem was modeled as a level 2 variable, as it is a between-person measure. Consequently, self- esteem was grand-mean centered (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003) and this division between level 1 and level 2 is represented with a dotted line in Figure 1. I used full information maximum likelihood estimation, which includes the data of all participants who provided data for more than one day. This approach weights the subjects who completed the most surveys more heavily in computing the coefficients and their standard errors. It has been demonstrated to be superior (unbiased, and more efficient) when compared to other methods of handling missing data (Enders, 2001). Given that this is a multi-level model, I followed the recommendations by Preacher, Zyphur, and Zhang (2010) to test mediation using simultaneous estimation methods (Preacher & Hayes, 2004). This estimates the significance of 63 the indirect effect simultaneously instead of using more piecemeal estimation methods, such as hierarchical linear modeling, as these more piecemeal approaches cannot estimate all parameters simultaneously. Therefore, I used bias-corrected Monte Carlo parametric bootstrapping with 20,000 resamples to create the confidence intervals surrounding the indirect effect and assess the significance of the indirect effect (Bauer, Preacher, & Gil, 2006). This uses the estimates for both the parameters and standard errors from the analysis to create the sampling distribution for the indirect effect (for examples, see Lanaj, Johnson, & Barnes, 2014; Wang, Liu, Liao, Gong, Kammeyer-Mueller, & Shi, 2013). Because of the number of outcomes included in this dissertation I had to divide these into two groupings to estimate the indirect effects. Including all outcomes at once caused non- convergence issues because there were not enough degrees of freedom remaining to estimate the model. The two categories that I divided the outcomes into were the justice outcomes, and the social interaction outcomes. 64 Tests of Hypotheses RESULTS The 175 participants who were included in the study completed a total of 1346 time 1 (evening surveys) and 1358 time 2 (morning surveys). The time 1 survey therefore had a 51% completion rate and the time 2 survey had a 52% completion rate. This also means that on average, each participant completed 7.7 evening surveys and 7.8 morning surveys. However, some individuals remarked on their evening survey that they did not have critical event, so the total number of critical events was 1241, an average of 7.1 per person. The matched number of surveys between the time 1 and time 2 surveys was 848. I first began by examining the amount of variance in the within-person constructs. As displayed in Table 1, all constructs showed a significant amount of within-person variance, which confirmed the proposed modeling approach. Shown in Table 2 are the correlations, means, and standard deviations for all the variables. Figure 2 illustrates the results for the multilevel path analysis. Hypothesis 1a argued that past experience moderates the relationship between critical events and imagine-other perspective taking such that the relationship is positive when past experience is low and there is no relationship when past experience is high. This hypothesis was not supported, as the interaction was not significant (γ = -.0.47, ns). Hypothesis 1b argued that past experience moderates the relationship between critical events and imagine-self perspective taking such that the relationship is positive when past experience is high and there is no relationship when past experience is low. This hypothesis was also not supported, as the interaction was not significant (γ = -.0.01, ns). Hypothesis 2ab proposed that imagine-other perspective taking was (a) positively related to empathic concern, and (b) not related to personal distress. Both Hypothesis 2a (γ = .45, p < .05) 65 and Hypothesis 2b were supported (γ = -.12, ns). Hypothesis 3ab proposed that imagine-self perspective taking is positively related to (a) empathic concern and (b) personal distress. Hypothesis 3a was not supported as imagine-self perspective taking was not significantly related to empathic concern (γ = -.09, ns). However, Hypothesis 3b was supported, as imagine-self perspective taking was positively related to personal distress (γ = .13, p < .05). Hypothesis 4 examined self-esteem as a moderator and proposed that self-esteem moderated the relationship between imagine-other perspective taking and empathy, such that the relationship is stronger when self-esteem is high. This hypothesis was not supported, as the effect was actually found to be the opposite (γ = -.19, p < .05). A simple slope analysis revealed that the relationship between imagine-other perspective taking and empathic concern was positive under both circumstances, but was higher when self-esteem is low (γ = .45, p < .05), rather than when it was high (γ = .25, p < .05). This interaction is shown in Figure 3. Hypothesis 5ab examines the imagine-self path and proposes that self-esteem moderates the relationships between imagine-self perspective taking and empathy and personal distress, such that the relationship between (a) perspective taking and empathy is stronger when self-esteem is high, and (b) the relationship between perspective taking and personal distress is stronger when self- esteem is low. Hypothesis 5a (γ = -.17, ns), and Hypothesis 5b (γ = .11, ns) were not supported. Hypothesis 6ab examines the role of similarity of response and argues that similarity of response moderates the relationship between imagine-self perspective taking and empathic concern and personal distress, such that the relationship between (a) perspective taking and empathic concern is stronger when similarity of response is high and weaker when similarity is low, and (b) the relationship between perspective taking and personal distress is stronger when similarity of response is low and weaker when similarity is high. Unsurprisingly, Hypothesis 6a 66 was not supported (γ = -.02, ns), as there is also not a relationship between imagine-self perspective taking and empathic concern. However, Hypothesis 6b was supported, as response similarly did moderate the relationship between imagine-self perspective taking and personal distress (γ = -.07, p < .05). A simple slope analysis confirmed this hypothesis, such that the relationship is positive and significant when response similarity is low (γ = .25, p < .05) and negative and insignificant when response similarity is high (γ = -.04, ns). This interaction is shown in Figure 4. Next we turn our attention to the justice outcomes. Justice is captured through distributive justice, procedural justice, informational justice and interpersonal justice, therefore I discuss the results of each of these behaviors in reference to each hypothesis. Hypothesis 7 argued that empathic concern was positively related to justice behaviors. Hypothesis 7 was mostly supported, as empathic concern was positively related to procedural justice (γ = .15, p < .05), informational justice (γ = .07, p < .05), and interpersonal justice (γ = .11, p < .05). Therefore, the only kind of justice that was not significantly related to this measure of empathic concern was distributive justice (γ = .05, ns). Now, turning our attention to personal distress and its relationship to justice, Hypothesis 8 proposes that personal distress was negatively related to justice behaviors. Hypothesis 8 was not supported, as personal distress was not related to distributive justice (γ = .01, ns), procedural justice (γ = .00, ns), informational justice (γ = .01, ns), or interpersonal justice (γ = .00, ns). Hypothesis 9ab shifted perspectives and examined the social identity outcomes and argued that empathic concern was positively related to (a) prosocial behaviors and (b) negatively related to ostracism. Hypothesis 9a was supported as empathic concern was significantly related to prosocial behavior (γ = .13, p < .05). Hypothesis 9b was also supported, as empathic concern 67 was negatively related to ostracism (γ = -.08, p < .05). Finally, Hypothesis 10ab proposed that personal distress was negatively related to (a) prosocial behavior, and (b) positively related to ostracism. Hypothesis 10a was not supported (γ = .00, ns), but Hypothesis 10b was supported (γ = .02, p < .05), as personal distress was positively related to ostracism. The next set of hypotheses examines the indirect effects between the two forms of perspective taking and the justice and social identity outcomes. Hypothesis 11 argued that imagine-other perspective taking has a positive indirect effect on justice behavior and prosocial behavior, and a negative indirect effect on ostracism, through empathic concern, which is moderated by self-esteem such that the relationships are accentuated when self-esteem is high, and attenuated when self-esteem is low. To test the indirect effect, I report Hayes’ index of moderated mediation, which is a term that captures the extent to which the indirect effect varies as a function of the moderator (Hayes, 2015). As noted by Hayes, a significant index signifies that any two conditional indirect effects would be significantly different from each other. This indirect effect was partially supported for Hypothesis 11. The index for distributive justice was not significant (γ = -.005, ns) and bootstrapping the indirect effect also showed that it was not significant. For procedural justice, the index was marginally significant (γ = .02, p < .10) and bootstrapping the indirect effect resulted in a confident interval that did not include zero (γ = .06, CI=[-.05, -.01]), demonstrating that it was a significant effect. The index for informational justice was not significant (γ = -.01, ns) and bootstrapping the indirect effect also showed that it was not significant. The index of moderated mediation for interpersonal justice was also marginally significant (γ = -.02, p < .10), and bootstrapping the indirect effect revealed that it was significant (γ = .04, CI=[-.04, -.01]). The index for prosocial behavior was marginally significant (γ = -.02, p < .10) and bootstrapping the indirect effect revealed that it was significant (γ = .04, 68 CI=[-.05, -.01]). Finally, the index of moderated mediation was not significant for ostracism (γ = .01, p < .10) but bootstrapping revealed that the indirect effect was significant for high levels of the moderator (γ = -.02, CI=[.00, .04]), but not low levels. Hypothesis 12 turns our attention to the imagine-self perspective taking path. This hypothesis argues that imagine-self perspective taking has a positive indirect effect on justice behavior and prosocial behavior, and a negative indirect effect on ostracism, through empathic concern, which is moderated by self-esteem such that the relationships are accentuated when self-esteem is high, and attenuated when self-esteem is low, and also moderated by similarity of response such that the relationships are accentuated when similarity of response is high and attenuated when similarity of response is low. This indirect effect was not supported for distributive justice, procedural justice, informational justice, interpersonal justice, prosocial behavior, or ostracism, as the relationship between imagine-self perspective taking and empathic concern was not supported and self-esteem was not a significant moderator. All indexes of moderated mediation and bootstrapping results were not supported. Finally, Hypothesis 13 proposes imagine-self perspective taking has a negative indirect effect on justice behaviors and prosocial behavior, and a positive indirect effect on ostracism, through personal distress, which is moderated by self-esteem such that the relationships are attenuated when self-esteem is high, and accentuated when self-esteem is low, and also moderated by similarity of response such that the relationships are attenuated when similarity of response is high and accentuated when similarity of response is low. This indirect effect was not supported for distributive justice, procedural justice, informational justice, interpersonal justice, prosocial behavior, or ostracism, as the relationship between imagine-self perspective taking and 69 empathic concern was not supported and self-esteem was not a significant moderator. All indexes of moderated mediation and bootstrapping results were not supported. Supplementary Analyses I ran several supplementary analyses to further explore the relationships in my model and determine other factors that may be confounding the proposed hypotheses. CFAs for Created Scales Given that five of the scales used in my dissertation were created for this specific project, I also conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), on these items for both the pilot study and main analyses. I first conducted a CFA on all constructs related to the critical event (i.e. event criticality, past similarity, response similarity, imagine-self perspective taking and imagine-other perspective taking) measured at Time 1. The construct indicators used in the CFA were the constructs’ specific items. The model for those items provided satisfactory fit to the data for both the pilot study (2 (df = 118, N = 144) = 174.42; RMSEA = .06; CFI = .92; SRMR = .08) and the main study (2 (df = 109, N = 794) = 386.90; RMSEA = .06; CFI = .97; SRMR = .06). I also tested an alternative model where two factors were specified for the items (one for the event specific items and another for the perspective taking items), though this provided poorer fit than the previous model for the main study (2 (df = 118, N = 794) = 4400.90; RMSEA = .21; CFI = .49; SRMR = .18) and the pilot study’s fit was so poor it would not even converge for this CFA. This indicated that the constructs are all distinct. Additionally, the five factors all were statistically significant for both the pilot and main study and had the following average loadings for the main study: .72 for event criticality, .92 for past similarity, .89 for response similarity, for .73 imagine-self perspective taking, and .83 for imagine-other perspective taking. I also conducted a chi-square difference test to compare the fit between the two models for the main 70 study and it revealed that the five-factor model had much better fit (2 [9] = 212.48). Thus, the more parsimonious model was rejected in favor of the more complex model. Critical Events and Similarity of Past Experience Although the hypotheses were aimed at understanding what kind of events spark imagine-other versus imagine-self perspective taking, I failed to support the first set of interaction hypotheses at the start of my model. I proposed that critical events equally lead to imagine-other and imagine-self perspective taking, but similarity of past experience dictates which form of perspective taking is most likely. More specifically, past experience moderates the relationship between critical events and perspective taking such that the relationship between critical events and imagine-other perspective taking is positive when past experience is low and the relationship between critical events and imagine-self perspective taking is positive when past experience is high. Therefore, I asked myself two questions moving forward with the data (a) Does my measure of critical events truly capture the most important experiences that individuals are having? (b) Does past experience make sense as the driving cause of perspective taking? After looking over the descriptions of the critical events, I found that the two most important factors to managers seemed to be the “criticality” of the event and the “unusualness” of the event. Because I had asked individuals to only report on negative events, I did not capture a full range of events as it was clearly taken as a given for individuals that they would be reporting on a negative event. On the other hand, the “disruptiveness” measure also did not seem to be a strong factor reflected in the descriptions that the managers gave. Many of the issues they reported came to them directly from the employees themselves, and did not have great variety in terms of materializing slowly over the day versus posing a huge disruption that stopped 71 everything. Therefore, it was the criticality and unusualness of the event that seemed to really be affecting perspective taking. Turning my attention to past experience, I found that past experience did have a direct effect with imagine-self perspective taking, which I feel suggested further probing. Therefore, I reran the interactions with past experience as the independent variable and criticality & unusualness of event as the moderator and found the following results. Past experience was positively related to imagine-self perspective taking (γ = .09, p < .05) and not significantly related to imagine-other perspective taking (γ = -.04, ns). Event criticality and unusualness did not moderate the relationship between past experience and imagine-self perspective taking but did moderate the relationship with imagine-other perspective taking (γ = -.07, p < .05). A simple slope analysis confirmed this interaction, such that the relation is negative and significant when criticality is high (γ = -.11, p < .05) and positive and insignificant when criticality is low (γ = .02, ns). 2x2 Interaction between Imagine-Other and Imagine-Self Perspective Taking Since the two forms of perspective taking have been shown to be orthogonal in nature, I wanted to test to see if there was an interaction effect between imagine-other and imagine-self perspective taking on the emotional responses. Results demonstrate that there is no significant interaction effect on empathic concern (γ = -.06, ns). However, there is a significant interaction for personal distress (γ = -.17, p < .05). As shown in Figure 5, there is a positive and significant slope for low levels of imagine-other perspective taking and an insignificant slope for high levels of imagine-other perspective taking. This means that any time imagine-self perspective taking is low, personal distress is low. There is also no distress if both imagine-self and imagine-other perspective taking are high. However, if imagine-self perspective taking is high but imagine-self 72 perspective taking is low, then personal distress significantly rises. This implies that imagine- other perspective taking can help to calm the negative effects of imagine-self perspective taking. However, when imagine-self perspective taking is operating alone, stronger emotional responses take place. Ordering of Perspective Taking and Emotions Though the literature on perspective taking presents perspective taking as the antecedent leading to emotional responses such as empathic concern and personal distress, this is not something that has been explicitly examined in the management literature. Therefore, I reran all my primary hypotheses with the two forms of perspective taking and emotional outcomes reversed. Hypothesis 1a now argues that past experience moderates the relationship between critical events and empathic concern such that the relationship is negative when past experience is low and positive when past experience is high. This hypothesis was not supported, as the interaction was not significant (γ = -.0.05, ns). Hypothesis 1b now argues that past experience moderates the relationship between critical events and personal distress such that the relationship is positive when past experience is high and there is no relationship when past experience is low. This hypothesis was also not supported, as the interaction was not significant (γ = -.0.07, ns). Hypothesis 2ab now proposed that empathic concern was related both to (a) imagine-other perspective taking and (b) imagine-self perspective taking. Hypothesis 2a was supported (γ = .36, p < .05) and Hypothesis 2b was not supported (γ = -.06, ns). Hypothesis 3ab now proposed that personal distress was negatively related to (a) imagine-other perspective taking and positively related to (b) imagine-self perspective taking. Hypothesis 3a was supported (γ = -.15, p < .05) and Hypothesis 3b was supported (γ = .14, p < .05). 73 Hypothesis 4 now examines self-esteem as a moderator and proposed that self-esteem moderated the relationship between empathic concern and perspective taking such that the relationship is stronger when self-esteem is high. This hypothesis was not supported for either imagine-other perspective taking (γ = .05, ns) or imagine-self perspective taking (γ = -.11, ns). Hypothesis 5 now examines the personal distress path and proposes that self-esteem moderated the relationship between personal distress and imagine-self perspective taking such that the relationship is weaker when self-esteem is high. Hypothesis 5 was also not supported (γ = -.11, ns). Hypothesis 6ab now examines the role of similarity of response and argues that similarity of response moderates the relationship between emotional responses and perspective taking, such that the relationship between (a) empathic concern and imagine-self perspective taking is stronger when similarity of response is high and weaker when similarity is low, and (b) the relationship between personal distress and imagine-self perspective taking is weaker when similarity of response is high and stronger when similarity is low. Neither hypothesis was supported for empathic concern (γ = -.01, ns) or personal distress (γ = -.08, p < .05). Next we turn our attention to the outcomes. Hypothesis 7abc argued that imagine-other perspective taking was (a) positively related to justice behaviors, (b) positively related to prosocial behavior, and (c) negatively related to ostracism. Hypothesis 7abc was mostly supported, as imagine-other perspective taking was positively related to distributive justice (γ = .7, p < .05), procedural justice (γ = .14, p < .05), interpersonal justice (γ = .07, p < .05) and prosocial behavior (γ = .07, p < .05). The relationship between imagine-other perspective taking and informational justice (γ = .05, p < .05) and ostracism (γ = -.02, p < .05) was not significant. Now turning our attention to imagine-self perspective taking, Hypothesis 8abc argued that imagine-self perspective taking was (a) negatively related to justice behaviors, (b) negatively 74 related to prosocial behavior, and (c) positively related to ostracism. Hypothesis 8abc was entirely not supported, as imagine-self perspective taking was not related to distributive justice (γ = -.01, ns), procedural justice (γ = -.03, ns), informational justice (γ = .00, ns), interpersonal justice (γ = -.01, ns), prosocial behavior (γ = .04, ns) or ostracism (γ = .00, ns). Therefore, taken as a whole, though there were some relationships that held between this supplemental analyses and the original analysis, there was better fit when perspective taking preceded emotional reactions to critical events. However, more research should be done on this topic to continue to separate these processes and understand their temporal progression. 75 DISCUSSION Perspective taking plays a unique and important role in manager’s judgment process when making a decision, determining a response, or trying to understand another person’s behavior. In these circumstances, perspective taking is often thought to help individuals move past their own biases and get at the foundation for others’ motivations and behaviors—increasing empathy (Cialdini et al., 1997), encouraging helping behaviors (Batson, 1991), and reducing prejudice and aggression (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). However, this dissertation represents an important first step in presenting a more balanced view of perspective taking. Drawing from social identity theory, I submitted a process-oriented model that explores the systematic differences between imagine-other and imagine-self perspective taking, presents both the possible negative and positive consequences of perspective-taking for managers, and identifies boundary conditions that may make either outcome more or less likely. More specifically I find that an individual’s own perspective and past experiences exert influence on how he or she interprets and passes judgments on other people’s experiences. To empirically test these hypotheses, I collected multi-level experience sampling data from 150 managers. Below I discuss the theoretical implications of the results, limitations and future directions, and conclusions. Implications of Results As I discussed above in the Results section, many of my hypotheses were supported, while others were not. There are several theoretical and empirical reasons for this that may explain the mixed findings. I discuss these below. 76 Critical Events and Similar Past Experience This dissertation contributes to the perspective taking and decision making literatures by proposing and testing antecedents of two different forms of perspective taking in the context of real critical events. Most of the perspective taking research has either focused on interactions among strangers or hypothetical scenarios involving someone they have never met. I believe that this has significantly limited the impact that perspective taking research has had on the literature, as it has not been able to examine real-life scenarios where perspective taking is used in context. Thus, by examining actual critical events between managers and subordinates, this dissertation contributes to the perspective taking literature and the management field by allowing for a more complex, nuanced, and externally valid examination of the antecedents of perspective taking. These hypotheses proposed that past experience would moderate the relationship between critical events and perspective taking such that the relationship between critical events and imagine-other perspective taking is positive when past experience is low and the relationship between critical events and imagine-self perspective taking is positive when past experience is high. Unfortunately, my hypotheses pertaining to the interaction between critical events and similar past experience were not supported. However, as mentioned above in the Supplemental Analyses, I found that past experience did positively predict imagine-self perspective taking. Additionally, though there was no direct effect between past experience and imagine-other perspective taking, the criticality and unusualness of the event moderated the relationship. More specifically, when past experience is low and the criticality and unusualness of the event is also low, no perspective taking happens. However, when past experience is low and the criticality and unusualness of the event is high, imagine-other perspective taking increases. 77 This finding theoretically contributes to the perspective taking literature by demonstrating three important findings. First, past experience with an event results in the manager employing imagine-self perspective taking. This is an important finding for the management literature, as we know that managers over-rely on their past experience and are not good at effectively adjusting away from it (Epley et al., 2004). Second, it appears that the level of criticality does not affect the extent to which imagine-self perspective taking is used. Once past experience was perceived to be relevant, the manager engaged perspective taking regardless of the level of criticality or unusualness of the event. Lastly, when past experience is low and the event does not appear overly critical or unusual, no perspective taking is used. However, if past experience is low and the event is critical or unusual, then imagine-other perspective taking was engaged. This is a significant contribution to the literature as there has been no research establishing the conditions under which imagine-self versus imagine-other perspective taking is actually viewed as necessary to decision making, versus not necessary. However, this dissertation establishes that for perspective taking to take place, one of two conditions need to be fulfilled. Either the manager needs to perceive shared experience with the situation, or the manager needs to view the situation as critical or unusual. Perspective Taking and its Emotional Responses Despite the benefits that perspective taking gives to organizations, and how increasingly important these mechanisms and tools are in diverse work spaces, there has been a dearth of research on understanding how perspective taking functions in organizations (Parker & Axtell, 2001). Additionally, though the perspective taking literature has traditionally separated this into two unique processes—imagine-self and imagine-other perspective taking—this separation has not been carried over to the management literature. Assessments of perspective taking, regardless 78 of whether they are exploring its positive or possible negative effects (though the vast majority examine only the positive effects), have examined it as one general process. However, with this dissertation I predicted that the effects of perspective taking in managerial settings are actually more complicated and nuanced than the existing literature would suggest and that the literature must separate and examine these two forms of perspective taking. I argued—and find support for—the idea that while considering another person’s perspective can lessen one’s focus on self-related concerns and instead increase concern for the other, this primarily happens with imagine-other perspective taking. This occurs because using imagine-other perspective taking allows an individual to put their own perspective aside and instead primarily focus on the other individual’s thoughts and feelings (Batson et al., 1997a; Jackson et al., 2006; Lamm et al., 2007). Therefore, as hypothesized, imagine-other perspective taking leads to an increase in empathic concern and does not increase personal distress. This confirms that though both forms of perspective taking represent an attempt to leave one’s own perspective behind in order to adopt another’s, imagine-other perspective taking was the most successful at this task. On the other hand, imagine-self perspective taking involves trying to imagine how you would feel, what you would think, and what you would do if you were put in the target’s same situation (Vorauer & Sucharyna, 2013). Though at first glance this may seem like an unsuccessful way to take another person’s point of view, it is important to understand that many people assume that everyone sees and interprets the world very similarly (Epley et al., 2004). Therefore, under circumstances where an individual is pulling from their own past experience and using imagine-self perspective taking, I predicted and found support for the idea that these individuals can experience personal distress as a response. In other words, this egoistic focus on 79 the self and imagining how one would think or react in another’s situation can actually lead to a similar stress response as really being in that situation. Prior research on perspective taking has also argued that empathic concern can be a response to this form of perspective taking, but that relationship was not supported in this dissertation—further strengthening the argument that imagine-self and imagine-other perspective taking have diametrically different emotional responses. This is a significant theoretical contribution to the management literature as it helps to explain the inconsistent findings surrounding perspective taking’s influence, and demonstrate both what triggers one form of perspective taking over another and what the emotional response to that form of perspective taking is. Perspective Taking and Response Similarity The goal of this dissertation was to contextualize perspective taking in real managerial situations and determine what emotional and behavioral differences are associated with these two forms of perspective taking. When it comes to determining a response, research has demonstrated that individuals are often judged relative to the decision maker’s active social identity (Mackie & Cooper, 1984; Marques et al., 1988). If the decision maker is personally involved in the situation (or believes that their identity is tied to the other individual’s behavior), then they may be biased to behave in a way that benefits him or herself—either confirming that the individual should have behaved in a similar way, or condemning them for behaving differently. I proposed that it is through this process of attempting to protect one’s social identity, and using it as a basis off which to judge other’s behaviors, that managerial similarity of response toward a critical event can result in considerable decision making bias. 80 On the one hand, I proposed, and found support showing that, when managers encounter someone who has behaved in a way that is consistent with their own past experiences, this strengthens the overlap with them and results in more favorable treatment. When managers felt they could relate to the employee’s response to a critical event, this buffered the relationship between imagine-self perspective taking and personal distress, as the manager could understand what it is to face that situation and respond similarly. This is an important contribution to both the perspective taking and social identity literature as it demonstrates ways that decision makers may excuse other’s mistakes as a way of excusing their own past errors. This also reinforces that the negative emotional response to imagine-self perspective taking can be negated when decision makers think about a time they may have reacted similarly. Though imagine-self perspective taking can lead to negative emotional and behavioral responses, there are ways to mitigate this process. On the other hand, I proposed, and found support showing that, when a manager encountered someone who undermined their past decisions by behaving in an inconsistent way, this increased personal distress on the part of the decision maker. When managers feel that the employee faced a similar situation, but behaved a different way than the employee, the manager may experience increased personal distress in response to the critical event, as this seemingly incompetent or unmotivated employee may reflect poorly on the manager, possibly affecting their social standing and perceived competency. Additionally, because the manager feels that the employee behaved differently than they have or would have expected, they may also imagine scenarios where this employee may continue to deviate from what is expected, further increasing distress. This is an important contribution to the perspective taking and social identity literature as it demonstrates that the level of similarity of past experience between the manger and the 81 employee is a very important boundary condition in understanding whether the manger experiences an increased distress response by demonstrating the extent to which manager’s use their own experiences as a guide to condemn the actions of others. In other words, having past experience with a situation makes decision makers feel justified in assuming they understand what another person is going through and makes them overconfident in their ability to understand (and judge) the other person’s perspective. Therefore, this dissertation has theoretical implications for the perspective taking literature by demonstrating the importance of applying social identity theory to understand the importance of the social landscape (or context) surrounding the decision making experience. Perspective Taking and Self-Esteem The reason that I focused on self-esteem in my dissertation is that trait self-esteem is important to social identity theory as it not only represents a strictly internal measure of one’s self-worth but also inherently involves some level of comparison between oneself and others and can therefore drive socially guided behaviors (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). However, self-esteem is also related to empathy and perspective taking (Davis, 1983). Because perspective taking involves a merging of self-representation and other-representation, it is theoretically important to understand how positive or negative an individual’s self-representation is. Past research has indicated that high self-esteem can have positive effects on minimizing an individual’s prejudice toward others, while low self-esteem bestows no such advantage (Galinsky & Ku, 2004; Galinsky et al., 2005). However, much of this prior work was lab and scenario based (i.e. strangers and hypothetical people) whereas the relationships that I examined were between people who actually knew each other. 82 Therefore, I hypothesized that the effect of self-esteem would align with these past theoretical findings. More specifically, based on the literature on self-esteem and perspective taking, I hypothesized that self-esteem moderated the relationship between both forms of perspective taking and their emotional outcomes (empathic concern and personal distress), such that the relationships are stronger when self-esteem is high. The results demonstrated that self- esteem did not moderate the relationship between imagine-self perspective taking and either form of emotional response. And though it did moderate the relationship between imagine-other perspective taking and empathic concern, the direction of the relationship was different than hypothesized. The results demonstrated that low levels of self-esteem strengthened the relationship between imagine-other perspective taking and empathic concern more than high levels of self-esteem. One of the reasons that these surprising effects could have taken place is that the self- esteem and perspective taking literature have not examined the two forms separately when examining self-esteem. It is possible that these effects are more pronounced when perspective taking is examined as one single construct, rather than broken down into imagine-other and imagine-self. Because imagine-other perspective taking focuses more on the other individual, rather than the self, it is possible that low self-esteem individuals are quicker to empathize with others than high self-esteem individuals. Particularly because the events that managers are discussing are negative in nature, perhaps low self-esteem individuals actually relate more to the employee who made a mistake, and found it easier to empathize with their bad situation. This might also explain why the same effect did not occur with the imagine-self condition. 83 Outcomes of Perspective Taking With my dissertation I took a balanced approach and focused on both the positive and negative consequences associated with perspective taking and more specifically, the allocation of justice and social interaction outcomes. The reason I chose to focus on these outcomes is that just and unjust behaviors represent managerial attempts to motivate, help or punish subordinates across a wide variety of justice-related situations. Similarly, prosocial behavior and ostracism also represent attempts to motivate, help or punish subordinates through engaging in socially positive behavior, or attempting to distance the subordinate from one’s group. These are important sets of behaviors to examine, as justice outcomes deeply matter to both managers and employees (for a recent meta-analysis, see Colquitt et al., 2013), and social interaction outcomes are directly related to need satisfaction (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). I proposed and found support for the idea that empathic concern lead to justice outcomes (all but distributive) and prosocial behavior, and was negatively related to ostracism. However, it is worth noting that distributive justice was still in the hypothesized direction but it may be that, given the infrequency with which managers can engage in distributive justice, that a longer time frame of measurement is needed before being able to see a manager engage in this behavior. These overall results mean that when managers are motivated by empathic concern through imagine-other perspective taking, they are more likely to adhere to justice rules, exhibit prosocial behavior, and are less likely to socially exclude the target employee. On the other hand, I found that personal distress is unrelated to justice outcomes and prosocial behavior and instead promotes ostracism behaviors. This means that managers suffering from personal distress may not actively engage in unjust behaviors, they also do not engage in just behaviors. This may be the case because personal distress focused managers so much on themselves that they did not 84 engage in interpersonal actions (which fairness behaviors might represent). On the other hand, the personal distress does drive managers to engage in ostracism, which is associated with a variety of negative outcomes for the person being ostracized including negative affect and decreasing need satisfaction (Warburton et al., 2006; Williams & Sommer, 1997; Williams & Zadro, 2005). Therefore, ostracism can be similar to other forms of interpersonal deviance as it is a very harmful and stressful social behavior that negatively affects both the target and the actor, as past research has also demonstrated that engaging in ostracism can result in negative affect, guilt, stress, and feelings of discomfort on the part of the manager (Ciarocco et al., 2001; Williams & Sommer, 1997). Additionally, because ostracism is characterized by omission of behavior it is possible that the self-focus that characterizes personal distress lends itself to covert aggression rather than overt aggression. Therefore, this dissertation contributes to the literature on perspective taking, justice, and social identity by demonstrating that though all instances of perspective taking may appear to be empathetic in nature, these seemingly prosocial motivations also act as egoistic blocking mechanisms that protect an individual’s sense of self and feelings about their own past decisions by either blaming an individual who reacted differently, or excusing one who made the same mistake. It is key when attempting to understand the effects of perspective taking to not examine this construct holistically, but instead recognize that perspective taking can have vastly different emotional and behavioral outcomes, depending on what form is used. This also has theoretical implications for the idea that there is considerable within-person motivation behind just and unjust behavior and social interactions. Though there may be just and unjust managers in the workplace, managers experience considerable variance in the way they treat subordinates, depending on what form of perspective taking they employ and the emotions that stem from it. 85 This dissertation also offers practical implications. First, managers should understand the influence of their own past experiences while perspective taking. Though the goal of perspective taking may be to understand others, this dissertation demonstrates that one’s own past experience can override this initially positive intention and result in seemingly unintentional negative behaviors. Perspective taking has the ability to increase empathy with others, but it can also increase personal distress—therefore, it is paramount that managers understand the influence that their past experiences play in pushing them to use one form of perspective taking rather than another. My results suggest that, when possible, managers should resist drawing on their own past experiences and instead try to apply imagine-other perspective taking. When this is not possible and managers find themselves using imagine-self perspective taking, they should try to think about ways that the employee’s response to the event might relate to their own. This may help curtail the negative emotional response. Second, this dissertation demonstrates that there should be a preference for managers to use one form of perspective taking (imagine-other) instead of the other (imagine-self). This is an important practical contribution as it is impactful for managers’ leadership development to be able to accurately and effectively perspective take with their subordinates without incurring negative outcomes. Therefore, though managers may currently use perspective taking as a general tactic, and while this dissertation certainly does not discourage the value of perspective taking, it does demonstrate the vastly different consequences of one form of perspective taking over the other. Therefore, managers should utilize imagine-other perspective taking when faced with critical decisions—as this promotes justice adherence, prosocial behavior, and discourages ostracism. 86 Third, this dissertation suggests that it would be beneficial in organizations if human resources could offer training in perspective taking or provide feedback in performance appraisals regarding it. Perspective taking—and more specifically, the right form of perspective taking—can increase manger’s justice behaviors and positive social interactions. This suggests that training managers to use perspective taking properly might be a low cost solution of increasing positive managerial behaviors in organizations. Lastly, though it certainly should not fall on the employee’s shoulders to advocate for themselves in critical situations to avoid being ostracized, this dissertation does suggest ways that employees might be able to help shape the way that managers treat them in response to critical events. Given the overreliance on managerial past experience when making decisions, it is in an employee’s best interest to point out differences between a given event and their manager’s past experience. Though not all employees may know their managers well enough to be able to think of specific instances that this is different, the more they can emphasize the uniqueness of the situation to anything the manager might have experienced, the more likely the manager will use imagine-other perspective taking and end up responding in a just and prosocial manner. Imagine-other perspective taking could also be used strategically in a lot of social interactions in organizations as it could help individuals gain understanding about the motivations of the target. Limitations and Future Directions These above strengths of my dissertation are still accompanied by some limitations. First, this dissertation suffers from common method bias, as it relies exclusively on self-report data. I chose manager self-reports for all focal constructs because I believe that managers have the most insight about what they perceive to be critical events, their past experiences with such critical 87 events, and their emotional and behavioral responses to such events. These perceptions, past experiences and emotional responses are not readily available to subordinates. However, to alleviate some of the concerns stemming from common method bias, I separated the report of critical events, past experiences, and emotional responses from behavioral responses to the aforementioned events. I also group mean centered these daily variables at the person level, which controls for between-person confounds in the focal variable, such as general response tendencies and social desirability. Second, I investigated only a single subordinate when examining critical events and manager’s responses to such events. I placed this limitation on my dissertation for the sake of scope, consistency, and simplicity in this first investigation. Though I told the managers to focus on the individual they felt was most involved in the critical event, it is still possible that there are larger group dynamics taking place around a critical event that could also affect outcomes. Though there has been very little research conducted on perspective taking in groups—or how one determines whose perspective to take in a particular situation—this could still affect the outcomes I collected. For example, if there are multiple individuals at fault with the event (or the managers perceives that many people contributed to the critical event) that could affect whose point of view the manager takes when perspective taking, which could, in turn, affect how they respond to a particular individual. Third, by nature of asking managers to focus on the event that was most critical (defined as events that are negative and high in criticality, unusualness, and disruptiveness) that day, that limited this dissertation to focus on relatively extreme events. The reason I chose to focus on this context is that I believe perspective taking is most relevant in situations where responses are less automatic and more processing or understanding is necessary to make a judgment. This suggests 88 that events that are more extreme, and where managers have less routinized responses, will yield the most important and fruitful research opportunities. However, it is possible that only examining this one end of the spectrum limited the theoretical and empirical contribution of my dissertation. For example, it is possible that under circumstances that are less extreme, managers may go through the same perspective taking process, but have a less extreme emotional response because the stakes are less high. Fourth, this data was collected through snowball sampling (having students recruit a full time manager to complete surveys in exchange for the student receiving extra credit for a course) and so there is the possibility of some limitations with this method. Snowball sampling has the potential to recruit employees who are not overly motivated to complete the surveys because they themselves may not feel connected to the study, as they are simply doing the student a favor. I attempted to minimize this risk by including a financial reward for completing the surveys, which helped motivate the employees to complete the surveys. I also emailed the employees directly and did not involve the student passed the point of initial recruitment. This dissertation also points to additional avenues for research to explore. One such direction is to investigate characteristics of the manager that might affect their propensity to choose one form of perspective taking over another. This dissertation focused on the context and past experiences that a manger might have with a critical event, but there are also both personality and job factors that could affect a manager’s perspective taking. These factors were held constant in this dissertation, as the primary variables were within-person and group-mean centered, but that does not imply that there are not important between person factors that could affect perspective taking outcomes. For example, if a manager happens to be high on empathic concern at the trait level, this might help override some of the distress responses that originate 89 from imagine-self perspective taking. Additionally, regulatory focus (i.e. whether a manager is more promotion or prevention oriented) might also dictate which form of perspective taking is utilized more freely and whether the manager is more likely to respond negatively to breaches of expectation. Trait perspective taking might also change the threshold of criticality that a manager needs to use perspective taking in a given situation. There are also characteristics of the manager’s job that may increase the likelihood that they can relate to the employee’s past experience (affecting which form of perspective taking they use and what response similarity might be). Research has indicated that individuals whose jobs involve boundary spanning are better at perspective taking (Parker & Axtell, 2001), and so the degree to which a manager’s past jobs or current job has exposed them to a variety of roles and perspectives could also have a meaningful impact. The results also suggest that men and women differ slightly in their use of perspective taking and their responses to it. The results suggest that women use imagine-self perspective taking more (γ = .05) and have a more heightened empathic response to perspective taking (γ = .06). Results also suggest that women engage in increased ostracism (γ = .05) but also increased prosocial behavior (γ = .05). This is potentially interesting because both of these cognitive effects (increased empathic concern and increased perspective taking) and behavioral effects (increased ostracism and prosocial behavior) have contradicting effects. Therefore, given the conflicting findings that this dissertation had for gender, future research should continue to investigate the role that gender effects may have in perspective taking. Another avenue that future research should explore is comparing relative perspective taking to absolute perspective taking. In other words, because level 1 variables were group-mean centered, all daily measures of perspective were relative to an individual’s daily mean. Therefore, 90 this dissertation examined each form of perspective taking relative to each respective manager’s average. However, future research should examine the relationship between absolute levels of imagine-other and imagine-self perspective taking and emotional and behavioral reactions, as these may yield different and interesting results. Although a large contribution of this dissertation was to expand the categorization of perspective taking to include both imagine-other and imagine-self perspective, another possible future research direction is to move beyond just these two mechanisms. Even though the self is the most readily available referent, here is evidence that individuals may use more than just the present self and other as referent points. For example, managers may have a system referent that they use when comparing results (i.e. what they imagine the “ideal” employee to be—even if different from themselves and their own past experiences). Additionally, theories of identity have indicated that past, present, future and imagined selves may all be used as different referents, changing expectations of behavior. Group perspective taking—or attempting to understand why a group of people behaved in a particular way—may also change the referent point that the manager uses. Therefore, future research should investigate perspective taking beyond simply the self and other categorizations. 91 APPENDICES 92 Appendix A—Study Training Critical Event Training Next we are going to give you some information about the two-week study that you will be participating in. Each work day we will have you recall a "critical event" that was caused by an employee that you manage or oversee. By “critical event,” we mean a negative situation that is demanding of attention and involved an employee (or employees) you manage. The significance of a particular critical event depends on the extent that it is disruptive (affects the employee’s ability to get work done or interrupts routines), novel (it is not a normal occurrence), or critical (the outcome of the event is important to you). It is important that the event not explicitly involve you (the manager), but be a problem that an employee (or several employees) were involved in. You will be asked to recall the event that was the most disruptive, novel and critical on that day, and describe it in detail. Please respond below that you have read this above statement, and understand what kind of event you will be recalling/discussing. If you have any questions or points of clarification around the description of "critical events" please email the researchers at connor32@msu.edu. Perspective Taking Training Next we are going to describe some of the questions that you will be responding to in reference to the critical event. In this study we are interested in perspective taking, which is an individual's ability to put oneself in the metaphorical shoes of another in order to better understand their feelings, emotions, or why they might have behaved a certain way. Perspective taking is often used to understand a situation, such as a critical event. 93 There are two different forms of perspective taking. The first kind is called "imagine- self" perspective taking and it involves putting yourself in the other person's shoes and imagining how you would think, feel, or react if in that same situation. This means that you are drawing on your own experiences and your own perspective and using that to understand the other person's perspective. On the other hand, the second kind is called "imagine-other" perspective taking and it involves imaging how that other person might be thinking or behaving in a particular situation. This means actively trying to NOT imagine how you would see the situation, but instead, focusing on how they see the situation. Please respond below that you have read this above description, and understand the difference between "imagine other" and "imagine self" perspective taking. If you have any questions or points of clarification around the description of these, please email the researchers at connor32@msu.edu. Next, there will be a short quiz over the difference between "imagine-self" and "imagine- other" perspective taking. You will read eight descriptions of a form of perspective taking. Please select the form of perspective taking you believe the description represents. For example, please see below: I imagined how I would think and feel if this situation was happening to me, personally.  Imagine-Other  Imagine-Self 94 Appendix B—Pilot Survey 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 Appendix C—One-Time Survey 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 Appendix D—Daily Survey 1 (Evening) 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 Appendix E—Daily Survey 2 (Morning) 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 Appendix F—Figures and Tables FIGURE 1: Theoretical Model 127 FIGURE 2: Results of Proposed Model 128 FIGURE 3: The Interaction of Self-Esteem and Imagine-Other Perspective Taking on Empathic Concern (Hypothesis 4) n r e c n o C c i h t a p m E 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 Low S-E High S-E Low I-O High I-O FIGURE 4: The Interaction of Similarity of Response and Imagine-Self Perspective Taking on Personal Distress (Hypothesis 6b) s s e r t s i D l a n o s r e P 2.5 2.4 2.3 2.2 2.1 2 1.9 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.5 Low IS PT High IS PT 129 Low Response Similarity High Response Similarity FIGURE 5: The Interaction of Imagine-Self and Imagine-Other Perspective Taking on Personal Distress (Supplemental Analysis) s s e r t s i D l a n o s r e P 3.5 3.3 3.1 2.9 2.7 2.5 2.3 2.1 1.9 1.7 1.5 Low I-O High I-O Low I-S High I-S 130 TABLE 1: Proportion of Within-person Variance among Study Variables Focal Variables 1) Imagine-Other PT 2) Imagine-Self PT 3) Empathy (Davis) 4) Personal Distress (Davis) 7) Past Experience 8) Response Similarity 9) Distributive Justice 10) Procedural Justice 11) Informational Justice 12) Interpersonal Justice 13) Prosocial Behavior 14) Ostracism Within-person Variance (e2) Between- person Variance (r2) % of Within- person Variance 0.62* 0.53* 0.81* 0.54* 1.09* 1.80* 0.45* 0.42* 0.41* 0.33* 0.57* 0.26* 0.24* 0.21* 0.43* 0.26* 0.40* 0.50* 0.37* 0.33* 0.37* 0.14* 0.49* 0.25* 75.6% 71.6% 65.3% 67.5% 73.1% 78.2% 54.9% 56.0% 52.6% 70.2% 53.8% 51.0% 131 TABLE 2: Correlation Table Note: * = .05 significance; Within-levels correlations below the diagonal and between-level correlations above the diagonal; Level 1 = 1480, Level 2 = 175 132 VariableMs.d.1234567891011121314Focal Variables 1) Critical Event (T1)3.011.111.19*.02.27*.46*.52*-.16*.35*.28*.41*.37*.17*-.04*.09 2) Imagine-Other PT (T1)3.060.91.07*1.04.30*.01.19*.11.30*.30*.26*.16*.25*-.03-.06 3) Imagine-Self PT (T1)2.950.84.05-.031-.04.09.04-.01-.04-.09-.10-.10.06.13-.13 4) Empathy (T1)2.301.12.12*.39*.031.35*.20*.24*.20*.25*.12.12.39*.06-.12 5) Personal Distress (T1)1.840.89.50*-.05.11*.14*1.18*-.02-.01-.10-.03-.12.29*.25*-.12 6) Past Experience (T1)3.251.23.31*.06*.09*.15*.09*1-.05.30*.29*.39*.37*.12-.21*.17* 7) Similarity of Response (T1)2.691.50-.04.23*.05.29*-.04.041-.01.11.05.10.15-.02.05 8) Distributive Justice (T2)3.790.90.22*.11*-.02.08*.03.23*.011.59*.67*.59*.21*-.38*.23* 9) Procedural Justice (T2)3.720.89.16*.22*-.04.19*-.09*.20*.04.53*1.55*.59*.18*-.37*.16* 10) Informational Justice (T2)4.130.89.28*.07*-.06.05-.01.23*.01.56*.52*1.76*.10-.64*.30* 11) Interpersonal Justice (T2)4.430.83.25*.09*-.06.12-.09*.27*.04.46*.49*.69*1.06-.75*.24* 12) Prosocial Behavior (T2)2.911.04.05.18*.06.27.14*.12*.07*.17*.11*.11*.10*1.03*-.15 13) Ostracism (T2)1.390.75-.18*-.01.05.01.20*-.21*.01-.30*-.30*-.47*-.62*.051-.23* 14) Self-Esteem 4.380.52--------------------------1 TABLE 3: Moderated Mediation Results (Imagine-Other and Empathic Concern) Imagine Other PT → Empathy → Distributive Justice Imagine Other PT → Empathy → Procedural Justice Imagine Other PT → Empathy → Informational Justice Imagine Other PT → Empathy → Interpersonal Justice Imagine Other PT → Empathy → Prosocial Behavior Imagine Other PT → Empathy → Ostracism Level of Self- Esteem High Medium Low High Medium Low High Medium Low High Medium Low High Medium Low High Medium Low g 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.07 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.03 0.04 0.05 -0.02 -0.03 -0.04 95% Bias-Corrected Confidence Intervals ns ns ns -0.05 -0.05 -0.05 ns ns ns -0.04 -0.04 -0.04 -0.05 -0.05 -0.05 0.00 ns ns ns ns ns -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 ns ns ns 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 -0.01 0.00 0.04 ns ns Bold = Significant 133 REFERENCES 134 REFERENCES Abrams, D. & Hogg, M. 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