The consequences of authenticity and impression management in the context of taboo conversations

"The current study integrates the construct of taboo into the organizational literature by considering its impact on coworker relationships, particularly in the context of authenticity and impression management. To explore how taboo topics may intrude on positive employee relationships, I consider its potential to impact helping behaviors in the workplace. An online between-subjects experiment manipulates motivation to be authentic or impression manage and a topic of discussion with a coworker to be taboo (e.g. abortion) or neutral (e.g. fitness). I evaluated participants' perceptions of their own motivation, participant's perceptions of their behavior during the interaction as authentic or impression management, and helping behaviors following the interaction. Results showed that motivation, but not taboo topics, influenced perceptions of behavior during the interaction. Further, taboo topics and the behavior during the interaction did not influence subsequent helping behaviors. However, exploratory results showed that taboo topics did impact affect towards the coworker that brought up the taboo topic. Limitations, implications for theory and practice, and future research directions are discussed."--Abstract.