Guilty and helpful: an emotion-based reparatory model of voluntary work behavior

This study proposes a dynamic reparatory model of voluntary work behavior. We test the hypothesis that when people are made aware of their high level of negative behavior at work (i.e., counterproductive work behavior) and are informed that their behavior is counternormative and undesirable, the kno...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of applied psychology Vol. 98; no. 6; p. 1051
Main Authors Ilies, Remus, Peng, Ann Chunyan, Savani, Krishna, Dimotakis, Nikolaos
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.11.2013
Subjects
Adult
Employment - psychology
Guilt
Helping Behavior
Humans
Models, Psychological
Social Behavior
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Summary:This study proposes a dynamic reparatory model of voluntary work behavior. We test the hypothesis that when people are made aware of their high level of negative behavior at work (i.e., counterproductive work behavior) and are informed that their behavior is counternormative and undesirable, the knowledge that they violated social norms induces guilt. This guilt, in turn, results in compensatory behavior that is positive in nature (i.e., organizational citizenship behavior). We report results from a field experiment involving normative feedback about employees' counterproductive work behavior to support this model. The findings indicate that undesirable behaviors in the workplace can be redressed by making employees aware of the negative consequences of these behaviors.
ISSN:1939-1854
DOI:10.1037/a0034162