CONSIDERING EMPLOYEE SEXISM IN THE FEEDBACK-SEEKING PROCESS:
THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPERVISOR CHARACTERISTICS
A Dissertation
Presented to
The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Alexandra I. Zelin
May, 2017 CONSIDERING EMPLOYEE SEXISM IN THE FEEDBACK-SEEKING PROCESS:
THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPERVISOR CHARACTERISTICS
Alexandra I. Zelin
Dissertation
Approved: Accepted:
______Advisor Department Chair Dr. Joelle D. Elicker Dr. Paul E. Levy
______Committee Member Dean of the College Dr. Paul E. Levy Dr. John Green
______Committee Member Dean of the Graduate School Dr. Andrea F. Snell Dr. Chand Midha
______Committee Member Date Dr. Jennifer T. Stanley
______Committee Member Dr. Steven R. Ash
ii ABSTRACT
Feedback-seeking within the workplace is imperative for employee success. Much of the extant research on predicting feedback-seeking behavior of employees relates to job-oriented variables such as motives, goal orientation, attitudes toward feedback, role ambiguity, and the source of the feedback. The present study incorporated yet unstudied, important variables from the Social Psychology literature which could impact feedback- seeking behaviors in the workplace: an employee’s level of both explicit and implicit sexism, and the behavioral “match” of supervisor gender with supervisor behaviors. As the number of women managers in the workplace increases, the need to measure both implicit and explicit sexism to determine the effect of these attitudes on employee behaviors also grows. Further, experience suggests that not all men and women act in accordance with their gender-prescribed roles. However, as evidenced in previous research, some behaviors are seen as more appropriate for management (e.g., masculine behaviors) and may also influence people’s perceptions of their supervisors’ ability to provide feedback. The present study investigated the influence of employee sexism, supervisor gendered behavior (i.e., matching with gender-prescribed behavior), and employee motives in relation to feedback-seeking behaviors from both one’s supervisor and another person within the organization. As outcomes of feedback-seeking behaviors are also important, the present study investigated employees’ levels of stress and anxiety
iii in relation to feedback-seeking behaviors. A sample of 280 student employees working over 20 hours per week participated via an online survey. Study results indicated that perceptions of supervisor gender-normative behavior and employee sexism interacted with individual motives for seeking feedback in determining actual feedback-seeking behavior.
iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a show of gratitude to my support systems who helped make my dissertation, and success through graduate school, a possibility. Your guidance and unwavering confidence in me is forever appreciated and I want to thank those of you who helped me along.
First, to my dissertation advisor, Joelle Elicker, for your help in brainstorming this process all the way to the product that it has become. To my committee, Paul Levy,
Andrea Snell, Jennifer Stanley, and Steven Ash, thank you for providing important insight and advice during this process. The interpretation of the four-way interactions was truly a team effort! I also want to thank Rosalie Hall and Jennifer Wessel for their support and guidance as my advisors through the thesis and comprehensive exam process. You both greatly influenced the path I took in the field of I-O and I am forever grateful.
Although not on my dissertation committee, I want to thank other faculty and staff at the University of Akron who helped me grow and develop throughout my time in the program: Karen Todaro, Kim Sturmi, Dennis Doverspike, Jim Diefendorff, Jan Yoder,
Stan Silverman, and Harvey Sterns. I truly appreciate everything you do!
Additionally, I want to thank my colleagues at the University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga. You made the process of finishing my dissertation while in my first year as an assistant professor as easy as it could be. Your support in the process and re-reading
v numerous drafts was not something that you thought you would get when you hired me, but you did it with a smile and unending encouragement. Thank you for keeping me sane!
To my friends and family, I could not have accomplished this without you. Your pride in me, your cheering at my successes, and your encouragement to “keep going” when things got tough is worth more to me than I can say. From the phone calls providing unwavering support throughout the process to making sure I survived the winter storms (Mom, Dad, Sam, & Josh), my personal cheerleader, warm meals and friendly family faces to celebrate the holidays and just any old day (Richard and Debbie and the rest of the Minster clan), calls, texts, and visits from out-of-state friends (too many to name individually), to the never-ending support from friends and colleagues in the program (also too many to name individually), I appreciate all of you. Special shout out to those who accompanied me to the various BSB and NKOTB concerts/listening to my BSB playlists in the office (you know I wouldn’t have made it through without my
BSB). This project was possible because of you. Thank you.
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
LIST OF TABLES ...... xi
LIST OF FIGURES ...... xiii
CHAPTER
I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ...... 1
II. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 7
Feedback-seeking Behavior ...... 11
Method Used to Seek Feedback: Inquiry ...... 11
Target of Feedback-Seeking Behavior ...... 12
Motives Predicting Feedback-Seeking Behavior ...... 13
Instrumental Motives (Figure 2.1) ...... 15
Supervisor (Source) Credibility ...... 15
Sexism and Supervisor Characteristics Predicting Perceived Supervisor Credibility...... 17
Sexism ...... 24
Ego- and Image-Defensive Motives (Figure 2.2) ...... 35
Hostile Sexism and Implicit Sexism ...... 36
Effects of Feedback-Seeking Behaviors ...... 40
Feedback-Seeking Behavior and Job Stress and Job Anxiety ...... 44
vii Hostile Sexism, Implicit Sexism, Supervisor Characteristics, and Job Stress and Job Anxiety ...... 45
Control Variables ...... 47
Job Tenure ...... 47
Learning Goal Orientation ...... 48
Feedback Orientation ...... 48
Job Performance ...... 49
Supervisor Interactions ...... 49
Summary of Contributions of the Proposed Study ...... 49
III. METHODOLOGY ...... 54
Participants ...... 54
Procedure ...... 59
Measures ...... 61
Pilot Testing ...... 73
Analytic Strategy ...... 73
Measuring Implicit Attitudes ...... 73
Tests of Hypotheses ...... 75
IV. RESULTS ...... 79
Subsample Correlations ...... 83
Participants Completing the Implicit Attitudes Measure ...... 88
Sexism, Supervisor Gender, Supervisor Behaviors, and Ego- and Image-Defense
Motives Related to Feedback-Seeking Behaviors ...... 89
Significant Four-Way Interaction for Feedback-Seeking from Supervisor ...... 91
viii Significant Four-Way Interaction Predicting Feedback-Seeking from Another Source ...... 97
When Gender Does Not matter: Tests of Sexism, Motives, and Supervisor Behavior Predicting Feedback-Seeking ...... 103
Further Investigation of Two-Way Interactions of Employee Sexism, Supervisor Behavior, and Employee Motives on Feedback-Seeking Behavior ...... 107
Sexism, Supervisor Gender, and Supervisor Behavior Related to Perceptions of Supervisor Credibility ...... 111
Supervisor Credibility and Instrumental Motives Related to Feedback-Seeking Behaviors ...... 113
Relationship Between Employee Sexism and Feedback-Seeking Behaviors through Perceptions of Supervisor Credibility ...... 114
Sexism, Supervisor Gender, and Supervisor Behavior Related to Employee Well-Being...... 116
Feedback-Seeking Behavior from Supervisor and Other Source Related to Employee Well-Being ...... 119
Summary of Results ...... 120
V. DISCUSSION ...... 129
Does Sexism Matter in Feedback Seeking? ...... 131
Benevolent Sexism ...... 131
Implicit Sexism ...... 133
Hostile Sexism ...... 138
Stress and Anxiety: Outcomes ...... 139
Hostile Sexism and Anxiety ...... 140
Implicit Sexism and Stress ...... 141
Feedback-Seeking Behavior and Employee Well-Being ...... 142
Supervisor Credibility ...... 142
ix Limitations and Future Research ...... 143
Conclusion ...... 149
x LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
2.1. Summary of hypotheses...... 52
3.1 Tests of equivalence between the two universities on the study variables...... 55
3.2. Test of equivalence of self-identified gender between the two universities...... 55
3.3. Employee Industry ...... 58
3.4. Proposed design for the IAT tasks...... 66
3.5. Measures, Measurement Sources, and Order of Presentation...... 70
4.1. Means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables in the present study based upon the full sample of participants...... 80
4.2. Means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables in the present study for participants with women supervisors...... 84
4.3. Means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables in the present study for participants with men supervisors...... 86
4.4. Results summary of four-way interaction tests ...... 90
4.5. Coefficients for four-way interaction of benevolent sexism, supervisor gender, image-defense motives, and supervisor agency on feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor...... 93
4.6. Regression results for the three-way interaction of supervisor agency, image-defense motives, and benevolent sexism on employee feedback-seeking behavior from one’s supervisor...... 95
4.7. Coefficients for four-way interaction of implicit sexism, supervisor gender, ego- defense motives, and supervisor communality on feedback-seeking from another person...... 99
xi 4.8. Regression results for the three-way interaction of supervisor communality, ego- defense motives, and implicit sexism on employee feedback-seeking behavior from another source...... 101
4.9. Interaction tests of employee sexism, motives and supervisor behavior on feedback- seeking ...... 105
4.10. Two-way interactions of employee sexism, supervisor characteristics, and employee motives on feedback-seeking behaviors...... 108
4.11. Employee sexism, supervisor gender, and supervisor behaviors contributing to employee perceptions of supervisor credibility...... 112
4.12. Sexism's relationship with perceptions of supervisor credibility conditional upon supervisor behaviors...... 113
4.13. Indirect effect of sexism on feedback-seeking behaviors through perceptions of supervisor credibility...... 115
4.14. Effect of sexism on well-being outcomes conditional upon supervisor gender and supervisor behavior...... 117
4.15. Effect of sexism on well-being outcomes conditional upon supervisor behavior. 117
4.16. Summary of hypotheses and results...... 126
4.17. Observed relationships in present study...... 127
xii LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
2.1. Model 1: Sexism and Feedback-seeking Considering Instrumental Motives ...... 8
2.2. Model 2: Sexism and Feedback-seeking Considering Ego-Defensive and Image- Defensive Motives...... 9
2.3. Interaction of perceived supervisor credibility and employee instrumental motives predicting employee feedback-seeking behavior...... 17
2.4. Employee sexism interacting with supervisor gender and supervisor behaviors to predict perceived supervisor credibility...... 34
2.5. Employee sexism predicting employee feedback-seeking behavior mediated by perceived supervisor credibility and conditional upon supervisor gender, supervisor behavior, and employee instrumental motives...... 35
2.6. Hostile and implicit sexism predicting employee feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon ego-based motives, image-based motives, supervisor gender, and supervisor behaviors...... 38
2.7. Benevolent sexism predicting employee feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon ego-based motives, image-based motives, and supervisor gender and supervisor behavior ...... 40
2.8. Employee feedback-seeking behavior from direct supervisor will interact with employee feedback-seeking behavior from another person in the organization to predict employee anxiety and stress...... 45
2.9. Employee hostile sexism and implicit sexism will each interact with supervisor gender and supervisor behavior to predict employee job stress and job anxiety...... 47
3.1. Algorithm instructions for collected IAT data. Note: B3 is the practice run of the IAT Step 3; B4 is the test run of the IAT Step 3; B6 is the practice run of the IAT Step 5; B7 is the test run of the IAT Step 5...... 75
3.2. Hayes (2013) conceptual and statistical diagrams for Model 21...... 77
xiii 3.3. Hayes (2013) conceptual and statistical diagrams for Model 3...... 78
4.1. Tested interactions between sexism, supervisor gender, supervisor behavior, and motives relating to feedback-seeking behaviors...... 90
4.2. Observed relationship of benevolent sexism, supervisor gender, image-defense motives, and supervisor agency with supervisor feedback-seeking behaviors...... 92
4.3. Graphical depiction of the three-way interaction of benevolent sexism, supervisor agentic behaviors, and image-defense motives on feedback-seeking behavior from one's supervisor...... 95
4.4. Graph examining the effects of benevolent sexism, supervisor agency, and image- defense motives on feedback-seeking from a woman supervisor. Note that values are not mean-centered...... 96
4.5. Relationship between implicit sexism, supervisor gender, ego-defense motives, and supervisor communality on other source feedback-seeking behaviors...... 98
4.6. Graphical depiction of the three-way interaction of implicit sexism, supervisor communal behaviors, and ego-defense motives on feedback-seeking behavior from another source...... 101
4.7. Graph examining the effects of implicit sexism, supervisor communality, and ego- defense motives on feedback-seeking from a source other than one's woman supervisor. Note that values are not mean-centered...... 102
4.8. Effect of sexism on feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon supervisor behavior and employee motives...... 104
4.9. Graphical depiction of the effects of implicit sexism on seeking feedback from another source conditional upon employee image-defense motives and supervisor communality...... 107
4.10. Effect of hostile sexism on supervisor feedback-seeking behaviors conditional upon ego-defense motives...... 109
4.11. Effect of hostile sexism on feedback-seeking behavior from another source conditional upon supervisor communality...... 110
4.12. Effect of supervisor agency on employee's likelihood to seek feedback from that supervisor, conditional upon employee image-defense motives...... 111
4.13. Three-way interaction of employee sexism, supervisor gender, and supervisor behaviors on perceptions of supervisor credibility...... 112
xiv 4.14. Interaction of perceptions of supervisor credibility and employee instrumental motives on feedback-seeking behavior...... 114
4.15. The effect of employee sexism on feedback-seeking behaviors through perceptions of supervisor credibility...... 115
4.16. The effect of sexism on employee well-being conditional upon supervisor gender and supervisor behaviors...... 116
4.17. Graph of the effect of hostile sexism on employee anxiety conditional upon supervisor communality...... 118
4.18. Effect of implicit sexism on employee stress conditional upon supervisor communality...... 119
4.19. The relationship of feedback-seeking behavior from one's supervisor on employee well-being, conditional upon feedback-seeking behavior from another source...... 120
xv CHAPTER I
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Previous literature on feedback-seeking behavior through inquiry (i.e., directly asking for feedback; Ashford, 1986) outlines numerous variables which influence employee feedback-seeking behavior, such as the perceived costs and value of the feedback, job tenure, learning goal orientation, and leader-member exchange (Anseel,
Beatty, Shen, Lievens, & Sackett, 2015). The present study investigates previously unexamined social psychological variables that I propose explain why employees may be less likely to seek feedback from supervisors: employees’ level of sexism (both implicit and explicit), the gender of employees’ supervisor, and the behaviors in which employees’ supervisors engage (i.e., acting in gender-stereotyped prescriptive behaviors).
As more women are entering the workplace in comparison to previous years, especially in stereotypically-masculine dominated jobs (e.g., engineering; National
Science Foundation, 2013), it becomes imperative to investigate how such women, particularly women managers, are perceived. Sexism is conceptualized in several ways, including hostile and benevolent sexism as explicit forms of sexism (Glick & Fiske,
1996), as well as through more implicit avenues (Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, &
Banaji, 2009). Hostile sexism is hostility toward women who are perceived as taking power from men. It is also described as behaving and thinking in prejudicial ways against
1 women. Benevolent sexism, however, is more complimentary of women, but only if they remain in their stereotypical gender-assigned roles. For instance, people who are high in benevolent sexism are more likely to generalize that women are nice and friendly, but they need protection from men for survival (e.g., when the Titanic was sinking, women and children were the first to be offered lifeboat positions). However, those who hold high levels of benevolent sexism do not perceive women to be competent enough to be successful in stereotypically-masculine jobs (Dardenne, Dumont, & Bollier, 2007; Glick
& Fiske, 2011).
However, people do not always explicitly endorse, or recognize, that they hold sexist attitudes (e.g., Greenwald et al., 2009). Rather, people can hold implicit attitudes, which are thoughts and attitudes that are held outside of one’s conscious awareness
(Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). As holding explicitly sexist attitudes is considered more taboo within the current American culture, but yet was engrained in American culture for so long, it is likely that many people still hold implicit sexist attitudes. In fact, previous research demonstrates that the American population holds implicit sexist attitudes (e.g., Gawronski, Ehrenberg, Banse, Zukova, &
Klauer, 2003).
Furthermore, it may not just be employee sexism and whether or not the supervisor is a man or a woman, but whether the supervisor engages in mainly agentic
(individualistic) or communal (relational) behaviors. Understanding gender normativity in communication is key to understanding what styles of communication are expected of men and women and what styles of communication are considered outside of the norm, and thus, to some, inappropriate. Gender norms assert that women should behave in a
2 more communal (e.g., encouraging, nurturing) fashion, whereas men should act more assertive and independent (i.e., agentic; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002; Rudman &
Glick, 2001). However, men and women do not always act in accordance with their prescribed gender norms (e.g., Phelan, Moss-Racusin, & Rudman, 2008; Rudman, 1998;
Rudman & Fairchild, 2004). Thus, as it is unrealistic to assume that men only engage in agentic behaviors and women only engage in communal behaviors, it becomes necessary to consider women and men who engage in typically-agentic or typically-communal behaviors.
The present study was designed to establish first whether sexism and supervisor characteristics (gender and engagement in gender-prescribed behaviors) influence feedback-seeking behaviors, and second, from whom is an employee seeking feedback if not from his/her supervisor? Consider an employee who holds higher levels of hostile sexism and also has a woman manager. Will this employee then choose to seek feedback from another supervisor (or person within the organization) who fits his/her expectations for competency?
Feedback-seeking behavior is also related to various job outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, Anseel et al., 2015; absenteeism, Humphrey, Nahrgang, & Morgeson, 2007).
Two specific outcomes, job stress and job anxiety (Humphrey et al., 2007), are of interest in this study as I anticipate an interaction of employee sexism and supervisor characteristics may influence them. Job stress and job anxiety both have a negative impact on employee well-being, such as increased depression (Thorsteinsson, Brown, &
Richards, 2014) and lower job satisfaction (Boyd, Lewin, & Sager, 2009; Jamal, 2005), as well as negative work effects such as participation in unethical behaviors (Kouchaki &
3 Desai, 2015). More importantly, these negative emotions are also quick to spread to others within one’s work group through emotional contagion, and thus can affect a wide range of people (e.g., Vijayalakshmi & Bhattacharyya, 2012) and become detrimental to an organization. An employee with higher levels of hostile sexism and a communal woman supervisor may experience job stress and job anxiety because that supervisor does not fit with his/her expectations of a successful supervisor.
Additionally, sexism within the workplace may not just affect the employee who holds such beliefs, but also his or her women supervisors. Multiple studies indicate that experiencing sexism, whether directly or indirectly, has negative impacts on both men and women. For instance, Dardenne and colleagues (2007) found that women in a job interview context who were treated with benevolent sexist behaviors by their interviewer
(rather than hostile sexist or neutral behaviors) performed significantly worse on a subsequent cognitive ability test. With regard to the supervisor, these findings may also translate to women supervisors not performing at their highest standards after experiencing benevolent sexism from their employees. As such, the organization would lose valuable work quality from a woman in a management position who experiences sexism from her subordinates.
In a similar study, women who experienced sexism during a job interview also performed significantly worse on a subsequent mathematics test than women who did not experience sexism within their interview (Koch, Konigorski, & Sieverding, 2014). The authors elaborated that women did not just perform poorly on any test, but on a test of content about which they are already negatively stereotyped (in contrast to a language test which participants were also administered), thus highlighting the negative impact
4 sexism can have on women in stereotypically-masculine industries. In connection to women managers in stereotypically-masculine industries (e.g., construction), being a recipient of sexist behavior may lower the quality of her work. Thus, making changes to the benevolent and hostile sexist attitudes of employees is beneficial to the manager’s success, as well as the employee’s success.
Even women who just witness acts of sexism (both benevolent and hostile sexism) against other women are more likely to have a decrease in self-esteem and career aspirations (Bradley-Geist, Rivera, & Geringer, 2015). It then becomes important not only for the employee’s tenure at the organization, but for the continued success of the women supervisors, to lessen the existence of sexism within the workplace.
Overall, this study investigated the effects of employee levels of explicit and implicit sexism, supervisor gender and behaviors, and motives to seek feedback on employee feedback-seeking behavior. By exploring these relationships, the present study connects the literatures from Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Social
Psychology to understand sexism and its influence in organizations. As more women are entering the workplace, it is important to determine how various processes can be affected and how employee sexism can be detrimental to his/her own success. Research on the selection process already demonstrated that women who act in accordance with their gender-stereotyped roles are perceived differently than women who do not behave this way (e.g., Rudman & Fairchild, 2004). The same was also observed for men in that not all men act in accordance with their prescribed-agentic behaviors, and as such were judged differently than men who acted in accordance with their prescribed-agentic behaviors (Rudman & Fairchild, 2004). Feedback-seeking in particular is an important
5 tool for employee success within the workplace (e.g., Anseel et al., 2015). Thus, the current research will add to the literature by incorporating variables which have yet to be studied with relation to feedback-seeking motives and subsequent behaviors: employee sexism and the gender and behavior of the supervisor.
6 CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
Feedback-seeking within the workplace plays an important role in employee development as the feedback received can provide employees with information regarding goal attainment and behavior regulation necessary for success (Ashford, 1986; Ashford &
Tsui, 1991). Through a meta-analysis published in 2015, Anseel, Beatty, Shen, Lievens, and Sackett also determined that employee feedback-seeking through inquiry is significantly and positively related to job satisfaction, building relationships, networking, and various socialization behaviors. Results of a separate meta-analysis conducted by
Humphrey, Nahrgang, and Morgeson (2007) suggested that jobs which provide lower levels of feedback result in higher employee absenteeism, anxiety, and stress, whereas jobs which provide higher levels of feedback result in higher levels of employee job performance, job satisfaction, supervisor satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement, and internal work motivation. Thus, research indicates that feedback- seeking has important outcome implications within the workplace.
Despite this existing research base, there are still a number of other variables that likely predict or influence employee feedback-seeking behavior, and thus may increase the positive work-related outcomes found by Anseel et al. (2015) and Humphrey et al.
(2007). Based upon the gender research within the field of social psychology, I propose
7 that employee sexism will be related to employee feedback-seeking behavior. This relationship will be conditional based on supervisor behaviors, supervisor gender, and employee feedback-seeking motives.
The present study examines an untested set of variables conceptualized as antecedents of feedback-seeking via inquiry (see Figures 2.1 and 2.2). The main focus is on the interaction of employee sexism and characteristics of the supervisor (e.g., supervisor gender and behaviors). This interaction is expected to influence perceptions of supervisor credibility, which Anseel et al. (2015) demonstrated significantly relates to feedback-seeking. In turn, supervisor credibility is expected to act as a mediator between employee sexism and feedback-seeking behaviors, conditional upon instrumental motives of feedback-seeking behaviors. The roles of the feedback-seeking motives of ego- defense/enhancement and image-defense/enhancement are also examined. Furthermore, two consequences of feedback-seeking are investigated in more detail: job anxiety and job stress. These consequences are expected to occur through two separate routes: via an interaction of feedback-seeking from two different sources, and an interaction between employee sexism and supervisor characteristics.
Figure 2.1. Model 1: Sexism and Feedback-seeking Considering Instrumental Motives
8 Figure 2.2. Model 2: Sexism and Feedback-seeking Considering Ego-Defensive and Image-Defensive Motives.
In the present study, explicit sexism is divided into two forms: hostile sexism and
benevolent sexism (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, Glick & Fiske, 1996). Hostile sexism
is defined as antipathy toward women perceived as taking power from men, and thinking
and behaving antagonistically and prejudicially toward women. Those who exhibit
benevolent sexism, however, perceive women as nice, friendly, kind, and subservient of
men, but do not perceive them as having competence within the workplace. Furthermore,
benevolent sexist ideals indicate that women need protection from men in order to
survive (Dardenne, Dumont, & Bollier, 2007; Glick & Fiske, 1996, 2011). Thus, I
suggest that employees who hold higher hostile and/or benevolent sexism attitudes and
who have a woman supervisor engage in different feedback-seeking behaviors than those
who (a) hold higher hostile and/or benevolent sexism attitudes and who have a man
supervisor, or those who (b) hold lower hostile and/or benevolent sexism attitudes and
who have a woman or a man supervisor.
It is also possible that employees may not explicitly endorse sexist attitudes, but
may implicitly hold such beliefs (e.g., Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009).
9 Implicit attitudes are defined as being any thoughts, beliefs, actions, or judgments that a person may maintain, but not be consciously aware they are supporting such attitudes
(Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Multiple studies within the past decade found that both men and women hold sexist or gender-stereotyped implicit attitudes and that these implicit attitudes influence subsequent behaviors (e.g.,
Geer & Robertson, 2005; Kiefer & Sekaquaptewa; White & White, 2006). I posit that someone who holds implicit sexist attitudes engages in similar feedback-seeking behaviors as someone higher in hostile sexism; the more implicitly one supports sexism, the less likely he or she is to seek feedback from a woman supervisor.
However, it is also important to note that men and women do not necessarily conform to their gender prescriptions (e.g., Rudman & Fairchild, 2004; Heilman &
Wallen, 2010). Women are expected to behave in a communal fashion, including demonstrating behaviors such as affection, helpfulness, kindness, sympathetic, and nurturing. Men, however, have gender prescriptions to engage in agentic behaviors, including demonstrating confidence, aggression, ambition, assertion, and control (e.g.,
Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). With this study, I propose and test the assertion that feedback-seeking behaviors of employees are determined not just by the level of an employee’s sexism attitudes and the gender of their supervisor, but also by whether the employee’s supervisor acts in accordance with his/her gender prescriptive roles.
While some researchers argue that sexism and the display of gender inequity in the workplace is no longer as prevalent as it was in previous decades (e.g., leadership positions; Eagly, 2007), many other studies still find evidence of sexism and/or bias against men and women who do not display gender prescriptive roles, especially against
10 women in supervisory (but not leadership) positions (e.g., Girvan, Deason, & Borgida,
2015; Halim & Heilman, 2013; Heilman & Wallen, 2010). Furthermore, it is important to note that attitudes of sexism are not held only by men; both men and women are documented as endorsing explicit (e.g., Young & Nauta, 2013) and implicit (e.g., White
& White, 2006) sexist attitudes. Thus, it is imperative to investigate how such attitudes, in conjunction with supervisor characteristics, can impact employee behaviors within the workplace.
Feedback-seeking Behavior
Employees seek feedback from others because it provides them with information on goal attainment and can also serve as a behavior-regulating tool (Ashford, 1986;
Ashford & Tsui, 1991). Years of research note five key aspects involved in seeking feedback from another person: “(1) frequency, or how often individuals seek it; (2) the method used to seek feedback, whether by observing, comparing, or asking for it; (3) the timing of feedback-seeking; (4) the target of feedback-seeking; and (5) the topic on which feedback is sought, for example, on successes versus failures or on certain aspects of performance” (Ashford, Blatt, & VandeWalle, 2003, p. 774). The current project is focused on predicting the second, specifically feedback-seeking via directly asking for it, and the fourth, the target from whom an employee seeks feedback, of these five key aspects. Both of these aspects are discussed in further detail below.
Method Used to Seek Feedback: Inquiry
Two methods employees can use to obtain feedback are inquiry and monitoring
(Ashford et al., 2003). Inquiry involves directly and verbally asking for feedback
(Ashford, 1986; Ashford et al., 2003; Hays & Williams, 2011; Teunissen, Stapel, van Der
11 Vleuten, Scherpbier, Boor, & Scheele, 2009). Essentially, an employee may directly ask the supervisor questions such as: “How was my performance on that last project?”, “Can you think of ways I can improve my presentations?”, and “What competencies do you think I can improve on?” Inquiry can also include asking indirectly for feedback using questions that help the employee “save face” by not revealing the true feedback-seeking intent (Miller & Jablin, 1991). This type is not investigated in the present study.
Monitoring, however, involves gleaning feedback from others without directly asking for it (Ashford 1986; Ashford et al., 2003; Hays & Williams, 2011; Teunissen et al., 2009).
An employee can obtain feedback by observing others’ actions and the environment and can take note of indications of how they are performing (Ashford at el., 2003).
As mentioned by Anseel and colleagues (2015), fewer studies focus on feedback- seeking through monitoring, and thus the majority of the meta-analytic results to-date investigated feedback-seeking via inquiry. The present study aims to continue adding to the feedback-seeking via inquiry literature by targeting additional variables likely to play a role as predictors and moderators of this process (e.g., sexism, supervisor characteristics).
Target of Feedback-Seeking Behavior
With regard to the target of feedback-seeking behavior, the present study is designed to investigate employee feedback-seeking behavior from both the direct supervisor and another source. The present study predicts that an employee’s feedback- seeking behavior from his or her immediate supervisor is dependent upon his/her own levels of sexism as well as the direct supervisor’s characteristics. For instance, I predict that an employee may seek less feedback from a direct supervisor who is a woman if that
12 employee has a high level of sexist attitudes. In this circumstance, employees may instead turn to their coworkers, subordinates, or another supervisor to inquire for feedback (e.g., Steelman, Levy, & Snell, 2004). However, some employees, if they do not turn to their supervisor for feedback, may not turn to anyone else for feedback.
Motives Predicting Feedback-Seeking Behavior
When discussing the method of feedback-seeking, the motives that actually influence whether or not feedback-seeking will occur must be explored. According to
Ashford and colleagues (2003), employees have three different motives when it comes to seeking feedback: seeking feedback to gain information (instrumental-based motive;
Anseel, Lievens, & Levy, 2007), desiring to protect one’s ego (ego-based motive;
Ashford & Cummings, 1983), and desiring to control others’ impressions of oneself
(image-based motive; Morrison & Bies, 1991). Research indicates that all three of the motives include a form of cost-benefit analysis, through which the employee needs to analyze whether the cost of seeking feedback is worth the potential benefit of receiving the feedback (Anseel et al., 2015; Park, Schmidt, Scheu, & DeShon, 2007; Teunissen et al., 2009; VandeWalle, Ganesan, Challagalla, & Brown, 2000).
Instrumental-based motive. Employees who have an instrumental motive seek feedback for the informational value it will provide (e.g., Ashford 1986; Ashford et al.,
2003; Ashford & Tsui, 1991), and will often conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the cost of asking for feedback is worth the value of receiving the informational feedback. Receiving information on performance allows employees to determine whether they achieved their work goals and if they performed well in the process (Anseel et al.,
13 2015; Ashford, 1986; Ashford et al., 2003; Ashford & Cummings, 1983; Ashford & Tsui,
1991; Tuckey, Brewer, & Williamson, 2002).
Ego-based motive. Maintaining a positive view of oneself is vital for feelings of self-confidence, which, in turn, is highly predictive of feedback-seeking behavior
(Ashford, 1986). In general, employees do not like hearing information that can directly threaten their ego and are commonly motivated to reduce such threats (Baumeister,
1999). Receiving feedback is even more threatening to one’s ego than regular information because of the emotional charge behind receiving feedback about oneself
(Ashford & Cummings, 1983). Thus, the possibility of receiving negative feedback from others influences employees’ motives and directives for seeking feedback to avoid hearing anything that could potentially be ego-deflating (Anseel et al., 2007; Ashford et al., 2003; Northcraft & Ashford, 1990). This can include discounting the feedback received (Baumeister, 1999; Mussweiler, Gabriel, & Bodenhausen, 2000) or even avoiding feedback-seeking altogether (Ashford & Cummings, 1983; Ashford &
Cummings, 1985).
More specifically, prior research demonstrated that employees who hold higher ego-defensive attitudes are less likely to seek feedback than employees who hold lower ego-defensive attitudes (e.g., Tuckey et al., 2002) as a way to protect their egos from potentially receiving negative feedback. With regard to the cost/benefit analysis, the costs of lowering an opinion about oneself by receiving negative feedback are worse than the benefits of knowing what went wrong and how to improve.
Image-based motive. Employees often want to manage how their image comes across to others within the organization (e.g., image-defense/enhancement; Ashford &
14 Cummings, 1983) and may engage in impression management to ensure that a positive image of themselves is portrayed to others. Impression management is a person’s attempt, either consciously or unconsciously, to influence how someone else perceives them within a social interaction (Barrick, Shaffer, & DeGrassi, 2009; Ellis, West, Ryan, &
DeShon, 2002; Gardner, Peluchette, & Clinebell, 1994; Guadagno & Cialdini, 2007;
Schlenker, 1980).
One important area in the workplace where employees will manage impressions is in relation to receiving feedback. Employee engagement in feedback-seeking behavior may be dependent upon how they believe the person from whom they seek feedback will view him/her or how he/she will be viewed by others based upon the feedback received.
Instrumental Motives (Figure 2.1)
One’s instrumental motives influence their feedback-seeking behavior for information (e.g., Ashford et al., 2003). Essentially, the employee wants feedback from someone who has competency within their area. This is where source credibility comes into focus.
Supervisor (Source) Credibility
Source credibility is an important aspect to consider within the feedback-seeking literature (e.g., Steelman et at., 2004) and the Anseel et al. (2015) meta-analysis determined credibility was a significant predictor of feedback-seeking behavior. Source credibility can be defined as a “good source of accurate information” (Fedor, Rensvold,
& Adams, 1992, p. 782) when coming from someone with expertise (Giffin, 1967).
Previous studies found that perceptions of a supervisors’ credibility (expertise or competency) in a certain area predicts an employee’s likelihood of seeking feedback from
15 that supervisor (e.g., Anseel et al., 2007; Ashford et al., 2003; Fedor et al., 1992; Levy,
Cober, & Miller, 2002; Vancouver & Morrison, 1995; VandeWalle, 2003). Thus, the key to perceptions of source credibility are whether or not the employee considers their direct supervisor to be competent as measured through perceived credibility. Essentially, the higher the level of employee perceptions of supervisor competence in conjunction with higher levels of the employees’ instrumental motives, the more likely the employee is to seek feedback from his/her supervisor through inquiry-based behaviors.
However, as the instrumental motive is based upon receiving information from a credible source, if the employee does not perceive an immediate supervisor as credible, it is possible that the employee will seek feedback from another, presumably more credible, source. Based on Steelman and colleagues (2004), I propose that the lower the perceived credibility of the supervisor, the more likely the employee is to seek feedback from a source other than his/her direct supervisor, especially when the employee is high in instrumental motives (Figure 2.3).
Hypothesis 1: Perceptions of supervisor credibility will predict feedback-seeking
behavior conditional upon an employee’s level of instrumental motives. (a)
Employees are more likely to seek feedback from a supervisor the higher their
level of instrumental motives and the more credible they perceive their supervisor.
(b) Employees are more likely to seek feedback from another source the higher
their level of instrumental motives and the less credible they perceive their
supervisor.
16 Figure 2.3. Interaction of perceived supervisor credibility and employee instrumental motives predicting employee feedback-seeking behavior.
Sexism and Supervisor Characteristics Predicting Perceived Supervisor Credibility
Within the present study, supervisor characteristics are defined as the
supervisor’s gender and perceived supervisor gender-normed behavior. As more women
enter the workplace, and specifically in managerial positions (e.g., National Science
Foundation, 2013), it is important to consider how the gender of an employee’s
supervisor can impact various aspects of the employee’s feedback-seeking behavior.
Research indicates that women are expected to behave, and typically do behave,
in a manner that is more communal, or relational (e.g., affectionate, caring, sympathetic,
kind; Fiske et al., 2002). Men, however, are expected to behave, and typically do behave,
in a manner that is more agentic, or individualistic (e.g., confident, aggressive, ambitious,
assertive, controlling; Fiske et al., 2002). Researchers created the communal (relational)
and agentic (individualistic) umbrella terms to reference the gender roles of stereotypical-
feminine behaviors and stereotypical-masculine behaviors, respectively (Deaux & Kite,
1993; Eagly, 1987; Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000; Williams & Best, 1990). It can be
said that someone acting “agentically” is likely to be viewed as more masculine.
Considering the stereotypical behavior patterns for men and women can help us
understand why certain behaviors and communication styles are viewed as inappropriate
in the workplace. Gender normativity indicates stereotypical women’s behavior as being 17 more communal (i.e., caring), whereas stereotypical men’s behavior is more agentic (i.e., individualistic; Bongiorno, Bain, & David, 2014; Fiske et al., 2002; Heilman, 2012;
Rudman & Glick, 2001). In alignment with these gender norms, women are much more likely to use an interpersonal and cooperative dialogue that promotes agreement among involved parties and emphasizes positive social behaviors (communal behaviors), whereas men typically engage in competitive, independent dialogues which result in more disagreements between parties (agentic behaviors; Nelson & Brown, 2012; Suh,
Moskowitz, Fournier, & Zuroff, 2004). Men also usually engage in task behaviors, including giving suggestions, directions, and opinions (agentic), versus women’s more social behaviors which encourage peaceful discussion (communal; Nelson & Brown,
2012).
In dyad and group discussions, men typically maintain control of the conversation and its topics by speaking more and interrupting others, leaving women within the group at a disadvantage for participating and voicing their own opinions (Karpowitz,
Mendelberg, & Shaker, 2012). As suggested by Tannen (1991), men’s dominance of conversations could occur because, in accordance with gender norms, men believe they need to stand their ground and prevent themselves from being a “push-over.” Women, in comparison, see working with others as a means for negotiation, confirmation, and reaching a consensus (Tannen, 1991).
Lastly, men are more likely to blatantly state their thoughts and opinions on a topic, pay attention to themselves, and describe themselves in more agentic terms (Cross
& Madson, 1997; Goh & Hall, 2015; Leaper & Robnett, 2011; Nelson & Brown, 2012), while women use disclaimers and qualifiers to act more modestly and avoid self-
18 promotion (Chafetz, 1990; Gardner et al., 1994; Goh & Hall, 2015; Hansen & O’Leary,
1985; Lakoff 1973; 1975; Leaper & Robnett, 2011; Nelson & Brown, 2012).
(Gendered) Interactions in workplace roles. Initially, researchers assumed that the communication differences between men and women would carry over into the workplace setting and predict the roles in which they would succeed (e.g., social role theory; Wood & Eagly, 2002). Gender norms stressed that since men had more dominant social roles and were more assertive, they would make better supervisors. Women, due to their characteristically more cooperative and interpersonal dispositions, were seen as unlikely to succeed in a supervisory or managerial position and would be better placed in a subordinate role (Garcia-Retamero & Lopez-Zafra, 2006; Heilman, 1995; Heilman &
Eagly, 2008; Korac-Kakabadse & Kouzmin, 1997; Lyness & Heilman, 2006; Wajcman,
1998; Wood & Eagly, 2002).
Gender-normed behaviors translate into the workplace through social role theory in that labor becomes defined along gender lines. According to social role theory, as men typically held supervisory/managerial roles in the past, and men stereotypically act in a more agentic/individualistic fashion, the position of supervisor/manager became associated with agentic/individualistic traits (Clow, Ricciardelli, & Bartfay, 2014; Eagly,
1987, 1997; Wood & Eagly, 2002).
Subsequently, Heilman’s (1983, 2001) lack-of-fit model notes that negativity toward women in supervisory roles is not due to stereotypes, but rather the women’s mismatch with that particular work role. Essentially, because women do not “fit” with the agentic/individualistic traits deemed necessary for a supervisory position, they will be viewed negatively in such roles. Research today still supports the lack-of-fit model, often
19 finding that women and men who are in jobs that are not in accordance with their gender stereotyped roles often receive less-than-favorable perceptions from others (e.g., Clow,
Ricciardelli, & Bartfay, 2014, 2015; Girvan et al., 2015; Heilman & Chen, 2005;
Heilman & Eagly, 2008; Heilman & Okimoto, 2007; Heilman & Wallen, 2010).
However, it is important to note that it is not always the case that men and women act in accordance with their gender-stereotyped roles (Rudman & Fairchild, 2004). The present study proposes that an employee’s feedback-seeking behavior can depend upon whether the employees’ supervisor is a man or a woman, and whether the supervisor behaves in a manner that reflects gender stereotypes. Essentially, the present study investigates beyond how the gender of the supervisor can relate to employee feedback- seeking behaviors by considering the supervisors’ actual behaviors. For example, is an employee more likely to inquire for feedback from a caring woman supervisor or a competitive woman supervisor?
The most common context in which gender norms are studied in Industrial-
Organizational Psychology is within the selection interview. Prior to entering an organization, applicants often go through a selection interview (Ryan, McFarland, Baron,
& Page, 1999). Within the selection interview, gender-stereotypical communications frequently impact an interviewer’s perceptions of the candidate. Interviewers expect men and women to engage in their stereotypical gendered roles, as they rate applicants as having better job fit if the applicant presents him- or herself in ways that align with his or her gendered social roles (Eagly, 1987; Rudman & Fairchild, 2004). Essentially, participants perceive women as having better job fit if they engage in verbal or nonverbal behaviors that are stereotypically feminine (e.g., cooperative), whereas they perceive men
20 as having better job fit if they engage in verbal or nonverbal behaviors that are stereotypically masculine (e.g., competitive).
While engaging in behaviors stereotypical to one’s gender may be beneficial when applying to jobs that match one’s social roles, such behaviors are not always beneficial when applicants apply for jobs that are in contrast to their gender-stereotypes.
Women in particular who engage in stereotypically-feminine (communal) behaviors are often at a disadvantage for gaining access to stereotypically-masculine professions (e.g., engineering, upper management; Guadagno & Cialdini, 2007; National Science
Foundation, 2013). However, when women act in a more agentic (i.e., less feminine) manner, they are often subjected to backlash from the interviewer (Phelan, Moss-
Racusin, & Rudman, 2008; Rudman, 1998; Rudman & Fairchild, 2004), as they are viewed as qualified and competent, but lacking in social skills (e.g., Phelan et al., 2008).
Men who present themselves in stereotypically-feminine ways, such as acting more communal rather than dominant, receive backlash as well and are often viewed as having low levels of competency but high levels of likeability (Rudman & Fairchild, 2004).
In addition to these more general research findings, there are several studies that more specifically investigated gendered workplace relationships between supervisors and subordinates and focus on perceptions of women within the middle management roles.
Within the workplace, based upon the communication styles between men and women and the resulting perception of men as better suited for a managerial role (e.g., Heilman,
1995; Heilman & Eagly, 2008; Lyness & Heilman, 2006; Wood & Eagly, 2002), one would expect that women who enter a managerial position would not be treated equal to or respected as much as men who were in the same roles. Research, however, presents
21 conflicting evidence to support this expectation. Through a meta-analysis published in
2006, Duehr and Bono demonstrated that men’s and women’s perceptions of women as successful middle managers have increased since the 1970s. In contrast, in an attempt to update and make sense of the media announcing that the number of women in management positions was rising within the corporate world, Eagly (2007) noted that most Americans still preferred having a man as a manager rather than a woman.
Thus, there could be other variables that impact people’s perceptions of women successfully holding management positions. The present study proposes that one of the possible reasons for the discrepant findings is because not all men and women act in accordance to their gender-prescribed or role-prescribed positions. While people may have a more positive view of women as successful middle managers (Duehr & Bono,
2006), it does not necessarily mean that employees perceive a fit between a woman and a management position (e.g., Heilman, 2001; Heilman & Wallen, 2010) or that they themselves want a woman as their own manager (Eagly, 2007).
Furthermore, even though women may be perceived positively within management roles (Duehr & Bono, 2006), men and women are still held to different standards within those roles. For example, women are expected to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors as part of their gender-stereotyped roles. Women who do not engage in such behaviors are provided with lower scores in their performance appraisal than if they did participate in organizational citizenship behaviors. As the masculine gender norm does not dictate that men need to provide citizenship behaviors toward others, men who do complete such behaviors receive higher performance ratings than men who do not participate in such acts (Heilman & Chen, 2005). Essentially,
22 women are expected to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors in addition to their assigned work to be considered “successful,” whereas men just need to display competence in their assigned work.
Adding more evidence for a difference in fit for managerial positions, Heilman and Wallen (2010), Clow and colleagues (2014, 2015), and Girvan et al. (2015), found that people preferred to have men and women successful in their gender-consistent jobs as managers rather than men and women who were successful in gender-inconsistent jobs. For example, two studies by Clow et al. (2014, 2015) found that women were perceived as a better fit for a management position within a nursing program than men.
Even when men are depicted as successful in a stereotypically-feminine job, they are characterized as less effective than women in the same role and receive less respect than men who were successful in a stereotypical-masculine job and receive less respect than women successful in the same stereotypically-feminine job (Heilman & Wallen, 2010).
Thus, even though men and women see women as a better fit for a managerial position than they did a few decades ago (Duehr & Bono, 2006), that perception of fit and success within that management position is still dependent on whether the job is stereotypically- masculine or –feminine.
Second, even though men and women are more supportive of women within a management position, multiple studies illustrate that both men and women hold explicit and implicit sexist attitudes (e.g., Clow et al., 2014, 2015; Halim & Heilman, 2013;
Heilman & Wallen, 2010; White & White, 2006; Young & Nauta, 2013). Thus, it could also be that an employee’s level of sexism in conjunction with their supervisor’s characteristics (gender and behavior) could be contributing to perceptions of the
23 employee’s supervisor and thus his or her own feedback-seeking behavior. Because people rarely ever engage in fully stereotypically-masculine or –feminine behavior, participants in the present study evaluated their own supervisors on both agentic and communal traits.
Sexism
Up until a few decades ago, it was acceptable to exhibit blatant discrimination against women. The current Western culture, however, suggests that such overt discrimination is no longer appropriate, leading behavioral discrimination against women to become more subtly displayed (Benokraitis & Feagin, 1986; Dumont, Sarlet, &
Dardenne, 2010; Lee, Fiske, & Glick, 2010; Napier, Thorisdottir, & Jost, 2010; Swim,
Aikin, Hall, & Hunter, 1995), but not necessarily changing discriminatory attitudes
(Barreto & Ellemers, 2005; Becker, 2010; Becker & Wagner, 2009). Traditional gender roles endorse a status difference between men and women and consider women to have lower levels of competence and intelligence (e.g., Barreto & Ellemers, 2005; Barreto,
Ellemers, Piebinga, & Moya, 2010; Bem, 1981; Dumont et al., 2010; Rudman & Glick,
2001; Swim et al., 1995).
However, while it is now seen as inappropriate for both men and women to publicly exhibit such beliefs, it does not mean that people fully endorse equality between men and women (Barreto et al., 2010; Dumont et al., 2010; Fowers & Fowers, 2010;
Glick & Fiske, 1996; Sibley & Wilson, 2004; Swim et al., 1995). For instance, some people still believe that women are inferior to men and should be dominated (e.g., hostile sexism; Barreto & Ellemers, 2005; Glick & Fiske, 1996), while others just reinforce gender norms by stating that women are better at something because they are women,
24 such as cooking, baking, and cleaning (e.g., benevolent sexism; Fowers & Fowers, 2010;
Glick & Fiske, 1996).
A different way in which sexism appears is as an implicit attitude. Implicit attitudes are often used to measure underlying thoughts or beliefs that people hold outside of their conscious awareness and are measured as automatic evaluations of stimuli (e.g.,
Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). With regard to sexism, implicit attitudes can elucidate unconscious beliefs that people hold about the inequality between men and women.
Essentially, without asking someone to think specifically about a certain question such as within the benevolent and hostile sexism scales, implicit sexism is referring to an immediate judgment of a stimulus. It is important to note that implicit sexist attitudes are not often measured in conjunction with the explicit attitudes of benevolent and hostile sexism. Implicit sexism may overlap with hostile sexism as the measure of implicit sexism reflects people’s perceptions of “men” and “work” versus “women” and “home,” whereas with benevolent sexism, women are considered “good” if they are in stereotypically feminine roles, such as a nurse or a teacher. However, because implicit sexism measures differences in response time needed for judgments connecting traditional and non-traditional beliefs about men and women, which reflect indirect and automatic evaluations, whereas explicit sexism measures evaluate direct responses after a short thought process, implicit and explicit sexist attitudes should both be assessed in research studies of sexism.
Hostile and benevolent sexism. As conceptualized and argued by Glick and
Fiske (1996), sexism is not necessarily hostility toward women, but rather a deep ambivalence. While still considered a prejudice, Glick and Fiske argue that solely
25 recognizing sexism as hostility toward women does not account for the positive feelings people may have toward women that supports sexist antipathy; they created the
Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), assessing a multi-dimensional construct which captures sexist attitudes. Hostile sexism includes acts of prejudice against women, antagonistic attitudes toward women, and strong antipathy toward women who are seen as taking men’s power from them (Barreto & Ellemers, 2005; Becker, 2010; Dardenne et al., 2007; Glick et al., 2000; Glick & Fiske, 1996, 2001, 2011).
Benevolent sexism is characterized by a positive attitude toward women, which can sometimes be paternalistic. The premise of benevolent sexism is that women appear to be considered warm and favorably, but are seen as less competent in the workplace than men and needing a man’s protection (Becker, 2010; Dardenne et al., 2007; Glick et al., 2000; Glick & Fiske, 1996, 2001, 2011). Despite the positive tones behind benevolent sexism, Glick and Fiske (1996) do not consider benevolent sexism to be a positive descriptor. Endorsement of benevolent sexism often places women in stereotypically restrictive roles (e.g., homemaker) and expects women to engage in prosocial behaviors
(e.g., helping; Barreto & Ellemers, 2005; Becker, 2010; Glick & Fiske, 1996; Lee et al.,
2010), while de-emphasizing competence in any agentic dimensions. Furthermore, the recipient of benevolent sexism may not perceive the experience as benevolent (Barreto &
Ellemers, 2005; Bosson, Pinel, & Vandello, 2010; Glick & Fiske, 1996; Lee et al., 2010).
For instance, insinuating that the man is the breadwinner and the woman is the homemaker, while complimentary to some, is not treating men and women as equals in ability.
26 Glick and Fiske (2001) argue that both hostile and benevolent sexism promote, justify, and maintain inequality between men and women, but that they do so in different forms. While benevolent sexism is aimed at reinforcing stereotypical gender roles, hostile sexism is directed toward women who are perceived as challenging men’s power (e.g., feminists; Barreto & Ellemers, 2005; Glick & Fiske, 2001; Lee et al., 2010). As such, hostile and benevolent sexism can occur simultaneously or separately as they characterize two different types of sexism, and are often correlated with one another. However, as indicated through factor analysis in their scale-development article (Glick & Fiske, 1996) and supported through other research articles encompassing numerous countries (e.g.,
Becker, 2010; Clow et al., 2014, 2015; Dardenne et al., 2007; Glick et al., 2000; Glick &
Fiske, 2011; Napier et al., 2010; Young & Nauta, 2013), benevolent and hostile sexism are conceptually different, mathematically load onto different scales, and differentially predict other variables.
While supporting sexism and prejudice against women can be thought of as something in which only men participate, it is argued and demonstrated that women also support sexism (Becker, 2010; Fowers & Fowers, 2010; Glick et al., 2000; Glick &
Fiske, 1996, 2001, 2011; Young & Nauta, 2013). In comparison to men, women are much more likely to reject the premise of hostile sexism. However, both men and women generally support benevolent sexism and women are much less resistant to it than hostile sexism. Glick and Fiske (2001) proposed that women may endorse benevolent sexism because it rewards them for complying with gender roles, but dislike hostile sexism because it is seen as punishment for challenging gender inequality. Moreover, because gender roles associate women with favorable traits, people may not view such traits as
27 sexist, thus promoting the stereotype that women are communal (Barreto et al., 2010;
Barreto & Ellemers, 2005; Fowers & Fowers, 2010; Glick & Fiske, 1996; Rudman &
Glick, 2001). Interestingly, support of benevolent sexism is different depending upon one’s age. Those who are college-aged and younger perceive benevolent sexism negatively, while adults perceive benevolent sexism as a positive, rather than a negative, attitude (Glick & Fiske, 1996).
Implicit attitudes of sexism. Implicit attitudes are characterized as thoughts, beliefs, actions, or judgments that occur outside of one’s conscious awareness
(Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald et al., 1998). According to Greenwald & Banaji
(1995), “implicit attitudes are manifest as actions or judgments that are under the control of automatically activated evaluation, with-out the performer’s awareness of that causation” (pp. 6-8). Essentially, implicit attitudes are measuring our unconscious, automatic evaluations of gender stereotypes. The goal of measuring such attitudes is to determine people’s immediate differential associations between two concepts (e.g., man’s name and a woman’s name) and specific attributes (e.g., words that describe “home” and words that describe “work”; Greenwald et al., 1998) when presented with various stimuli.
When stereotypical attributes are presented, people should be quick to select the concept related to that attribute. For instance, when told to match all “work” presented words with the concept of man and all “family” presented words with the concept of woman, implicit theory suggests that people participating in this matching will have fairly quick reaction times. However, when told to match all “work” presented words with the concept of women and all “family” presented words with the concept of men, implicit theory suggests that since these directions go against an automatic sexist
28 evaluation of “men/work” and “women/home,” it will take longer for participants to correctly match the attribute with the concept, the more they believe in the stereotypical roles that are part of sexist attitudes. This time difference between matching concepts and attributes which one believes should be related and matching concepts and attributes which one believes should not be related is indicative of a bias. If there is only a small or no time differential, then the person completing the implicit sexism test does not hold pre-existing attributes that men belong with “work” and women belong with “home.”
When one needs to take time, even a split second, to think about which concept button to push when presented with an attribute that goes against an automatic association, that suggests bias. With relation to gender and gender roles, there are two theories which connect the use of such implicit attitudes to subsequent behaviors: gender authority theory (Berger, Fisek, Norman, & Zelditch, 1977) and gender stereotype theory (Eagly,
1987).
Gender authority theory suggests that people develop attitudes toward men and women based upon the labor divisions which occur in the workplace, thus developing different status expectancies for men and women. Essentially, people make the connection between men holding higher positions in the work place as a context for all men having some sort of prestige and legitimacy (Berger et al., 1977). Gender authority theory is also supported in that not only do men dominate higher roles within the workplace, but also in various social roles (e.g., politics, military, religion), producing an implicit belief that men are more suited to managerial positions (Banaji & Greenwald,
1995; Eagly, 1987; Levinson & Young, 2010; Lynch, 2010; Nosek, Banaji, &
Greenwald, 2002). As such, Rudman and Kilianski (2000) posit that people’s associations
29 between men and authority is much stronger than their association between women and authority, resulting in an implicit dislike toward women who enter into managerial roles.
Gender stereotype theory echoes the fit research described earlier, in that people expect men and women to hold different traits and act in accordance with those traits
(e.g., agency, communion; Eagly, 1987). Traditionally, men have filled the roles associated with power (e.g., CEO, President, Vice President, Minister), and thus people associate “authority” with “masculine characteristics,” creating a lack of fit association between women and authority positions (Eagly, 1987; Heilman, 1983, 2012). Women who exhibit masculine characteristics (i.e., agentic characteristics) might incur prejudice because they are exhibiting characteristics outside of their prescribed gender roles (Eagly,
1987; Glick & Fiske, 1999; Rudman & Fairchild, 2004).
The Implicit Attitudes Test (IAT), measures these unconscious attitudes through the use of automatic evaluation (Greenwald et al., 1998). While there is no direct link between implicit attitudes of sexism and benevolent or hostile sexism, the IAT acts as a tool to measure the facet of unconscious sexism. Essentially, hostile and benevolent sexism are measuring a person’s conscious thought process about what is considered appropriate activities for men and women to engage in. Implicit sexism, however, is measuring unconscious, automatic evaluations of whether certain roles are acceptable for men or women. Previous research (see Greenwald et al., 2009 for a review) supports that
IAT is an effective measure for discerning a person’s unconscious attitudes and beliefs. A benefit of using the IAT is the potential to find automatic associations that people otherwise would not, or could not, explicitly or willingly state that they hold such beliefs for reasons such as social desirability concerns (Dovidio & Fazio, 1992; Greenwald &
30 Banaji, 1995; Greenwald et al., 1998; Levinson & Young, 2010; Monroe & Martinez-
Marti, 2008; Nosek et al., 2002; Swim et al., 1995).
A multi-study paper published by Gawronski, Ehrenberg, Banse, Zukova, and
Klauer (2003), found that both men’s and women’s implicit attitudes subsequently affected their perceptions of a target’s agentic/communal orientations and that holding strong implicit sexist attitudes can impact stereotypic associations. In the first study,
Gawronski et al. (2003) had participants watch an interview of a man or woman (i.e., the target person) discussing a topic unrelated to gender. The interview suddenly ended by the target person claiming that he/she needed to leave to a) pick up his/her children from kindergarten (a domestic responsibility), b) needs to go to the grocery store because his/her children would be home from work soon (a domestic responsibility), c) needs to leave immediately for an urgent business appointment (a work responsibility), or d) needs to leave to go to work (a work responsibility). After watching the interview, the participants rated the target on multiple gender-stereotyped traits involving career and household topics. Participants then took a men-career/women-household IAT
(researchers reported that the order of presentation of materials did not affect IAT scores). Results of the study indicated that participants who had a weak implicit sexist association between women-household and men-career rated both men and women targets lower in communal traits when they stated they had to end the interview for work- related business than when they ended the interview for domestic-related business
(Gawronski et al., 2003).
In a follow-up study within the same article, a new set of participants viewed a group of four men and four women discussing six topics relating to the roles of men and
31 women in intimate relationships as well as the roles of men and women in general society
(e.g., child care, job and finances). Each person in the group spoke once on each of the six issues and gave either a conservative (gender-stereotyped) or progressive (not following gender stereotypes) answer. The researchers then told the participants that they would be assigning the statements they just heard to the person who said them.
Researchers used 96 statements in total: 48 which were mentioned in the discussion the participants overheard (“old”), and 48 which were new. Participants read each statement and chose whether the statement was “old” (was said in the discussion) or “new” (was not said in the discussion). If the participant chose “old,” they were shown photos of the participants on the screen and asked to attribute the statement to the photo of the person who said it. If the participant chose “new,” the next statement in the list appeared.
Within this second study, researchers found that participants who had weak implicit sexist associations between men-career/women-household paid more attention to individual comments and information than participants who had strong implicit sexist associations. Participants who had stronger implicit associations had much more trouble recalling who made which statement, and thus “exhibited a clear preference to assign statements in a stereotype-consistent manner” (Gawronski et al., 2003, p. 26). This trend was not found for participants who displayed weaker implicit associations.
Both of Gawronski et al.’s (2003) studies demonstrated that people who have strong implicit gender-stereotype associations (e.g., men-career/women-household) are more likely to ascribe gender stereotypic traits to others. It stands to reason that people with strong implicit gender-stereotype associations may also be more likely to judge others based on behaviors that either match or mismatch gender-stereotypic traits and
32
which will subsequently influence feedback-seeking behavior from these sources. As such, employees who hold higher levels of implicit sexism would react strongly to circumstances where behaviors of the supervisor were not gender-stereotypic.
Benevolent, hostile, and implicit sexism. A common theme linking benevolent, hostile, and implicit forms of sexism is the belief that women are incompetent within the workplace (e.g., Becker, 2010; Dardenne et al., 2007; Glick & Fiske, 2011; Levinson &
Young, 2010). Therefore, regardless of how a woman employee behaves (stereotypically- masculine or stereotypically-feminine), she will be perceived as incompetent as a manager in a workplace simply because she is a woman.
For hostile sexism specifically, as people who endorse higher levels of hostile sexism also perceive women to be taking higher-position organizational roles from men, they will be even more against women in managerial roles as they will perceive her as being “given” her spot rather than earning it through competence. Due to that perceived incompetence, employees should be significantly less likely to seek informational feedback from women in management positions the higher they score on benevolent sexism, hostile sexism, and/or implicit sexism.
All three forms of sexism also consider masculine qualities and behaviors (i.e., agentic) to be superior to feminine qualities and behaviors (i.e., communal), especially with regard to a management position, according to: gender authority theory, gender stereotype theory, social role theory, and lack-of-fit model. Thus, to those who hold higher levels of benevolent, hostile, or implicit sexism, a man acting in opposition to his prescribed agentic behavior (e.g., acting feminine) will be perceived as having lower
33 levels of competence than a man acting in accordance with his prescribed agentic behaviors (e.g., acting masculine; Figure 2.4).
Hypothesis 2: Employee levels of sexism, supervisor gender, and supervisor’s
gendered behavior (agentic, communal), will interact to predict perceptions of
supervisor credibility. Employees are likely to perceive their supervisor as less
credible if they hold higher levels of sexism and the supervisor is a woman,
regardless of how she behaves. Employees are likely to perceive their supervisor
as less credible if they hold higher levels of sexism, their supervisor is a man, and
he behaves more communally.
Figure 2.4. Employee sexism interacting with supervisor gender and supervisor behaviors to predict perceived supervisor credibility.
It is also important to note that Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 may not operate independently of each other. Rather, Hayes (2013) suggests that all pieces of the presented model should be tested together even if the individual pieces were not found to be significant. The idea of testing this model as a whole in addition to testing the separate pieces makes is possible to evaluate whether it is the interaction of all the variables working together that predicts the dependent variable (Figure 2.5).
34 Hypothesis 3: There will be an indirect effect of employee sexism on feedback-
seeking behaviors through perceptions of supervisor credibility and conditional
upon supervisor gender, supervisor behaviors, and employee instrumental
motives. In combining Hypotheses 1 and 2, employees are less likely to seek
feedback from a woman supervisor but more likely to seek feedback from another
source the higher their sexist attitudes.
Figure 2.5. Employee sexism predicting employee feedback-seeking behavior mediated by perceived supervisor credibility and conditional upon supervisor gender, supervisor behavior, and employee instrumental motives.
Ego- and Image-Defensive Motives (Figure 2.2)
Ego- and image-based motives are concerned with how well one’s ego can be enhanced or how one’s image will be perceived by others rather than whether or not the feedback was informative. Thus supervisor credibility is not as important of a variable in feedback-seeking when taking ego- and image-based motives into account, as employees may ask for feedback from a supervisor even though they do not expect a credible answer. Rather, employees may just want an ego-boost or an image-boost (or avoid a negative image perception; e.g., Ashford et al., 2003). As such, from the perspective outlined by these models, an employee’s feedback-seeking method is likely to be
35 predicted by the interaction of the employee’s level of sexism (benevolent, hostile, or implicit), the characteristics of the employee’s supervisor, and the employee’s level of ego- or image-based motives.
Hypotheses 2 and 3, involving supervisor credibility, predict identical relationships for hostile, benevolent, and implicit sexism because all three characterize women as not being credible. However, I expect different relationships when considering ego- and image-based motives. As both hostile and implicit sexism share a similar ideal that women are usurpers to men’s positions as managers, it was anticipated that employees holding either form of sexism would not consider asking a woman supervisor for feedback at all. Thus, the hypotheses based on these models and including hostile and implicit sexism differ from those that include benevolent sexism.
Hostile Sexism and Implicit Sexism
Employees with high levels of hostile sexism and/or implicit sexism dislike women in the workplace altogether and may believe they are not suited to provide any type of feedback. For these individuals, seeking feedback from (i.e., deferring to) a woman would demolish their egos. Seeking feedback from a woman would also tarnish their image, because they would be perceived as stooping beneath themselves to ask a woman for feedback. This lack of feedback-seeking from women would happen
(especially with high ego- or image-defense motives) regardless of whether the woman acted in a communal or agentic manner in her supervisory role. For employees high in hostile or implicit sexism, the essential belief is that a woman is not a good source of feedback. Thus, it can be argued that men with higher levels of hostile or implicit sexism are less likely to ask more agentic women for feedback because doing so would mean
36 acting even more outside their gender-prescribed comfort zone (i.e., holding a managerial position and not acting communal).
Thus, it would be likely that employees, especially those with ego-defensive motives and hostile or implicit sexism, are more likely to seek feedback through inquiry from supervisors who are men than supervisors who are women. It also should be noted, however, that employees with high levels of hostile or implicit sexism attitudes may also react negatively toward (i.e., fail to seek feedback from) male supervisors who act in a feminine (communal) manner. While such a supervisor may provide positive, ego- and image-boosting feedback, seeking feedback from a man supervisor who does not act in accord with his gender role would threaten the egos and images of employees’ who hold strong hostile or implicit sexist attitudes. Thus, it is likely that employees with high levels of ego-defensive motives are more likely to go to an agentic man for feedback than toward a communal man (Figure 2.6).
Hypothesis 4: There will be a four-way interaction of employee sexism (hostile,
implicit) with employee motives (ego-, image-defense), supervisor gender (man,
woman), and supervisor behavior (agentic, communal) predicting feedback-
seeking behavior. Employees holding stronger sexist attitudes and stronger
defense motives will be less likely to seek feedback from a woman supervisor who
is behaving agentically or communally; they will be more likely to seek feedback
from another source. Employees holding stronger sexist attitudes and stronger
defense motives will be more likely to seek feedback from a man supervisor who is
behaving agentically.
37 Figure 2.6. Hostile and implicit sexism predicting employee feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon ego-based motives, image-based motives, supervisor gender, and supervisor behaviors.
Benevolent Sexism
In contrast to the expectations just outlined for employees with hostile or implicit sexism, individuals with high levels of benevolent sexism perceive women to be kind and compassionate (e.g., Glick & Fiske, 1996), and would expect feedback from women to be warm and ego-enhancing. Furthermore, this positive feedback would help the employee manage his/her image with others, as receiving positive, praising feedback promotes a great impression management face (e.g., Ashford & Cummings, 1983). Thus, I expect that if the employee endorses benevolent sexism, he or she would be more likely to inquire for feedback from a woman supervisor because the employee expects the feedback to be positive.
Feedback-seeking via inquiry from a woman supervisor may also depend on whether that particular supervisor acts more communal or more agentic. Agentic women act in opposition to how those who hold higher levels of benevolently sexist attitudes believe women should behave. As such, an employee high in benevolent sexism may 38 actually be less likely to seek feedback through inquiry because his/her supervisor does not act how the employee believes women should act. More specifically, the employee would not know what type of feedback to expect from their supervisor, and thus would be more careful because he/she may not receive positive “good job” feedback that would increase one’s image or ego. Thus, employees high in ego- and image-defense motives and benevolent sexism are more likely to seek feedback through inquiry from a communal woman supervisor because they believe she is very likely to give ego- and image-boosting feedback.
In relation to supervisors who are men, people who hold higher levels of benevolent sexism believe that women are much warmer than men. Thus, such employees would be reluctant to ask a man for feedback, especially one who acts stereotypically masculine, because he is not expected to provide feedback that would stroke one’s ego and image. One exception to this arises from the work of Rudman and
Fairchild (2004), who found that men who engaged in more communal behaviors rather than agentic behaviors were perceived as having high levels of likeability, and therefore potentially likely to provide positive ego- and image-boosting feedback. As such, employees are more likely to inquire for feedback from communal men and communal women when they hold higher levels of benevolent sexism and are high in ego- and image-defense motives. Employees are less likely to inquire for feedback from agentic men and agentic women when they hold higher levels of benevolent sexism and are high in ego- and image-defense motives (Figure 2.7).
Hypothesis 5: There will be a four-way interaction of employee benevolent sexism
with employee motives (ego-, image-defense), supervisor gender (man, woman),
39 and supervisor behavior (agentic, communal) predicting feedback-seeking
behavior. Employees with stronger benevolent sexist attitudes and stronger
motives will be more likely to seek feedback from their man or woman supervisor
the more communal that supervisor behaves. The opposite sign pattern is
predicted with regard to seeking feedback from another source.
Figure 2.7. Benevolent sexism predicting employee feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon ego-based motives, image-based motives, and supervisor gender and supervisor behavior.
Effects of Feedback-Seeking Behaviors
It is not enough to simply predict an employee’s feedback-seeking behaviors.
Instead, one must be able to link the feedback-seeking behaviors to outcomes within the organization. The introduction to chapter two discussed a plethora of outcomes to feedback-seeking and general feedback from the job (e.g., supervisor satisfaction, organizational commitment, job anxiety). The present study focuses on two of those outcomes: job anxiety and job stress.
40 Humphrey and colleagues (2007) conducted a meta-analysis outlining all of the relationships found since 1970 between various work characteristics and subsequent outcomes, including behavioral, attitudinal, role perception, and well-being outcomes.
One of the key work characteristics discussed within their meta-analysis is from
Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) Job Characteristics Model. Within the model, Hackman and Oldham assert that the more feedback available from the job, the higher the likelihood of positive behavioral and attitudinal outcomes. In fact, an older meta-analysis conducted in 1987 from Fried and Ferris found just that: jobs that provide more feedback are positively and significantly related to internal work motivation, growth satisfaction, and job satisfaction. One of the goals of the Humphrey et al. (2007) meta-analysis was to provide an update based upon 20 additional years of research. They discovered that feedback from the job was significantly negatively related to anxiety and stress; the more feedback from the job, the lower the levels of employee anxiety and stress.
Although the Humphrey et al. (2007) meta-analysis only investigated feedback available from the job and not the act of feedback-seeking itself, Ashford et al. (2003) argues that “many of the outcomes of feedback seeking are the outcomes of the feedback itself” (p. 784-785). Thus, it is expected that an employee who seeks feedback will have lower levels of job stress and anxiety over and above the positive results from feedback already provided by the job (e.g., feedback received from one’s supervisor without asking). The work outcomes of job stress and job anxiety were selected for inclusion within the present study because of their previously demonstrated relationship to feedback-seeking behavior, a logical relationship to employee sexism and supervisor
41 characteristics, and their anticipated subsequent negative outcomes for both employees and their organizations.
With regard to job anxiety, multiple studies have linked higher levels of job anxiety to a plethora of negative outcomes. For instance, Schieman, McBriar, and van
Gundy (2003) noted that the more job anxiety one experiences, the more likely he or she will experience separation in work-family life. Two other studies noted that higher levels of job anxiety result in increases in job dissatisfaction (Boyd, Lewin, & Sager, 2009) and an increase in unethical behaviors (Kouchaki & Desai, 2015). Other researchers discovered that an increase in job anxiety results in a decrease in job performance (Ford,
Cerasoli, Higgins, & Decesare, 2011), economic success (Forsyth, Kelly, Fusé, &
Karekla, 2004), and organizational effectiveness (Boyd et al., 2009).
Employees who experience higher levels of job stress also do not fare as well within the workplace. A study conducted on a Canadian and Chinese sample noted that employees, regardless of their country, with higher levels of job stress also have significantly more health problems (Jamal, 2005). Specifically, Thorsteinsson, Brown, and Richards (2014) noted that employees who indicate higher levels of job stress also have higher levels of anxiety, depression, and fatigue. They also have higher levels of turnover intentions than their counterparts who experience lower levels of job stress
(Jamal, 2005; Thorsteinsson et al., 2014).
Overall, job anxiety and job stress have a multitude of negative impacts on employee well-being, turnover, and burnout. One of the largest impacts these negative feelings can have, however, is their ability to spread to other colleagues within the workplace, and therefore potentially multiply the effects of these negative outcomes (i.e.,
42 turnover intentions, burnout, employee well-being). As many organizations now have their employees working together in various groups and teams (e.g., Kelly & Barsade,
2001; Vijayalakshmi & Bhattacharyya, 2012), there is an increased likelihood that employee emotions will spread throughout team members through a process called emotional contagion (EC; Barsade, 2002; Friedman & Riggio, 1981; Johnson, 2008;
LaFasto & Larson, 2001; Lee & Wagner, 2002; Vijayalakshmi & Bhattacharyya, 2012).
Evidence from previous research suggests that negative moods transfer more strongly and quickly, or at the same rate, as positive moods (Barsade, 2002; Joiner, 1994;
Tickle-Degnan & Puccinelli, 1999), therefore making the study of the transfer of anxiety and stress even more important within a work setting. Barsade (2002) specifically noted that negative emotions transfer through small groups, and that groups with negative emotional transfer had significantly lower levels of cooperation and task performance, and higher levels of group conflict than groups with positive emotional transfer. What is key to note is the fact that these three outcomes were rated by individual group members, other group members, and coders who watched the video at a separate time. Spreading negative moods such as job anxiety and job stress can lead to serious negative consequences for work teams and overall organizational performance.
A summary of findings from Vijayalakshmi & Bhattacharyya (2012) provide a review of the current state of EC within the workplace. “(a) The more cohesive a group, the more the spread of emotions. (b) The greater the psychological bonding between members of a group, the greater would be the level of EC. (c) The greater the degree of inter-dependence of tasks, the greater would be the level of EC. (d) Groups with higher congruence would have higher level of EC. (e) Interpersonal attraction will have been
43 significantly related to EC.” (p. 367), and “(a) A smaller sized team will evidence a higher level of EC than a larger sized team. (b) A homogenous team will have a higher level of EC than a heterogeneous team.” (p. 370). As such, it can be anticipated that feelings of stress and anxiety can and will be transferred among group members within an organization.
Feedback-Seeking Behavior and Job Stress and Job Anxiety
As previously mentioned, Humphrey et al. (2007) found job anxiety and job stress to be significantly influenced by the extent to which feedback occurs in a work environment. I expect that an employee who does not inquire for feedback from his or her supervisor will experience higher levels of job anxiety and job stress. However, I also hypothesize that the factors which decrease employee likelihood to seek feedback from their direct supervisor will be the same factors which increase his/her likelihood of seeking feedback from another source within the organization. Thus, negative well-being effects (job anxiety and job stress) of not seeking feedback from a supervisor may be mitigated if one seeks feedback from another source, but exacerbated if one does not seek feedback from another source (Figure 2.8).
Hypothesis 6: Feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor will predict employee
levels of stress and anxiety conditional upon feedback-seeking behavior from
another source. Levels of stress and anxiety will be lowest the more feedback the
employee seeks from both the supervisor and other source.
44 Figure 2.8. Employee feedback-seeking behavior from direct supervisor will interact with employee feedback-seeking behavior from another person in the organization to predict employee anxiety and stress.
Hostile Sexism, Implicit Sexism, Supervisor Characteristics, and Job Stress and Job
Anxiety
It can also be argued that there is a direct relationship (see Figure 2.2) of hostile sexism and implicit sexism interacting with supervisor characteristics directly predicting job anxiety and job stress. An employee who holds higher levels of hostile sexism or implicit sexism and who also has a woman manager, or a communal man manager, may experience differences in his or her well-being outcomes than an employee with higher levels of hostile sexism or implicit sexism and who has a man manager who acts more agentic.
Having a woman manager, especially one who acts in opposition to her prescribed communal behaviors, may cause anxiety and stress for someone who has higher, rather than lower, levels of hostile sexism or implicit sexism. The anxiety and/or stress may stem from the fact that the employee does not perceive his or her supervisor as someone matching his/her stereotypical manager ideals (cognitive dissonance; Festinger, 1962).
The same could be said for having a man manager who acts more communal than agentic. The anxiety and/or stress could also stem from the fact that the employee dislikes having someone above him/her whom he/she believes does not deserve to be there; that 45 person took the role of a man manager solely for “diversity” reasons. Thus, the interaction between levels of employee hostile sexism or implicit sexism and supervisor characteristics could predict both job anxiety and job stress.
Having a woman manager, especially one who acts in opposition to her prescribed communal behaviors, may also result in someone who has higher levels of hostile or implicit sexism not being satisfied with their supervisor or their job. Someone with high levels of hostile or implicit sexism is already against having a woman, or a communal man, as his/her supervisor. Thus, I expect that he/she would have lower levels of satisfaction with his/her supervisor. It is also likely that if someone with higher levels of hostile or implicit sexism has a woman or communal man as supervisor, he/she will be dissatisfied with their job, as he/she does not see him-/herself fitting into his/her current position.
I do not anticipate that these same relationships will occur for someone who holds higher levels of benevolent sexism. While people with higher levels of benevolent sexism may see their woman supervisor as incompetent, they also see them as “nice” and “kind,” leading to an unclear path between benevolent sexism, supervisor characteristics, and the two outcome behaviors. Thus, no interaction between employee benevolent sexism and supervisor characteristics is anticipated for job stress or job anxiety (Figure 2.9).
Hypothesis 7: There will be a three-way interaction of employee sexism (hostile,
implicit) with supervisor gender (man, woman), and supervisor behaviors
(agentic, communal) in predicting employee levels of stress and anxiety.
Employees will feel less stressed and anxious the weaker their sexist attitudes and
the more communal a woman supervisor behaves. Employees will feel most
46 stressed and anxious the stronger their sexist attitudes and the more communal a
man or woman supervisor behaves.
Figure 2.9. Employee hostile sexism and implicit sexism will each interact with supervisor gender and supervisor behavior to predict employee job stress and job anxiety.
Control Variables
The Anseel et al. (2015) meta-analysis identified numerous antecedents to feedback-seeking behavior. However, many of these antecedents are correlated with one another (e.g., job tenure, age, and organizational tenure), and are key variables within some of the current proposed models (e.g., supervisor credibility, motives). I chose to measure the antecedents most relevant to the focal study variables as potential control variables. These control variables are taken into account for all relevant preceding hypotheses, as described below.
Job Tenure
The longer an employee has held his or her job, the less likely he/she is to inquire for feedback (ρ = -.22; Anseel et al., 2015). This is often because employees who are new to their positions need to learn new skill sets and become acclimated to their new responsibilities in order to be successful. The longer the employee holds the same job, the 47 more the employee has learned with regard to being successful, and therefore the fewer questions the employee needs to ask (Anseel et al., 2015). The goal of the present study is to predict feedback-seeking behaviors regardless of employee job tenure. Based on the anticipated negative relationship between job tenure and feedback-seeking behavior, relevant analyses will control for job tenure.
I chose to control for job tenure rather than age or organizational tenure as the focus of the study is measuring perceptions of direct supervisor and subsequent feedback- seeking behaviors from that specific supervisor. An employee’s age may not be related to his/her length of time with a specific supervisor, and time within an organization may not predict feedback-seeking within his/her specific role with his/her specific supervisor.
Learning Goal Orientation
Learning goal orientation can be defined as a person’s desire to develop competence in new skills or in a new area (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). Anseel et al.
(2015) determined that those who have high learning goal orientations are significantly more likely to ask for feedback, especially to gain information (ρ = .41). I will use learning goal orientation as a potential control variable for analyses that include feedback-seeking.
Feedback Orientation
Feedback orientation consists of an employee’s overall receptivity to feedback
(Linderbaum & Levy, 2010). Essentially, some employees are more receptive to feedback than others, and thus would naturally ask for more feedback. Anseel et al.’s (2015) meta- analysis supported this finding (ρ = .41), demonstrating that the higher one’s level of feedback orientation, the more likely he/she is to seek feedback. Thus, I included
48 feedback orientation as a potential control variable in analyses that include feedback- seeking.
Job Performance
A meta-analysis conducted by Ford and colleagues (2011) discovered that work performance has a strong relationship with anxiety (ρ = -.26). As such, if an employee has high work performance, he or she may not seek as much feedback because the employee already knows their current performance standing, and therefore has lower job stress and job anxiety. Thus, job performance, as measured via the employee’s supervisor, will be a control variable for hypothesis 6. As feedback-seeking behavior is not related to job performance (Anseel et al., 2015), job performance will not act as a control variable for other hypotheses.
Supervisor Interactions
It is also likely that employees may not ask their supervisors for feedback if the supervisor already actively provides unprompted feedback. I developed one question to assess this (detailed in the Method Section), and it will act as a potential control variable for analyses that include the feedback-seeking variable.
Summary of Contributions of the Proposed Study
I designed the proposed study to make several contributions to the feedback- seeking literature. First and foremost, the addition of the gender and sexism literature to the feedback-seeking literature adds a new perspective. Specifically, no prior research has investigated how an employee’s level of sexism, his/her supervisor’s gender, and the general behaviors in which his/her supervisor engages, are expected to predict feedback- seeking through inquiry. While prior research has discussed different pieces (e.g.,
49 communion/agency, Phelan et al., 2008; gender of participant, Wood & Karten, 1986), there is no one combined study within the literature representing these issues considered as a set. The addition of sexism adds even more to the workplace literature, as studies demonstrate that sexism still exists today (e.g., Dardenne et al., 2007; Young & Nauta,
2013) and can potentially impact workplace behaviors.
As more women are entering the workplace than in previous years, researchers have already discovered that exhibiting gender-stereotypical or non-gender-stereotypical behaviors has an impact on an interviewer’s perception of the applicant (e.g., Eagly,
1987; Phelan et al., 2008). Often, both men and women who engage in stereotypically- feminine (i.e., communal) behaviors are seen as nice but also as incompetent in the workplace (Rudman & Fairchild, 2004). There is reason to suggest that these perceptions may carry over into the actual work environment, influencing how employees view their supervisors. Such perceptions can be enhanced based upon attitudes of sexism and, when combined with feedback-seeking motives, can subsequently affect feedback-seeking behavior. The present study was designed to help us understand whether the findings from the interview literature regarding perceptions of people based on their gender and gender-normative behavior will extend to the context of feedback-seeking at work.
Furthermore, examining participants’ levels of sexism allows us to look deeply into the complex aspect of feedback-seeking behavior in a way which has not yet been studied. Sexism does not operate in just one form – there can be blatant sexism of
“women don’t belong in the workplace” (i.e., hostile sexism, Glick & Fiske, 1996), to more mild, often viewed as positive, forms of sexism, “you are such a good cook because you are a woman” (i.e., benevolent sexism, Glick & Fiske, 1996), to an unconscious bias
50 (i.e., implicit sexism). The present study facilitates investigation of potentially differing effects of sexism on feedback-seeking in conjunction with the plethora of literature on motives and supervisor gender, and the sparser literature on gender-normative behaviors.
More specifically, the present study will examine the interactive effects of the employee characteristics (i.e., motives and sexism), and the context of the situation (supervisor gender and gender-normative behaviors) on the feedback-seeking process.
The present study will also add to the literature by examining implicit sexism’s role in feedback-seeking. No studies within the I-O literature have used a measure of implicit sexism to examine sexism and perceptions of gender differences within the feedback-seeking context. By measuring implicit sexism, I can examine relationships that may not be observed by solely using explicit measures of hostile and benevolent sexism.
Findings regarding implicit sexism will be instrumental in furthering our knowledge on how implicit attitudes can be connected to workplace behaviors.
Furthermore, the present study examines from whom an employee seeks feedback if not from his/her own supervisor. For instance, an employee who does not believe his/her supervisor is competent is predicted to be more likely to seek feedback from another source within the organization. Seeking such feedback from another source is also predicted to mitigate the negative effects of job stress and job anxiety which result from not having enough feedback from the job. As such, results could indicate that with regard to feedback-seeking behavior, having a sexist employee may not have largely detrimental effects. However, these effects could come into play with regard to job stress and job anxiety due to a sexist employee and the particular characteristics of his/her supervisor. As the effects of sexist employees are largely understudied within the field of
51 Industrial-Organizational Psychology, the present study may shed light on the negative effects of such attitudes. Table 2.1 provides a summary of the hypotheses within the current study.
Table 2.1. Summary of hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 Perceptions of supervisor credibility will predict feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon an employee’s level of instrumental motives. (a) Employees are more likely to seek feedback from a supervisor the higher their level of instrumental motives and the more credible they perceive their supervisor. (b) Employees are more likely to seek feedback from another source the higher their level of instrumental motives and the less credible they perceive their supervisor. Hypothesis 2 Employee levels of sexism, supervisor gender, and supervisor’s gendered behavior (agentic, communal), will interact to predict perceptions of supervisor credibility. Employees are likely to perceive their supervisor as less credible if they hold higher levels of sexism and the supervisor is a woman, regardless of how she behaves. Employees are likely to perceive their supervisor as less credible if they hold higher levels of sexism, their supervisor is a man, and he behaves more communally. Hypothesis 3 There will be an indirect effect of employee sexism on feedback-seeking behaviors through perceptions of supervisor credibility and conditional upon supervisor gender, supervisor behaviors, and employee instrumental motives. In combining Hypotheses 1 and 2, employees are less likely to seek feedback from a woman supervisor but more likely to seek feedback from another source the higher their sexist attitudes. Hypothesis 4 There will be a four-way interaction of employee sexism (hostile, implicit) with employee motives (ego-, image-defense), supervisor gender (man, woman), and supervisor behavior (agentic, communal) predicting feedback-seeking behavior. Employees holding stronger sexist attitudes and stronger defense motives will be less likely to seek feedback from a woman supervisor who is behaving agentically or communally; they will be more likely to seek feedback from another source. Employees holding stronger sexist attitudes and stronger defense motives will be more likely to seek feedback from a man supervisor who is behaving agentically. Hypothesis 5 There will be a four-way interaction of employee benevolent sexism with employee motives (ego-, image-defense), supervisor gender (man, woman), and supervisor behavior (agentic, communal) predicting feedback-seeking behavior. Employees with stronger benevolent sexist attitudes and stronger motives will be more likely to seek feedback from their man or woman supervisor the more communal that supervisor behaves. The opposite sign pattern is predicted with regard to seeking feedback from another source.
52 Table 2.1. Summary of hypotheses (Continued). Hypothesis 6 Feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor will predict employee levels of stress and anxiety conditional upon feedback-seeking behavior from another source. Levels of stress and anxiety will be lowest the more feedback the employee seeks from both the supervisor and other source. Hypothesis 7 There will be a three-way interaction of employee sexism (hostile, implicit) with supervisor gender (man, woman), and supervisor behaviors (agentic, communal) in predicting employee levels of stress and anxiety. Employees will feel less stressed and anxious the weaker their sexist attitudes and the more communal a woman supervisor behaves. Employees will feel most stressed and anxious the stronger their sexist attitudes and the more communal a man or woman supervisor behaves.
53 CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
Participants
I examined the hypotheses detailed in the previous section using an
occupationally diverse sample of working adults and their direct supervisors to allow me
to generalize findings across a variety of industries and job types. I recruited participants
through undergraduate Psychology courses at a large, Midwestern university and a mid-
size, Southeastern university. For Institutional Review Board purposes, students were
over the age of 18, and, for study purposes, students worked at least 20 hours a week.
This second inclusion rule was set so that time spent at work represents a considerable
portion of their week and they had more chances to interact with their supervisor.
Participants received extra course credit for their participation and were not penalized if
their supervisors did not complete their surveys.
As data were collected from working adults recruited through two different
universities, I conducted t-tests on all major variables to establish the equivalence of both
subsamples before combining the data for further analysis. Results are presented in
Tables 3.1 and 3.2. Participants did not differ on any of study variables. A total of 81 participants from the large Midwestern university (30.30%) and 165 participants from the
54 mid-size southeastern university (61.80%) completed the study. Twenty-one participants
(7.90%) failed to identify which school they attended.
Table 3.1 Tests of equivalence between the two universities on the study variables.
Table 3.2. Test of equivalence of self-identified gender between the two universities.
As detailed later, the hypotheses were tested using correlational and regression- based techniques through an SPSS add-on known as PROCESS (Hayes, 2013). Hayes indicates in his 2013 book that the bootstrapping used within PROCESS models 55 involving conditional indirect effects contributes to increased power, even with a small sample size. However, some of the current proposed models are quite complex and likely would require larger sample sizes if tested using more traditional forms of regression.
For some perspective, recent published literature using PROCESS models similar to the proposed models range in sample size from 83 (Sanchez & Vazquez, 2014) to 182/185 participants (Hoyt, Burnette, & Auster-Gussman, 2014, studies 1 and 2 respectively).
Although it does not directly map onto PROCESS models, in keeping with predicting sample size in other contexts I also conducted a G*Power analysis. When applied to the most complex model in the present study (see Figure 5), the recommended sample size was at least 100 participants to obtain a power of 0.80 and an effect size of
0.30 (Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner, & Lang, 2009; Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007), even though other studies have found effect sizes of larger than 0.30 when measuring relationships amongst gender, gendered-behavior backlash, and preferred leadership behaviors (Eagly et al., 2003; Rudman & Fairchild, 2004). Furthermore, Fritz and
MacKinnon (2007) recommend having a sample size of at least 148 to obtain a power of
.80 when conducting a mediation analysis if the expected α and β paths are .26 and a bias-corrected bootstrap (utilized in PROCESS) is used. However, since the proposed mediation model also includes conditional variables, it is important to recruit additional participants.
Thus, based upon the current literature on sample sizes necessarily to conduct
PROCESS as well as the G*Power analysis, I recruited greater than 250 participants. In total, 380 participants accessed the survey. A total of 98 were removed from the data set for not passing the initial screening questions (i.e., not being over the age of 18 and/or not
56 working at least 20 hours per week). I removed an additional 15 people because they failed more than two attention check items interspersed among the other survey items.
This data cleaning process left a total analyzable sample of 267 participants.
Participants could not be penalized if their supervisor did not complete his/her follow-up portion of the study. Unfortunately, many supervisors did not complete their surveys; only 52 supervisors completed surveys about their employees, out of 165 for whom participants provided e-mail addresses. Of these responding supervisors, only 47 provided the requested matching data of providing their e-mail address. Thus, only 47 working adult participants could be matched to a supervisor rating (19.10%) of the total employee sample). Further, of the 47 supervisors who could be matched with participant data, 28 indicated their gender as “woman,” 16 indicated their gender as “man,” and 3 indicated that they did not gender identify.
Of note, the present study aimed to assess employee feedback-seeking behaviors as measured from both employee and supervisor perspectives. However, based on the low number of supervisor responses it was not appropriate to test the hypotheses with supervisor-provided feedback-seeking behavior due to power constraints (e.g., Creedon
& Hayes, 2015; Hayes, 2013). Essentially, for women supervisors, only data from 28 participants could be included in the analyses with women supervisors, with the assumption that all 28 of those participants completed each section required in the analyses (e.g., if the participant did not complete the IAT, that participants’ data could not be used in analyses involving implicit sexist attitudes). As it is inappropriate to conduct analyses on large models with such a small sample size (e.g., Creedon & Hayes,
2015; Faul et al., 2009; Faul et al., 2007; Hayes, 2013), the intended analyses using
57 supervisor-provided feedback-seeking behavior data were not conducted. Instead, all hypotheses were tested using employee-provided feedback-seeking behavior data only.
Participants ranged in age from 18 – 59 years, with the average age of 22.79 years
(SD = 5.93). Participants reported working between 20 – 62 hours per week (M = 28.09,
SD = 8.55). Overall, 71.90% identified as a woman (23.60% men; 4.50%, or 12 participants, did not report gender). The individuals identified as predominately White
(75.30%; 9.40% African American; 2.20% Asian/Pacific Islander; 0% American Indian;
2.20% Latina/Latino; 0.70% Middle Eastern; 4.90% Multiracial; 0.70% did not wish to disclose their race, and 4.50% did not report ethnicity). Participants’ organizational tenure ranged from 0.50 months to 163 months (M = 21.57, SD = 22.54), and within their current job from 0.50 months to 163 months (M = 17.12, SD = 20.33). Most individuals reported working within the following industries: 27.00% Food Services, 17.20% Retail and 15.70% Other (primarily childcare and beauty; see Table 3.3 for a full list of participant reported industries). In terms of household income, most participants reported having a household income between $1 - $9,999 (22.10%), between $10,000 - $19,999
(22.80%), or between $20,000 - $29,999 (14.20%).
Table 3.3. Employee Industry Industry Percentage Industry Percentage Administrative Support 2.60 Public 0.40 Administration Agriculture 0.40 Real Estate 0 Arts/Entertainment/Recreation 1.10 Retail 17.20 Construction 0.70 Social Assistance 0.70 Educational Services 4.50 Student 2.20 Finances & Insurance 3.00 Transportation 2.20 Food Services 27.00 Utilities 1.10 Health Care 9.00 Warehouse 1.90 Information 1.10 Waste Management 0 Manufacturing 0.70 Wholesale Trade 0
58 Table 3.3. Employee Industry (Continued) Military 1.50 Other 15.70 Professional, Scientific, & 1.90 Did not respond 4.90 Technical Services
Participants indicated how likely they saw themselves in a job similar to their
current job in 10 years. The definition of “similar job” included: promotions within the same company or moving to a different company but still holding a similar role. On a
scale of 1 (Not very likely) to 5 (Very likely), the average response was 1.98 (SD = 1.34).
Procedure
Data were collected through an online survey (hosted by Qualtrics) and were
gathered at a single point in time for each participant. Participants read a brief description
of the study, “We are researchers at the University of Akron/University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga who are interested in people’s experiences at work.” Participants were told
that they needed to live in the United States, be over the age of 18, and work at least 20
hours per week to participate in the survey. Participants who met the criteria and
expressed interest in continuing with the study clicked on a link which took them to the
internet-based survey. The first screen the participant encountered was an Informed
Consent letter that explained participant rights. Participants indicated their informed
consent to participate by selecting a button in the survey indicating that they either did or
did not want to participate. Those who did not consent to participate in the experiment
were directed out of the survey and thanked for their time.
Participants were notified at the beginning of the survey that attention-grabbing
items were placed throughout the survey to ensure they were paying attention to the
questions. Huang, Bowling, Liu, and Li, (2014), developed a measurement scale to be
59 used within any type of survey which contains various infrequency items. These items were designed so that they would (a) have similar answers from participants, (b) not have a “social desirability” implication, (c) have highly reliable Insufficient Effort
Responding, and so that (d) participants would not perceive the items negatively. These eight questions were placed randomly throughout the survey. Two additional items created to mimic the study participation requirements were also randomly placed throughout the survey. All students who participated in the study earned extra credit regardless of the number of attention check items they answered incorrectly.
For those who consented to participate, the survey presented screening questions to ensure that the participants met the criteria prior to completing the remainder of the survey. If participants did not answer the questions accordingly (e.g., they only work 18 hours/week, live in England, etc.), they were directed to a page thanking them for their time, but saying that they did not qualify for the survey.
Participants who did meet the study criteria continued on with the survey. A more detailed description of the order of the scales is provided after outlining each measure in the next portion of this section. The participants also took the gender-career IAT within this same survey. Then, after completing participant demographics, participants were asked to enter their first name and last initial (e.g., Sara G.), their direct supervisor’s name, and their direct supervisor’s e-mail. Participants provided this information solely for the researcher to contact the direct supervisor with a link of a survey for him/her to complete. Participants were able to view a list of the questions their supervisor would be answering prior to entering the identifying information. After completion, the participants were thanked for their time.
60 For all participants who entered in their supervisor’s e-mail, Qualtrics, the host website for the study, automatically e-mailed the direct supervisor a link to the supervisor portion of the study at the completion of the employee’s survey. The e-mail described that the study is a part of a research project being conducted in the University of Akron’s
Psychology Department. The e-mail included the first name and last initial of the employee in question. After answering a few questionnaires, including demographics, supervisors filled out their first and last name, and the first name and last initial of the person for whom they completed the survey.
After both parts of the survey were completed (employee survey, and supervisor survey), randomized individual identification numbers were assigned to each employee and supervisor pair. All personal identifying information (student name, supervisor name, supervisor e-mail) was then deleted from the data file. Again, as only 47 out of 165 supervisors responded with usable information, there were not enough supervisor data points to conduct analyses of the hypotheses using supervisor ratings of various behaviors.
Measures
All measures and questions provided to the participant and the supervisor are listed in Appendices A and B, respectively. Table 3.5, at the end of the measures section, lists the order in which participants viewed the questions.
Employee demographic information. Participants provided demographic information, including age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status, education level, and if they are currently employed. With regard to their current job, participants answered the number of hours they work per week and how long, in years, they have worked with their
61 current company. Participants also answered how long they have worked in their current position, the title of their current position, and the industry in which they currently work.
As a control variable, participants reported the degree to which their supervisor provides unprompted feedback on their job performance (M = 3.02, SD = 1.30). Participants indicated that their work often requires interaction with their supervisor (M = 3.94, SD =
1.24).
Supervisor demographic information. Supervisors indicated their age, gender, race/ethnicity, and level of education. They also indicated the number of months they have supervised the employee in question, their current job title, the industry in which they work, the number of direct reports they supervise, and how frequently they interact with the employee in question.
Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick
& Fiske, 1996) assessed participants’ levels of hostile and benevolent sexism. The ASI consists of two different scales: Hostile Sexism and Benevolent Sexism. Each scale contains 11 items and is measured on a 6-point Likert scale (0 = disagree strongly to 5 = agree strongly). Observed internal reliabilities for Benevolent and Hostile Sexism from the ASI are .83 and .89, respectively (Glick & Fiske, 1996). Sample items for Benevolent
Sexism include: “No matter how accomplished he is, a man is not truly complete as a person unless he has the love of a woman,” and “A good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man.” Sample items for Hostile Sexism include: “Women are too easily offended,” and “Feminists are making entirely reasonable demands of men (R).” The internal consistency for Benevolent Sexism within the present study was .74 and the internal consistency for Hostile Sexism within the present study was .91.
62 Feedback-seeking behaviors. Participants responded to their supervisor feedback-seeking behaviors using the questions and response scale recommended and used by Ashford (1986). Participants responded using a scale from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently). Likelihood of inquiring for feedback was assessed via two questions: How likely are you to “Seek feedback from your supervisor about your work performance?”, and “seek feedback from your supervisor about potential for advancement within the company?”
Likelihood to inquire for feedback was also assessed using two questions from
Williams and Johnson (2000), as used by Whitaker (2007). Participants indicated on a response scale from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently): (1) “How often do you ask your supervisor for information about what is required of you to function successfully on the job?” and (2) “How often do you ask your supervisor how well you are performing on the job?” Alpha for the combined inquiry scales of Whitaker (2007) and Ashford
(1986) for supervisor feedback was .84.
Participants also reported the person from whom they seek the most feedback other than their direct supervisor. Participants were given the answer choices of a colleague/coworker, a different supervisor, a subordinate, a customer client, or a different person within the organization (open-ended). The same questions asked for feedback- seeking from the direct supervisor were modified (e.g., how often do you seek feedback from this person about your work performance?). Alpha for inquiring from others was
.81.
Supervisors also answered questions from Ashford (1986) and Williams and
Johnson (2000) about employee feedback behaviors. Supervisors answered questions
63 such as “how often does this person seek feedback from you about his/her work performance?” The scale ranged from 1 (very infrequently) - 5 (very frequently).
Motives for seeking feedback. Tuckey et al. (2002) developed the Motives for
Seeking Feedback scales. The present study utilized three of the four scales created:
Desire for Useful Information (Instrumental; α = .82), Ego Defense (α = .85), and
Defensive Impression Management (α = .91). Participants rated each question on a six- point Likert scale from 1 (extremely untrue) to 6 (extremely true). The Desire for Useful
Information scale is comprised of eight items, such as, “Receiving feedback about my performance helps me to improve my skills.” The Ego Defense scale consists of seven items, including, “I try to avoid negative feedback because it makes me feel bad about myself.” The Defensive Impression Management scale includes eight items, including, “I am usually concerned about other people hearing the content of the individual feedback I receive.” Internal consistency was .86, .86, and .78 for Desire for Useful Information,
Ego Defense, and Defensive Impression Management scales, respectively.
Source credibility. The Source Credibility Scale from the Feedback Environment
Scale (Steelman, et al., 2004) measured perceptions of supervisor credibility. The scale contains five items and is measured using a 7-point Likert Scale, where 1 = “Strongly
Disagree” and 7 = “Strongly Agree.” Internal reliability for the scale is .88 (Steelman et al., 2004), and was .89 in the present study. A sample item is “In general, I respect my supervisor’s opinions about my job performance.”
Goal orientation. Learning Goal Orientation was measured using the 5-item
Learning Goal Orientation subscale of the Work Domain Goal Orientation scale
(VandeWalle, 1997). Sample questions included: “I am willing to select a challenging
64 work assignment that I can learn a lot from,” and “I often look for opportunities to develop new skills and knowledge.” Participants were asked to rate their agreement with the questions on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Alpha for the scale from the initial study is .88 (VandeWalle, 1997) and was .95 for the present study.
Implicit attitudes toward sexism. I measured implicit attitudes toward sexism through the Implicit Association Task (IAT) developed by Greenwald et al. (1998). I administered the IAT in accordance with the guidelines from Greenwald et al. (1998).
The first step included creating the initial target-concept discrimination. In the present study, the initial target-concept discrimination was the gender of the name presented
(e.g., Ben vs. Sara). Participant discrimination between the names was performed by having the participant select a button on the left-hand side of the keyboard (A) if the name was male and select a button on the right-hand side of the keyboard (L) if the name was female. The second step was to introduce the associated attribute discrimination
(two-category dimension), which in this case was determining whether the word represented career or family. After introducing the first and second steps, the two steps were superimposed to create the third step: stimuli for both the name and the type of word appeared on alternate trials. In step four, the participant practiced with the reverse assignments of step 1. In this case, the male name was associated with the right-hand side of the keyboard (L) and the female name was associated with the left-hand side of the keyboard. The final step involved superimposing step 4 (the reverse target-concept discrimination) onto step 2 (attribute discrimination). Within the current design, participants engaged in Step 3 twice and Step 5 twice, resulting in 7 total tasks.
65 According to an updated scoring critique from Greenwald, Nosek, and Banaji
(2003), the first time participants encounter Step 3 and Step 5 their reaction times did count toward the actual test of implicit associations, contrary to original scoring designations where only the “test” trials were used to calculate mean differences. Mean differences, were calculated between the “practice” trials (i.e., the first time presented with Step 3 and Step 5), and between the “test” trials (i.e., the second time presented with
Step 3 and Step 5). See Table 3.4 below for an example of the set-up for the present study.
Table 3.4. Proposed design for the IAT tasks.
For the IAT, if the gender of the name and the career/family attributes are differentially associated, participants will find one of the combined tasks (step 3 or step 5, above) easier than the other, measured by response times. The resulting IAT score is a D-score determined by the difference between the mean reaction times throughout each of the trials divided by its associated standard deviation. Mean differences were calculated for each of the trials (trial for step 3 and test for step 3; trial for step 5 and test for step 5). 66 Those resulting mean differences were divided by the standard deviation for the trial and the test for step three and the trial and test for step five, respectively. This resulted in two ratios: one for step 3 and one for step 5. The D score is the average of those resulting ratios, with the larger D-score representing stronger implicit bias. For conceptual purposes, a D-score is similar to a standard deviation difference between scores
(Greenwald et al., 2003). The words used in the task are from Project Implicit, the
Gender-Career IAT, with effects verified and reported through Nosek, Banaji, and
Greenwald (2002).
Supervisor/other communality/agency. Participants judged how communal and how agentic they perceive their current supervisor. I presented participants with multiple descriptors of communality and agency, which were obtained from previous research which categorized terms into communality and agency (e.g., Bem, 1974; Duehr & Bono,
2006; Wessel, Hagiwara, Ryan, & Kermond, 2015). Participants indicated the degree to
which the terms are descriptive of their supervisor on a scale from 1 (a very low degree)
to 5 (a very high degree). Specifically, I asked participants: “To what degree does your
supervisor seem to…” with the following communal statements: (a) have a concern for the welfare of others, (b) be affectionate, (c) be helpful, (d) be kind, (e) be sympathetic, and (f) be nurturing. Interspersed within the communal statements were the following agentic statements: (a) be assertive, (b) be controlling, (c) be confident, (d) be aggressive, and (e) be ambitious.
Participants indicated the gender of their current supervisor in the demographic section of the survey. Within the present study, the internal consistency for men supervisors was .86 for communal statements and .69 for agentic statements. The internal
67 consistency for women supervisors was .87 for communal statements and .60 for agentic statements. Overall communality and agency for supervisors had internal consistencies of
.88 and .62, respectively.
Participants also completed items measuring the same agency and communality descriptors of the person from whom they seek the most feedback other than their immediate supervisor. They indicated the gender of this person as well. Internal consistency for communality and agency for men “others” was .83 and .64, respectively, and was .87 and .68 for the communality and agency, respectively, for women “others.”
Overall alphas for communality and agency for “others” was .87 and .69, respectively.
Feedback orientation. Participants indicated Feedback Orientation using the 20- item Feedback Orientation Scale developed by Linderbaum and Levy (2010). The scale includes four domains: Utility (α = .88; “Feedback contributes to my success at work”),
Accountability (α = .73; “It is my responsibility to apply feedback to improve my performance”), Social Awareness (α = .85; “I try to be aware of what other people think of me”), and Feedback Self-Efficacy (α = .78; “I feel self-assured when dealing with feedback”). Participants were asked how strongly they agree or disagree with the statements on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Internal consistency within the present study was .90, .79, .87, and .84, for Utility, Accountability, Social
Awareness, and Feedback Self-Efficacy, respectively.
Job stress. Job stress was analyzed using the 14 questions from the Perceived
Stress Scale (Cohen, Kamarck, Mermelstein, 1983). Scale instructions and questions themselves were adjusted to ask participants about their experiences with regard to work.
Sample questions include: “In the last month, how often have you been upset because of
68 something that happened unexpectedly at work?” and “In the last month, how often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things at work?” Participants answered the questions on a scale of 0 (never) to 4 (very often). Coefficient alpha was .86 in Cohen et al.’s (1983) study and .78 in the present study.
Cohen and colleagues (1983) argued that “because levels of appraised stress could be influenced by daily hassles, major events, and changes in coping resources, the predictive validity of the Perceived Stress Scale is expected to fall off rapidly after four to eight weeks” (p. 387). Thus, they developed questions for the scale based on a one-month time frame to maintain predictive validity of the scales. To obtain a measure of stress at work with higher predictive validity, the present study also used a one-month time frame when asking about experiences of job stress.
Job anxiety. Participants indicated their levels of job anxiety using five items from the “Job-Related Feelings of Anxiety” scale (Parker & DeCotiis, 1983). Responses for the scale ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Sample questions include: “I have felt fidgety or nervous as a result of my job,” and “My job gets to me more than it should.” Chronbach’s alpha of the original scale was .74 and was .77 in the present study. To maintain a similar timeframe as the job stress measure for comparison purposes, participants answered the questions based upon their feelings within the past month.
Attention check items. Eight items developed by Huang et al. (2014) as a measurement scale to identify participant Insufficient Effort Responding were placed throughout the survey. How participants responded to these items was indicative of whether they paid adequate attention to answering the questions presented within the
69 survey. Sample questions include: “I can run 2 miles in 2 min,” and “I eat cement occasionally.” The rating scores for these items were dependent upon which scale the item is inserted to; however, all responses should be on the “disagreement” side of the scale. In addition, two items were added to double-check attention and that coincide with the survey requirements: “I work more than 20 hours per week,” and “I am over the age of 18.” The answers to these questions should be on the “strongly agree” side of the scale.
Overall, 15 participants were dropped from the initial sample due to answering more than two of the ten attention check questions incorrectly.
Employee job performance. Supervisors assessed employee job performance through the use of the 21-question measure of Job Performance by Williams & Anderson,
1991. This measure is comprised of three different types of job performance: in-role behaviors (7 questions), organizational citizenship behaviors – individual (7 questions), and organizational citizenship behaviors – organizational (7 questions). Supervisors answered questions about the employee on a scale of 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently). An example of the in-role behavior statements includes: “adequately completes assigned duties.” An example of the organizational citizenship behaviors – individual statements includes: “helps others who have been absent.” “Attendance at work is above the norm” is an example of a statement from the organizational citizenship behaviors-organizational portion of the scale.
Table 3.5. Measures, Measurement Sources, and Order of Presentation. Construct Measure Number of Order of items presentation Requirements for 3 separate questions: 3 1 Participation country in which currently reside, age, and hours worked/week
70 Table 3.5. Measures, Measurement Sources, and Order of Presentation. (Completed)
Information Completed by Employee Explicit Sexism Ambivalent Sexism Scale 22 2 (Glick & Fiske, 1996)
Goal Orientation Learning Goal Orientation 5 3 subscale of the Work Domain Goal Orientation scale (VandeWalle, 1997) Motives Motives for Seeking 23 4 Feedback Scales (Tuckey et al., 2002) Feedback-seeking Feedback-seeking 4 5 Behaviors Behaviors (Ashford, 1986) and 2 inquiry questions from Williams and Johnson (2000) as used by Whitaker, 2007 Feedback Orientation Feedback Orientation Scale 20 6 (Linderbaum & Levy, 2010) Job Anxiety Job-Related Feelings of 5 8 Anxiety (Parker & DeCotiis, 1983) Job Stress Perceived Stress Scale 14 9 (Cohen, Kamarck, Mermelstein, 1983). Source Credibility Feedback Environment 5 11 Scale (Steelman, Levy, & Snell, 2004) Supervisor Communality Measuring employee 12 12 & Agency perceptions of supervisor. Items developed for study based on Duehr & Bono (2006), Bem (1974), and Wessel et al. (2015). Other Source of Other source 17 13 Feedback Communality communality/agency, & Agency feedback-seeking from other source, Gender of other source. Developed for study based on Duehr & Bono (2006), Bem (1974), and Wessel et al. (2015). 71 Table 3.5. Measures, Measurement Sources, and Order of Presentation. (Completed) Implicit Sexism Implicit Attitudes Test 7 parts 14 (IAT) Greenwald et al. (1998) Demographics, including Employee age, gender, 12 15 Gender of supervisor ethnicity, yearly household and unsolicited feedback income, organizational from supervisor tenure, job industry, job title, job tenure, length of time perceive oneself to remain in that job/organization; gender of supervisor; Created the question regarding unsolicited feedback from supervisor for the purposes of the current study. Attention Grabbing Huang et al. (2014) 10 Interspersed Items Information Completed by Supervisor Employee Job Williams & Anderson, 21 1 Performance 1991 Employee Feedback- Feedback-seeking 4 2 Seeking Behavior Behaviors (Ashford, 1986) and 2 inquiry questions from Williams and Johnson (2000) as used by Whitaker, 2007. Modified for supervisor. Supervisor Age, gender, ethnicity, 9 3 Demographics education, job title, job industry, number of direct reports, months worked as supervisor for employee in question, level of interaction with employee.
72 Pilot Testing
Ten participants completed the employee survey and the supervisor survey as a pilot test. Pilot participants indicated that the average time to complete the employee survey was 30 minutes and the average time to complete the supervisor survey was 10 minutes. Participants indicated one confusing question which was fixed via adding necessary punctuation. Pilot participants also noted that the instructions for the IAT should be presented in bold font for clarity. Previous pilot testing of 10 people noted that the IAT did not work on cell-phones. As such, participants were instructed to respond to the main survey for this study via a laptop or desktop computer.
Analytic Strategy
Upon completion of data collection for this study, information directly identifying participants was deleted from the data set (e.g., name, supervisor name). Participants who did not pass the manipulation checks and/or failed to complete the required number of attention grabbing items also had their data deleted (N = 15). Following this, the remaining data were cleaned and prepared for analysis (e.g., naming variables and assigning value labels). Reverse coding of scale items occurred prior to computing variable scales and subsequent scale reliabilities. I examined all data for univariate and bivariate outliers; zero cases were removed from the dataset due to outliers.
Measuring Implicit Attitudes
The scoring algorithm for the IAT (measuring the construct of implicit attitudes) was initially developed by Greenwald and colleagues (1998), and updated by Greenwald and colleagues (2003) to better assess IAT results in the following domains: (1) construct
73 purity, in that IAT scores are not as contaminated by outside variables, resulting in (2) the ability to better assess relationships and association strengths between the IAT and other variables, and (3) reduced required sample size (N = 39). Greenwald et al. (2003) advised researchers to discard participant data if more than 10% of their trials had latencies faster than 300ms. In the present study, though, because participants responded to the IAT via an internet website, where connection errors could occur, rather than a program installed on their computer, this rejection rule was not followed. Instead outliers were investigated on a case-by-case basis. Outliers which had continuous recordings of less than 100 ms and/or answered more than half of the pairings incorrectly (e.g., selected “male” when the name presented was “female”) were deleted, resulting in a total of 10 deleted IAT trials.
For ease of understanding, Figure 3.1 (below) summarizes the steps suggested from
Greenwald et al. (2003) for scoring the IAT.
74 Figure 3.1. Algorithm instructions for collected IAT data. Note: B3 is the practice run of the IAT Step 3; B4 is the test run of the IAT Step 3; B6 is the practice run of the IAT Step 5; B7 is the test run of the IAT Step 5.
Tests of Hypotheses
The proposed hypotheses were tested using a variety of models within the
PROCESS add-on to the SPSS analysis program (Hayes, 2013) or via hierarchical regression. PROCESS allows for the estimation of direct and indirect effects, conditional indirect effects, and two- and three-way interactions using ordinary least squares regression. More importantly, PROCESS is designed to also provide simple slopes for interactions, Bootstrapped confidence intervals, and a variety of effect size estimates 75 (depending upon the model). The macro portion of PROCESS functions as a user- friendly, menu-based interface that enables users to select analytical models and analytical options. The macro then assists in clearly calculating effects using all of the equations present in the selected model.
Hypotheses 1, 2, 6, and 7, measuring simple moderation effects, were estimated using Hayes’ (2013) Model 1 PROCESS template. When calculating these interactions, mean centering did take place for ease of interpretation. Analyses indicated hypothesis support if the Bootstrapped confidence intervals around resulting estimates did not include zero. For all analyses, the confidence interval was set at 95% confidence level.
Where appropriate, representative figures were generated to illustrate significant interaction effects. Furthermore, when significant interactions were identified, I used the
Johnson-Neyman (J-N) technique to more fully explain their nature.
Hypothesis 3, testing the combination of Hypotheses 1 and 2, was evaluated using
Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS Model 21 (Figure 3.2). Although I did not hypothesize a direct effect between Sexism and Feedback-Seeking Behaviors, it was necessary to measure for the direct effect so as to capture other variables and variances not measured in the current design (Hayes, 2013).
76 Figure 3.2. Hayes (2013) conceptual and statistical diagrams for Model 21. Hypotheses 4 and 5 were tested using Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS Model 3 (Figure
3.3). I chose Model 3 instead of Model 2 (another two-moderator Model) because of the predicted interactive effects of all three variables. Model 3 allows for all possible combinations of interactions to be measured. Model 2 does not allow the testing of a three-way interaction. The three-way interaction is deemed significant if the b7 regression coefficient is statistically significant from zero (i.e., the feedback-seeking behavior is
77 dependent upon one’s level of hostile sexism, context, and ego-motive). If the regression coefficient for the three-way interaction is not significant, pathways b4, b5, and b6, the two-way interactions, will be considered in case there is a two-way interaction.
Figure 3.3. Hayes (2013) conceptual and statistical diagrams for Model 3.
78 CHAPTER IV
RESULTS
All means, standard deviations, and correlations are available in Table 4.1 for demographic and main variables. As demographic variables were discussed at the beginning of chapter three (e.g., age, gender), this section focuses on the means of variables used within the present study and how they compare to previous literature.
Participants in this study reported overall medium levels of benevolent (M = 2.11) and hostile (M = 1.79) sexism (scale of “0” indicating disagree strongly to “5” indicating agree strongly), which are in agreement with average levels of benevolent and hostile sexism within the United States (Glick & Fiske, 2001) and to other college students within the United States (Young & Nauta, 2013). With regard to the implicit attitudes test, where higher scores indicate more implicit sexism, one study involving the same target-concept discrimination of man/woman and home/work (i.e., gender/career IAT) of law students had a very similar d-score of .33 (Levinson & Young, 2010) to the one I observed in the present study of .31, but is lower than the .72 D-score found within an average of almost 40,000 participants (Nosek et al., 2002).
79 Table 4.1. Means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables in the present study based upon the full sample of participants.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 216-267.
80 Table 4.1 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 216-267.
Table 4.1 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 216-267.
81 Table 4.1 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 216-267.
Considering mean scores for motives for seeking feedback, participants in the present study indicated stronger motivations to seek feedback for instrumental purposes
(M = 5.40) than for ego- (M = 2.67) and image-defense motives (M = 2.92). The mean scores observed in the current study are representative of previous literature (e.g., Tuckey et al., 2002), with instrumental motives being the highest.
With regard to seeking feedback via inquiry, participants reported similar frequencies for seeking feedback from their supervisor (M = 3.01) than another person within one’s organization (M = 2.97). These behaviors are directly in the middle of the scale, as participants rated their feedback-seeking behaviors on a scale of 1 very infrequently to 5 very frequently. However, these direct feedback-seeking behaviors are slightly lower than those in previous studies (e.g., 3.61 on a scale of 1-5, Dahling &
Whitaker, 2016; 4.41 on a scale of 1-7, Niemann, Wisse, Rus, Van Yperen, &
Sassenberg, 2015).
Participants’ average response for supervisor credibility (M = 4.36) corresponded to the neutral anchor for a 4 on a scale of 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree. This is almost one full marking lower than the 5.07 mean within the original study of source credibility (Steelman et al., 2004), indicating that the present sample may not perceive their supervisor as credibly as other samples. They also perceived their supervisor to be 82 slightly more communal (M = 3.68) than agentic (M = 3.27), indicating that their supervisor was moderately agentic and above average in displays of communality.
In assessing well-being outcomes, the reported mean of 1.45 for reported levels of stress at work is halfway between the 1 (almost never) and the 2 (sometimes) answer choices on a scale of 0 (never) to 4 (very often). The mean level of workplace stress that participants reported in the current study is similar to stress reported outside the workplace by participants regarding life in general in a random sample of business founders (M = 1.37; Baron, Franklin, & Hmieleski, 2016). The current study’s participants also reported that they slightly agreed with experiencing anxiety at work (M
= 2.72, on a scale of 1 strongly disagree to 5 strongly agree). Feelings of workplace anxiety in the original study by Parker and DeCotiis (1983) was 1.93, thus indicating that workplace anxiety in the current study was higher than in the seminal study.
Subsample Correlations
Correlations for each subsample of participants with women supervisors and those with men supervisors appear in Tables 4.2 and 4.3.
83 Table 4.2. Means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables in the present study for participants with women supervisors.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 116-135.
84 Table 4.2 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 116-135.
Table 4.2 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 116-135.
85 Table 4.2 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 116-135.
Table 4.3. Means, standard deviations, and correlations among variables in the present study for participants with men supervisors.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 84-103.
86 Table 4.3 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 84-103.
Table 4.3 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 84-103.
87 Table 4.3 continued.
Note. Supervisor Provide FB is the amount of feedback the supervisor provides without being prompted; LGO is Learning Goal Orientation; IAT is Implicit Association Test (implicit sexism); Org is organization; FO is Feedback Orientation; “Other” is other person from whom seek feedback; Gender is coded 1 for men and 2 for women; ** p < .01 level (2 tailed), * p < .05. N ranged from 84-103.
Participants Completing the Implicit Attitudes Measure
Because of the relatively large number of participants who failed to successfully
complete the IAT, I conducted simple t-tests to determine if there were key differences
between those participants and those who completed the IAT. This analysis identified
differences on five variables: benevolent sexism, hostile sexism, instrumental motives,
image-defense motives, and perceptions of supervisor credibility. Those who did not
complete the IAT had significantly higher levels of benevolent sexist attitudes [t(256) =
-2.09, p = .03], hostile sexist attitudes [t(255) = -2.92, p = .004], and image-defense
motives [t(260) = -1.98, p = .048]. Those who did not complete the IAT also had lower
levels of instrumental motives [t(261) = 2.20, p = .03] and lower perceptions of
supervisor credibility [t(263) = 2.57, p = .01]. This analysis showed no significant
differences between the groups for average hours worked, age, degree supervisor
provides information without the employee asking, degree work requires interaction with
supervisor, learning goal orientation, ego-defense motives, feedback orientation,
inquiring for feedback from one’s supervisor, anxiety, stress, supervisor communality,
supervisor agency, inquiring for feedback from another source, or that other sources’
level of agency or communion.
88 Sexism, Supervisor Gender, Supervisor Behaviors, and Ego- and Image-Defense
Motives Related to Feedback-Seeking Behaviors
I conducted my analyses starting with the most complex model: a four-way interaction between sexism, supervisor gender, supervisor behaviors, and ego-/image- defense motives related to feedback-seeking behaviors (Hypotheses 4 and 5; Figure 4.1).
The main question within this analysis is whether sexism relates to feedback-seeking behaviors, and what role do supervisor gender, supervisor behavior, and motives have on that relationship. As Hayes (2013) does not have a model to test 4-way interactions, I tested the model using hierarchical linear regression. Step one of the hierarchical linear regression included the four main effects for these variables. Step two of the hierarchical linear regression included each of the two-way interactions, for a total of six two-way interactions. Step three included each of the three-way interactions, for a total of four three-way interactions added. Finally, step four added the proposed four-way interaction.
I repeated this same analysis for each combination of employee sexism, supervisor behavior, and employee motives to predict the two dependent variables of supervisor and other source feedback-seeking behavior. This resulted in a total of 24 analyses for each of the four-way interactions. In lieu of full regression results for each analysis, a summary table (Table 4.4) is presented below which includes the results of Δr2 once the four-way
interaction is added to the model. Full regression results are presented and discussed for
the two significant four-way interactions.
89 Figure 4.1. Tested interactions between sexism, supervisor gender, supervisor behavior, and motives relating to feedback-seeking behaviors. Table 4.4. Results summary of four-way interaction tests
Note. r2 change reports change in the significance of the model once step four of the hierarchical regression, the four-way interaction, is added. The four variables included in the interaction are supervisor behavior (communality or agency), employee sexism (hostile, benevolent, or implicit), employee motives (ego-defense or image-defense), and supervisor gender. 90 Overall, two of the four-way interactions reached significance: Benevolent
Sexism x Gender x Agency x Image-Defense Motives in relation to feedback-seeking behaviors from a supervisor (Δr2 = .029, p = .008), and Implicit Sexism x Gender x
Communality x Ego-Defense Motives in relation to feedback-seeking from another source (Δr2 = .04, p = .007). For interpretation of these four-way analyses, I also conducted two three-way interactions (Sexism x Supervisor Behavior x Motives) on feedback-seeking behavior split by supervisor gender (man/woman). For interpretation purposes, the hierarchical regression of the four-way interactions as well as each of the three-way interactions split by gender is outlined in further detail below, and a graphical depiction of the significant interactions is provided.
Significant Four-Way Interaction for Feedback-Seeking from Supervisor:
Coefficients for each step in the hierarchical linear model representing the significant four-way interaction between benevolent sexism, supervisor gender, image- defense motives, and supervisor agency to predict feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor are presented in Table 4.5. The conceptual model is presented below in
Figure 4.2.
91 Figure 4.2. Observed relationship of benevolent sexism, supervisor gender, image- defense motives, and supervisor agency with supervisor feedback-seeking behaviors.
92 Table 4.5 Coefficients for four-way interaction of benevolent sexism, supervisor gender, image-defense motives, and supervisor agency on feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor.
Note. r2 change reports change in the significance of the model once step is added; reported Betas are standardized. N = 222.
93 Table 4.5. Continued.
Note. r2 change reports change in the significance of the model once step is added; reported Betas are standardized. N = 222.
To better examine the this significant four-way interaction, I ran two three-way
interactions of benevolent sexism, image-defense motives, and supervisor agency on
feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor split by supervisor gender using PROCESS
Model 3 (Hayes, 2013). Figure 4.3 provides an overview of the three-way interaction
model being tested, and Table 4.6 provides results of the three-way interaction. Note that for presentation within the table, all reported coefficients are mean-centered.
94 Figure 4.3. Graphical depiction of the three-way interaction of benevolent sexism, supervisor agentic behaviors, and image-defense motives on feedback-seeking behavior from one's supervisor.
Table 4.6. Regression results for the three-way interaction of supervisor agency, image- defense motives, and benevolent sexism on employee feedback-seeking behavior from one’s supervisor.
Note. X’ = centered predictor variable; M’ = centered moderator variable; W’ = centered moderator variable; XM’ = interaction term predicting Y; XW’ = interaction term predicting Y; MW’ = interaction term predicting Y; XMW’ = interaction term predicting Y; Y = feedback-seeking behavior from one’s supervisor; SE = standard error. Reported coefficients are mean-centered. N sizes were 124 and 98 for women and men supervisors, respectively.
Results from the three-way interaction indicate that only for women supervisors is
there a relationship of supervisor agency, image-defense motives, and benevolent sexism
on employee feedback-seeking behaviors from supervisors (t = -2.98, p = .004). The
same is not found for men supervisors (t = .83, p = .41). To further explore the significant
95 effect of sexism on feedback-seeking from one’s woman supervisor, a graph of the interaction is presented in Figure 4.4.
Figure 4.4. Graph examining the effects of benevolent sexism, supervisor agency, and image-defense motives on feedback-seeking from a woman supervisor. Note that values are not mean-centered.
Overall, there are three different patterns of moderating effects of image-defense motives on the relationship between supervisor agency and feedback-seeking from one’s woman supervisor depending on the level of an employee’s benevolent sexism. When benevolent sexism is low, image-defense motives matter for lower levels of agency such that employees with lower image defense motives are more likely to seek feedback from
96 their woman supervisor than employees with higher levels of image-defense motives.
Interestingly, when an employee’s level of benevolent sexist attitudes is low, his/her image-defense motive does not matter when the employee perceives a high level of agency from his/her woman supervisor.
For employees who hold moderate levels of benevolent sexism, agency has a positive effect on feedback-seeking behavior from a woman supervisor regardless of that employee’s level of image-defense motives. A main effect is present in this pattern suggesting that individuals with lower levels of image-defense motives are more likely to seek feedback from a woman supervisor.
Employee participants highest on levels of benevolent sexism are very likely to seek feedback when their image-defense motives are low and the more they perceive their woman supervisor to act agentic. However, employees higher on benevolent sexism who are also high in image-defense motives are unlikely to seek feedback regardless of perceptions of supervisor agency.
Significant Four-Way Interaction Predicting Feedback-Seeking from Another
Source
Results revealed implicit sexism, supervisor gender, ego-defense motives, and supervisor communality interact to predict feedback-seeking behavior from another source. Coefficients for each step in the hierarchical linear model are presented in Table
4.7. The model is presented below in Figure 4.5.
97 Figure 4.5. Relationship between implicit sexism, supervisor gender, ego-defense motives, and supervisor communality on other source feedback-seeking behaviors.
98 Table 4.7. Coefficients for four-way interaction of implicit sexism, supervisor gender, ego-defense motives, and supervisor communality on feedback-seeking from another person.
Note. r2 change reports change in the significance of the model once step is added; reported Betas are standardized. N = 190.
99 Table 4.7. Continued.
Note. r2 change reports change in the significance of the model once step is added; reported Betas are standardized. N = 190.
To better examine the effect of the significant four-way interaction of implicit
sexism, supervisor gender, ego-defense motives, and supervisor communality on
feedback-seeking behaviors, I ran two three-way interactions of implicit sexism, ego-
defense motives, and supervisor communality on feedback-seeking behavior from
another supervisor split by supervisor gender. PROCESS Model 3 (Hayes, 2013) was
used to conduct this analysis. Figure 4.6 provides an overview of the three-way interaction model being tested, and Table 4.8 provides results of the three-way interaction. Note that for interaction results in the table, all reported coefficients are mean-centered.
100 Figure 4.6. Graphical depiction of the three-way interaction of implicit sexism, supervisor communal behaviors, and ego-defense motives on feedback-seeking behavior from another source.
Table 4.8. Regression results for the three-way interaction of supervisor communality, ego-defense motives, and implicit sexism on employee feedback-seeking behavior from another source.
Note. X’ = centered predictor variable; M’ = centered moderator variable; W’ = centered moderator variable; XM’ = interaction term predicting Y; XW’ = interaction term predicting Y; MW’ = interaction term predicting Y; XMW’ = interaction term predicting Y; Y = feedback-seeking behavior from another source; SE = standard error. Reported coefficients are mean-centered. N = 109 and 81 for women and men supervisors, respectively.
Again, similar to the results found in the first significant four-way interaction,
results from the split-sample three-way interaction tests indicate that only for women
supervisors is there a relationship between supervisor communality, ego-defense motives,
and implicit sexism on employee feedback-seeking from another source (t = -2.74, p =
.007). The same is not found for men supervisors (t = 1.32, p = .19). To further explore
101 the significant relationship of sexism with feedback-seeking from one’s woman
supervisor a graph of the interaction is presented in Figure 4.7 and interpreted below.
Figure 4.7. Graph examining the effects of implicit sexism, supervisor communality, and ego-defense motives on feedback-seeking from a source other than one's woman supervisor. Note that values are not mean-centered.
For employees with lower levels of implicit sexism there was a strong relationship
between supervisor communality and feedback-seeking from another source conditional
upon that employee’s ego-defense motives. Employees were most likely to seek feedback
from another source the more communal their supervisor behaved and the more ego-
defense motives the employee held. However, they were least likely to seek feedback
102 from another source the less communal their supervisor behaved and the more ego- defense motives they held. Employees with lower ego-defense motives were more likely to seek feedback from another source when their woman supervisor behaved less communally and were less likely to seek feedback from another source when their woman supervisor behaved more communally.
For employees moderate in implicit sexism, supervisor communality had a positive effect on feedback-seeking from another source regardless of that employee’s ego-defense motives. Thus, a main effect is present in this pattern, suggesting that employees with lower ego-defense motives are most likely to seek feedback from another source.
For employees high in implicit sexism, an opposite trend existed compared to those low in implicit sexism: employees were more likely to seek feedback from another source the lower ego-defense motives they held, the more communal their woman supervisor behaved, and the more implicit sexist attitudes they held. Employees were least likely to seek feedback from another source if they had high levels of ego-defense motives and their woman supervisor behaved more communally. It is also important to note that employees were more likely to seek feedback from another source the more ego-defense motives they held and the less communal their woman supervisor behaved.
When Gender Does Not matter: Tests of Sexism, Motives, and Supervisor Behavior
Predicting Feedback-Seeking
Overall, 22 of the 24 four-way interactions did not reach significance, indicating that gender does not always play a role in the relationship of sexism with feedback- seeking. Thus, I collapsed across gender of the supervisor (i.e., did not differentiate
103 gender of supervisor) and conducted three-way interactions of employee sexism on
feedback-seeking, conditional upon employee motives and supervisor behaviors. A
model of the interaction is presented in Figure 4.8.
Figure 4.8. Effect of sexism on feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon supervisor behavior and employee motives.
The three-way interactions were tested using PROCESS Model 3 (Hayes, 2013).
In conducting these three-way interactions, only one effect reached significance: The
effect of implicit sexism on feedback-seeking behavior from another source conditional
upon employee image-defense motives and supervisor communality. Full results of the
three-way interaction significance levels are presented in Table 4.9. Note, 3-way
interactions that were part of the significant 4-way interactions were ignored in these
analyses (and noted in the table), as their relationship with feedback-seeking requires
consideration of the fourth variable, gender, which has already been described above.
104 Table 4.9. Interaction tests of employee sexism, motives and supervisor behavior on feedback-seeking
Note. Results presented are for the three-way interaction significance only; 3-way interactions that are part of significant 4-way interactions are ignored.
To further investigate the significant three-way effect, I plotted the results (Figure
4.9). Regardless of supervisor gender, for employees with lower levels of implicit sexism,
image-defense motives differentially relate to feedback-seeking from another source
when supervisor levels of communality are low. Employees are more likely to seek
feedback when image-defense motives are low, and less likely to seek feedback when
image-defense motives are high. When supervisor levels of communality are high,
image-defense motives do not relate to other source feedback-seeking behavior.
At moderate levels of implicit sexism, supervisor communality had a positive
relationship with feedback-seeking from another source regardless of the employee’s
image-defense motives. Consistent with the three-way interactions previously described,
105 a main effect exists, suggesting that employees with higher levels of image-defense motives are least likely to seek feedback from another source, whereas employees with lower levels of image-defense motives are most likely to seek feedback from another source.
For employees in this sample with higher levels of implicit sexism, image-defense motives did not influence the relationship between supervisor communality and feedback-seeking from another source when supervisor communality was low. However, when supervisor communality was high, employees with higher levels of implicit sexism were less likely to seek feedback from another source when they had higher levels of image-defense motives than when they had lower levels of image-defense motives.
106 Figure 4.9. Graphical depiction of the effects of implicit sexism on seeking feedback from another source conditional upon employee image-defense motives and supervisor communality.
Further Investigation of Two-Way Interactions of Employee Sexism, Supervisor
Behavior, and Employee Motives on Feedback-Seeking Behavior
Based on the previous analyses testing Hypotheses 4 and 5, it is evident that sexism plays a role in some, but not all, relationships with feedback seeking. Thus, to further investigate this relationship, I conducted multiple two-way interactions using
PROCESS Model 1 (Hayes, 2013), pairing each of the three remaining variables with each other. Full results are located in Table 4.10. Interactions were not conducted for variables found to significantly predict within the three- and four-way interactions. 107 Table 4.10. Two-way interactions of employee sexism, supervisor characteristics, and employee motives on feedback-seeking behaviors.
Note. X’ = centered predictor variable; M’ = centered moderator variable. Results presented include the two-way interaction variable only; 2-way interactions that are part of significant 3-way and 4-way interactions are ignored.
Overall, three significant two-way interactions appeared which were not present
when testing the three-way and four-way interactions. Each interaction is graphed and
described below. First, hostile sexism and ego-defense motives interacted to influence
supervisor feedback-seeking behavior (t = 2.36, p = .02; Figure 4.10). Hostile sexism did
not have an effect on feedback-seeking behavior when an employee held lower ego-
defense motives. In fact, employees sought more feedback the lower their ego-defense
motives, regardless of their level of hostile sexism. However, hostile sexism did relate to
feedback-seeking behavior from one’s supervisor when ego-defense motives were high.
Employees sought less feedback when ego-defense motives were high and the employee
held low levels of hostile sexism.
108 Figure 4.10. Effect of hostile sexism on supervisor feedback-seeking behaviors conditional upon ego-defense motives.
The second significant interaction effect indicated a positive relationship between
hostile sexism and feedback-seeking behavior from another source conditional upon
supervisor communality (t = 2.08, p = .04). This effect is graphed in Figure 4.11. Overall,
employees sought less feedback from another source the more communal their supervisor
behaved and the lower hostile sexist attitudes they held. The more hostile sexist attitudes
they held, and the more communal their supervisor behaved, the more likely they sought
feedback from another source, in alignment with the hypothesized direction. Essentially,
the more one’s supervisor, regardless of supervisor gender, behaves “like a woman,” and
109 the more hostile sexist attitudes an employee holds, the more likely that employee will
ask for feedback from another source. However, this finding should not be taken as
meaning that employees will seek less feedback from their own supervisor. Rather, the
present finding only indicates feedback-seeking behavior from another source.
Figure 4.11. Effect of hostile sexism on feedback-seeking behavior from another source conditional upon supervisor communality.
The third significant two-way interaction indicated that supervisor agency relates
to feedback-seeking from that supervisor, qualified by the image-defense motives held by
that employee (t = -2.29, p = .02). Plotting the interaction (Figure 4.12) indicates that
110 supervisor agency has a larger effect on an employee’s feedback-seeking behavior from
that supervisor when image-defense motives are low. Employees are most likely to seek
feedback from their supervisor when image-defense motives are low and the supervisor
displays higher levels of agency.
Figure 4.12. Effect of supervisor agency on employee's likelihood to seek feedback from that supervisor, conditional upon employee image-defense motives.
Sexism, Supervisor Gender, and Supervisor Behavior Related to Perceptions of
Supervisor Credibility
Hypothesis 2 predicted that an employee’s level of sexism, their supervisor’s
gender, and their supervisor’s behavior would predict that employee’s perceptions of
111 his/her supervisor’s credibility. I tested this model using PROCESS Model 3 (Hayes,
2013). The full model is presented in Figure 4.13 below. Separate three-way interactions were conducted using each of the different types of sexism. A summary of results of the three-way interactions are provided in Table 4.11.
Figure 4.13. Three-way interaction of employee sexism, supervisor gender, and supervisor behaviors on perceptions of supervisor credibility.
Table 4.11. Employee sexism, supervisor gender, and supervisor behaviors contributing to employee perceptions of supervisor credibility.
Note. SE = standard error. Results presented include the three-way interaction variable only. Reported coefficients are mean-centered. N sizes ranged from 194-225.
Unfortunately, none of the three-way interactions of sexism X supervisor
behavior X supervisor gender significantly related to perceptions of supervisor
credibility. This finding is in contrast to the hypothesized relationship that sexism would
112 have with perceptions of supervisor credibility, conditional upon the gender and behaviors of that employee’s supervisor. Thus, it appears that gender of one’s supervisor does not relate to the relationship of sexism on supervisor credibility. I then conducted two-way interactions between sexism and supervisor behavior collapsing across supervisor gender. As evidenced by the interaction effects presented in Table 4.12, and contrary to my hypothesis, sexism did not relate to perceptions of supervisor credibility conditional upon supervisor behavior.
Table 4.12. Sexism's relationship with perceptions of supervisor credibility conditional upon supervisor behaviors.
Note. X’ = centered predictor variable; M’ = centered moderator variable. Results presented include the two-way interaction variable only.
Supervisor Credibility and Instrumental Motives Related to Feedback-Seeking
Behaviors
Hypothesis 1 predicted that an employee’s perceptions of the supervisor’s
credibility would be related to the employee’s feedback-seeking behavior from both the
supervisor and another source, and that the effect would depend on the employee’s level
of instrumental motives. This hypothesis was tested using PROCESS Model 1, a two-way
interaction measuring the effect of perceptions of supervisor credibility on feedback-
seeking behavior conditional upon an employee’s instrumental motives. The full model is
113 presented in Figure 4.14, and a summary of the results of the two-way interaction
variables are presented below.
Figure 4.14. Interaction of perceptions of supervisor credibility and employee instrumental motives on feedback-seeking behavior.
The effect of supervisor credibility on feedback-seeking behavior from one’s
supervisor depending on the employee’s level of instrumental motive was not significant
(t = .91, p = .37). This result did not support the hypothesis that an employee would seek
more feedback from a supervisor when perceptions of supervisor credibility were high
and the employee had higher levels of instrumental motives.
The effect of supervisor credibility on feedback-seeking behavior from another
source conditional upon the employee’s level of instrumental motives was also not
significant (t = 1.12, p = .26). This is in contrast to the hypothesized relationship wherein
lower levels of supervisor credibility and higher levels of employee instrumental motives
would positively predict feedback-seeking behavior from another source.
Relationship Between Employee Sexism and Feedback-Seeking Behaviors through
Perceptions of Supervisor Credibility
Hypothesis 3 anticipated employee sexism would be related to feedback-seeking
through perceptions of supervisor credibility and conditional upon supervisor gender,
supervisor behaviors, and employee instrumental motives. However, as neither
Hypothesis 1 nor Hypothesis 2 were supported, it was inappropriate to test this full model 114 measuring conditional effects (moderators) which were not significant in portions of the model. Thus, only the remaining relationships, which include the indirect effect of employee sexism on feedback-seeking through perceptions of supervisor credibility was tested for Hypothesis 3. The model is presented below in Figure 4.15.
Figure 4.15. The effect of employee sexism on feedback-seeking behaviors through perceptions of supervisor credibility.
The model was tested using PROCESS Model 4 (Hayes, 2013). Evidence for a significant indirect effect of sexism on feedback-seeking behaviors through supervisor credibility would be present if the confidence interval did not contain “0.” Unfortunately, none of the indirect effects were significant within any of the six models, thus not supporting Hypothesis 3. All indirect effect results are presented in Table 4.13.
Table 4.13. Indirect effect of sexism on feedback-seeking behaviors through perceptions of supervisor credibility.
Note. boot = bootstrapped; SE = standard error; LLCI = lower level confidence interval, ULCI = upper level confidence interval. Indirect effects are presented. N ranged from 213-254.
115 Sexism, Supervisor Gender, and Supervisor Behavior Related to Employee Well-
Being
Hypothesis 7 predicted that an employee’s hostile and implicit sexist attitudes would relate to his/her job anxiety and job stress, and that this relationship would be conditional depending upon the gender of the supervisor and the behavior of the supervisor. This relationship was tested using PROCESS Model 4 (Hayes, 2013). A presentation of the model tested is listed below in Figure 4.16.
Figure 4.16. The effect of sexism on employee well-being conditional upon supervisor gender and supervisor behaviors.
The three-way interactions were tested using PROCESS Model 3 (Hayes, 2013).
Results are presented in Table 4.14 below. None of the three-way interactions were
significant, indicating that sexism, supervisor gender, and supervisor behaviors do not
jointly relate to employee well-being on the job.
116 Table 4.14. Effect of sexism on well-being outcomes conditional upon supervisor gender and supervisor behavior.
Note. Only the t-scores of the three-way interaction variables are presented. N ranged from 190-221.
Based upon these results, I concluded that the gender of one’s supervisor does not relate to the effect of sexism on well-being outcomes. Thus, I conducted two-way
interactions to determine the effect of sexism on anxiety and stress conditional upon only supervisor behaviors (i.e., collapsed across gender). Results of the analyses are presented below in Table 4.15. Overall, two interactions reached significance: the relationship of employee hostile sexism with employee anxiety conditional upon levels of supervisor communality (t = 2.15, p = .03), and the relationship of employee implicit sexism on employee stress conditional upon levels of supervisor communality (t = 3.66, p < .001).
Each of these are graphed to determine the characteristics of the interaction.
Table 4.15. Effect of sexism on well-being outcomes conditional upon supervisor behavior.
Note. Only the t-scores of the two-way interaction variables are presented. N ranged from 205-249.
With regard to employee anxiety, employees experienced the lowest levels of
anxiety when they had lower levels of hostile sexism and their supervisor displayed
higher levels of communality, as I anticipated (Figure 4.17). Employee anxiety was
117 highest, however, when supervisor communality was low, irrespective of hostile sexist attitudes. It is important to keep in mind that this effect was found regardless of the gender of the supervisor.
Figure 4.17. Graph of the effect of hostile sexism on employee anxiety conditional upon supervisor communality.
The relationship between implicit sexism and employee stress conditional upon
supervisor communality was also significant. Employee stress was highest the fewer
implicit sexist attitudes an employee held and the less communal the supervisor behaved
(Figure 4.18). Employees felt the least amount of stress the fewer implicit sexist attitudes
118 they held and the more communal the employee behaved. However, when implicit
sexism was higher, communality had no relationship with employee stress.
Figure 4.18. Effect of implicit sexism on employee stress conditional upon supervisor communality.
Feedback-Seeking Behavior from Supervisor and Other Source Related to
Employee Well-Being
Hypothesis 6 predicted that an employee’s feedback-seeking behavior from his/her supervisor would relate to his/her job anxiety and job stress. The hypothesis further stated that this relationship would be conditional upon the employee’s feedback- seeking behaviors from another source. The model is presented in Figure 4.19.
119 Figure 4.19. The relationship of feedback-seeking behavior from one's supervisor on employee well-being, conditional upon feedback-seeking behavior from another source.
The model was tested using PROCESS Model 1 (Hayes, 2013). The effect of
feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor on employee levels of anxiety and conditional
upon feedback-seeking from another source was not significant (t = -.98, p = .33). The
effect of feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor on employee levels of stress conditional
upon feedback-seeking from another source was also not significant (t = -.28, p = .78).
Thus, the findings do not support Hypothesis 6.
Summary of Results
I examined the hypotheses by testing a series of models, beginning with the most
complex consideration of the predicted conditional relationships and working through
less complex models. This process was used to identify the highest level of theorized
complexity for which there was support, allowing me to best understand how the
variables being studied are related and thereby evaluate which hypotheses are supported
and which are not. Overall, three of the hypotheses (4, 5, & 7) received partial support.
Tables 4.16 and 4.17 illustrate the summary of the hypothesis tests and the summary of
the observed relationships, respectively.
Two significant four-way interactions were supportive of Hypotheses 4 and 5,
demonstrating that sexism relates to feedback-seeking behavior when an employee has a
120 woman supervisor and when supervisor behavior and employee motives are considered.
First, the relationship of supervisor agency and image-defense motives with feedback- seeking from one’s woman supervisor differed depending on levels of benevolent sexism.
When employee benevolent sexism was low, image-defense only mattered when the woman supervisor’s agency was low, such that employees were less likely to seek feedback from her when employee image-defense motives were high and most likely to seek feedback when image-defense motives were low. With moderate levels of benevolent sexism, a main effect existed such that agency had a positive effect on feedback-seeking behaviors regardless of employee image-defense motives. Overall, employees were most likely to seek feedback when they held lower levels of image- defense motives. Employees highest in benevolent sexism were most likely to seek feedback when they had lower image-defense motives and the more they perceived their woman supervisor to engage in agentic behaviors. These findings match my hypotheses as I anticipated lower levels of supervisor feedback-seeking the higher one’s level of benevolent sexism and image-defense motives, and the more agency the woman supervisor displayed.
The second four-way interaction, which involved implicit sexism displayed different patterns. When employees of women supervisors had lower levels of implicit sexism, supervisor communality had a relationship to feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon ego-defense motives. Employees lower in implicit sexism were most likely to seek feedback from another source when the woman supervisor was high in communality and the employee held higher levels of ego-defense motives. However, employees were least likely to seek feedback from another source if, all other conditions
121 the same, the employee perceived low levels of supervisor communality. Investigating trends for employees who held moderate levels of implicit sexism, a main effect existed such that supervisor communality had a positive relationship with feedback-seeking from another source regardless of employee ego-defense motives. Of note, employees with lower ego-defense motives were most likely to seek feedback from another source. For employees high in implicit sexism, those also high in ego-defense motives were least likely to seek feedback from another source the more communal their woman supervisor behaved. Employees low in ego-defense motives were most likely to seek feedback from another source the more communal their woman supervisor behaved. This finding presents partial support for my hypothesis.
To further examine what was happening for the nonsignificant four-way interactions, I conducted three- and two-way interactions among employee sexism, supervisor behaviors, and employee motives on employee feedback-seeking behaviors regardless of the gender of the supervisor, ignoring interactions that were part of the significant higher-level interactions. One significant three-way interaction was observed.
When employees had lower levels of implicit sexism, image-defense motives did not relate to feedback-seeking from another source the more communal their supervisor behaved. For low levels of supervisor communality, employees were most likely to seek feedback from another source when the employee had lower image-defense motives; employees were least likely to seek feedback when image-defense motives were high.
Similar to the four-way interactions, a main effect existed between supervisor communality and feedback-seeking from another source regardless of employee image- defense motives when the employee held moderate levels of implicit sexism. Employees
122 were most likely to seek feedback from another source the lower their image-defense motives. For employees high in implicit sexism, image-defense motives did not influence the relationship between supervisor communality and other source feedback-seeking behavior when communality was low. Employees high in implicit sexism were most likely to seek feedback from another source when their supervisor was high in communality and they held lower image-defense motives.
Several significant two-way interactions were also observed. The most feedback- seeking from one’s supervisor occurred when the employee was low in hostile sexism and low in ego-defense motives. However, hostile sexism had the strongest, positive relationship with supervisor feedback-seeking behavior the more ego-defense motives an employee held, contrary to expectations. The second significant two-way interaction involved employees being more likely to seek feedback from another source when their supervisors were high in communality and the employees themselves had higher levels of hostile sexism, in accordance with my hypothesis. Lastly, supervisor agency’s relationship with supervisor feedback-seeking behaviors was dependent upon levels of employee image-defense motives. Employees sought the most feedback from their supervisors the more agentic the supervisor behaved and the lower that employee’s level of image-defense motives.
I next examined the relationship of sexism on perceptions of supervisor credibility conditional upon supervisor gender and supervisor behavior (Hypothesis 2). Contrary to expectations, none of these effects were significant. Thus, I collapsed across supervisor gender to examine the relationship of sexism on supervisor credibility dependent upon supervisor behavior. Again, none of those interactions reached significance. I then tested
123 whether supervisor credibility was related to feedback-seeking behavior conditional upon an employee’s instrumental motive (Hypothesis 1). The results were not significant. In testing the combination of Hypotheses 1 and 2 as a full model for Hypothesis 3, I dropped the hypothesized conditional variables as they did not bear out in the tests of those hypotheses. The final model tested for Hypothesis 3 included the mediation of employee sexism on supervisor feedback-seeking behavior through perceptions of supervisor credibility. None of these results reached significance, contrary to my initial hypotheses.
The next tested model (Hypothesis 7) determined that sexism did not relate to employee well-being conditional upon supervisor gender and supervisor behavior. Again,
I collapsed across supervisor gender to determine if an employee’s level of sexism related to well-being conditional solely upon the behavior of the supervisor. As expected, I observed that employees experienced lower levels of anxiety when they also had low levels of hostile sexism and their supervisor behaved more communally. The higher an employee’s level of hostile sexism, regardless of how the supervisor behaved, the more anxiety the employee reported feeling. Also as expected, employees experienced lower levels of stress the less implicit sexist attitudes they held and the more communal their supervisor behaved. Contrary to expectations, however, they experienced the most stress when their implicit sexist attitudes were lower and levels of supervisor communality were lower. The expected relationship was that employees would experience the highest amount of stress the more implicit sexist attitudes they held and the less communal the supervisor behaved.
124 Lastly, I assessed the relationship of feedback-seeking on employee well-being
(Hypothesis 6). The interaction of feedback-seeking from one’s supervisor and another source did not significantly predict employee well-being.
125 Table 4.16. Summary of hypotheses and results. Hypothesis Table Figure Supported? H1 Instrumental Motives moderates the None 4.14 No Supervisor Credibility and Feedback- Seeking Behavior relationship H2 Supervisor Characteristics moderates 4.11 4.13 No the Sexism and Supervisor Credibility 4.12 relationship H3 Sexism relating to Feedback-Seeking 4.13 4.15 No Behaviors through Supervisor Credibility and Conditional Upon Supervisor Characteristics and Instrumental Motives H4 Supervisor Characteristics and Motives 4.4 4.1 Partial H5 moderate the Sexism and Feedback- 4.5 4.2 Seeking Behavior relationship 4.6 4.3 4.7 4.4 4.8 4.5 4.9 4.6 4.10 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 H6 Feedback-Seeking from Another None 4.19 No Source moderates the Feedback- Seeking from Supervisor and Anxiety/Stress relationship H7 Supervisor Characteristics moderates 4.14 4.16 Yes- Woman the Sexism and Employee Well-Being 4.15 4.17 Communal/Hostile relationship 4.18 Sexism
126 Table 4.17. Observed relationships in present study.
Table 4.17 continued.
127 Table 4.17. Observed relationships in present study. (Continued)
128 CHAPTER V
DISCUSSION
Predictions of feedback-seeking behavior are important within the workplace.
Receiving feedback assists in goal attainment and behavior regulation, which employees often utilize to increase their levels of success (e.g., Ashford, 1986). Feedback-seeking behavior can also predict job satisfaction, relationships within one’s organization, and various socialization behaviors (Anseel et al., 2015). The negative consequences of not receiving feedback can be detrimental to the organization as employees are more likely to be absent and report higher levels of anxiety and stress if they do not receive feedback on the job (Humphrey et al., 2007).
Despite the evidence that speaks to the critical role feedback plays in a work environment, additional research suggests that not all workers seek and/or respond to feedback in the same way. Research conducted on feedback-seeking motives and behaviors often finds that the more ego- and image-defensive motives an employee has, the less that employee will engage in feedback-seeking behavior through from his/her supervisor. On the contrary, the higher an employee’s level of instrumental motives, the more likely that employee will seek feedback from his/her supervisor (e.g., Ashford et al., 2003). However, much of the feedback-seeking literature only focuses on the
“supervisor” as a whole and not the characteristics of that particular supervisor. In the
129 present study I hypothesized that it is not just the gender of the particular supervisor, but also the gendered behavior of that supervisor which relates to feedback-seeking behavior in addition to individual motives. In addition, I expected that the extent of sexist attitudes one holds, whether implicitly or explicitly, would relate to an employee’s feedback- seeking behaviors from his/her supervisor. The current study demonstrated that sexism is related to both employee feedback-seeking behavior and employee well-being.
The inclusion of supervisor characteristics (supervisor gender and behavior) as well as employee sexism into the feedback-seeking literature comes at a time when more women are entering managerial positions than in the past (e.g., National Science
Foundation, 2013). If not receiving feedback is detrimental to one’s individual health as well as to organizational utility, then it is imperative to discover why individuals may not seek feedback even when it is available. As one of the underlying components of sexism consists of perceptions of women’s lack of competency (e.g., Rudman & Fairchild,
2004), it follows that an employee who holds sexist attitudes and has a woman supervisor may not seek informational feedback from her. As a separate example, if an employee had an agentic boss who behaved in ways that were not ego-enhancing, an employee may not seek feedback from that boss as he/she would want to maintain a positive view of him/herself.
The question then arises as to who these types of employees would turn to for feedback if not their own supervisors. The employee could be receiving feedback from another source, which would mitigate the negative effects of not receiving feedback from one’s supervisor and increase the positive effects of receiving feedback (e.g., lower anxiety and stress). Thus, in the present study I also sought to determine from whom
130 employees were seeking feedback if not their direct supervisor, and how the combination of feedback-seeking behavior from both sources could help diminish employee anxiety and stress.
Does Sexism Matter in Feedback Seeking?
Not only is the present study the first to measure the interplay among the gender of one’s supervisor, that supervisor’s behaviors, and employee sexism in relation to employee feedback-seeking behavior, it is the first to demonstrate that sexism is related to feedback-seeking in the workplace. In fact, the type of sexism and the extent of an employee’s sexist attitudes seem to play different roles in their relationships to an employee’s feedback-seeking behavior.
Benevolent Sexism
Benevolent sexism was related to feedback-seeking from a woman supervisor, but not a man supervisor, when supervisor agency and employee image-defense motives were considered. What is puzzling, though, is the relationship that occurred was in opposition to the relationship anticipated. When employees held higher levels of benevolent sexism, they sought more feedback from their woman supervisors when the supervisor portrayed high levels of agency and the employee had lower levels of image- defense motives. This finding could be a result of a few different competing variables at play. First, it could be that women supervisors need to behave more agentically (i.e., more traditionally masculine; lack-of-fit model; Heilman, 1983) for employees high in benevolent sexism to perceive them as “fitting” in their roles, thus making it acceptable to seek feedback from those women supervisors.
131 However, one also needs to consider the effect of the employee’s feedback- seeking motives. Employees lower in image-defense motives are less concerned with how they will appear to others when they ask for feedback (Ashford et al., 2003). Thus, it could be that lower image-defense motives played a stronger role in feedback-seeking behaviors than supervisor agency. This explanation also supports the finding that supervisor feedback-seeking behavior was the lowest when employee’s held high levels of image-defense motives, regardless of supervisor agency. A combination of both of these reasons could be what influenced the direction of the finding for employees with higher levels of benevolent sexism.
The trends that existed when employees held higher levels of benevolent sexism did not transfer over to when employees held lower levels of benevolent sexism. For low benevolent sexism employees with a woman supervisor, but not a man supervisor, employee levels of image-defense motives only mattered with lower levels of supervisor agency. It could be that even though someone has lower levels of benevolent sexism and may perceive women as competent in the workplace, that person still expects women supervisors to engage in agentic behaviors to demonstrate their fit for the position.
However, when the woman supervisor engaged in lower levels of agentic behavior, feedback-seeking was highest when image-defense motives were low. This finding is in alignment with the aforementioned image-defense motive feedback-seeking theory
(Ashford et al., 2003), such that lower image-defense motives contribute to higher levels of feedback-seeking. Overall, what this result demonstrates is that if a woman supervisor engages in agentic behavior and the employee has lower levels of benevolent sexism, the employee is likely to seek feedback from her. However, if she acts less agentically, the
132 employee needs to hold lower image-defense motives to increase feedback-seeking behaviors.
Implicit Sexism
In contrast to the explicit forms of sexism exhibited by people who hold higher levels of benevolent and hostile sexism, implicit sexism is characterized by an individual’s unconscious sexist attitudes (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald et al.,
1998). While the IAT and the construct of implicit attitudes themselves are often under scrutiny (for a full review, see Greenwald et al., 2009), results from the present research suggest that more attention may need to be paid to the unconscious beliefs that humans hold. The present study provides evidence that implicit sexism does matter and is something to be investigated in the workplace.
Implicit sexism was related to numerous outcome variables within the present study, including feedback-seeking behaviors with women supervisors, for feedback- seeking behaviors regardless of supervisor gender, and employee levels of anxiety.
Interestingly enough, all of these significant effects occurred in combination with levels of supervisor communality. This interplay with communality will be discussed briefly below and again within each of the following sections. The relationship between implicit sexism and stress will be discussed in the well-being section.
Within the broad personality literature, displaying communal characteristics is often associated with that person being “liked,” as communal characteristics are oriented toward serving others’ interests (e.g., Wojciszke, Abele, & Baryla, 2009; Wortman &
Wood, 2011). In essence, someone who is rated high in communal traits is often more concerned about others and puts others’ interests first. People higher in communality,
133 regardless of whether they identify as a man or a woman, are also considered by others to be more conscientious than someone who does not hold communal traits (Wojciszke et al., 2009). Overall, the more communal one behaves, the more others perceive that person as an accurate judge of others’ work (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007).
In contrast, a supervisor with more agentic behaviors may engage in more self- serving behaviors (Wojciszke et al., 2009). This supervisor may not be familiar with his/her employee’s work because that supervisor is too focused on his/her own performance within the workplace. Thus, the employee may not trust the supervisor to provide fair, accurate ratings of job performance and could express low confidence in the feedback that is received. In this instance, the employee would not consider his/her supervisor as a source of accurate information as he/she recognizes that the supervisor is not focused on employee success, and could therefore be unable to provide useful and accurate feedback. Essentially, this supervisor, and others engaging in agentic behaviors, are not approached for feedback because they do not display other-focused behaviors. As such, it may be that employees prefer communality as a trait displayed in the workplace rather than agency as they recognize that people from whom they can seek feedback are other-focused and supportive.
Feedback-seeking from others when one has a woman supervisor. The pattern found for feedback-seeking behaviors from another source when employees were higher in implicit sexism is in alignment with the literature. Again, it is important to remember that employees high in implicit sexism do not explicitly realize that they hold biases against women. Thus, many of these behaviors are the result of an influential unconscious attitude. First, employees who are high in implicit sexism are less likely to
134
seek feedback from another source the more communal their woman supervisor behaves and the more ego-defense motives the employee holds. It could be that when a woman supervisor behaves communally, as it is against how the employee perceives a traditional supervisor should behave, protecting one’s ego becomes the most important.
In contrast, if someone has low ego-defense motives and their woman supervisor is engaging in communal behaviors (and thus out of alignment with the agentic- prescribed roles in which a supervisor should behave), the employee is more motivated to seek feedback from another source due to his/her higher levels of implicit sexism. The employee is being driven by his/her unconscious attitudes that since his/her woman supervisor is not acting as she “should,” that employee should seek feedback from another source. This effect is strengthened the lower ego-defense motives the employee holds, and thus less concerned about protecting his/her ego when it comes to seeking feedback. It is important to note that these findings do not indicate that employees sought more or less feedback from their supervisor than another source; rather, the results simply describe feedback-seeking from another source without relation to supervisor feedback- seeking behaviors.
When employees had lower levels of implicit sexism, or, as the value of zero which is one standard deviation below the observed mean in the current sample indicates, no bias against women (or men) in the workplace, they sought feedback from others the more communal their supervisor behaved and the more ego-defense motives the employee had. However, they sought less feedback from others when their supervisor displayed fewer communal behaviors and the employee held higher levels of ego-defense
135 motives. This finding is in contrast to what was expected and partially against what the literature suggests should be the case.
The idea that higher ego-defense motives leads to fewer instances of feedback- seeking is expected (Anseel et al., 2003). What was not expected was that higher levels of ego-defense motives actually increased the likelihood of feedback-seeking from another source when supervisor communality was high. It could be possible that employees with women supervisors who engage in their prescribed communal behaviors feel comfortable going to others asking for feedback. As nurturing is considered a positive trait supporting growth due to its other-focused nature (e.g., Wojciszke, Abele, & Baryla, 2009; Wortman
& Wood, 2011), it may increase the likelihood of the employee also seeking-feedback from another source to obtain more support. In fact, a woman supervisor behaving communally may be indicative of the culture of the entire organization, thus increasing the overall likelihood of feedback-seeking because communality-based (i.e., nurturing, other-focused) feedback provides an ego-boost rather than an ego-drop. Important to point out is that this finding does not indicate that an employee sought feedback from another source instead of one’s supervisor, but rather their feedback from another source increased in this situation.
Feedback-seeking from others regardless of supervisor gender. Implicit sexism also related to feedback-seeking behaviors from others when supervisor gender was not a factor in the equation. While ego-defense motives influenced the four-way interaction including supervisor gender, it was image-defense motives which contributed to feedback-seeking from another source regardless of supervisor gender. Also of note,
136 the effect was only significant when the supervisor, regardless of gender, behaved high in communality.
For employees high in implicit sexism (i.e., demonstrating bias against women), high levels of image-defense motives, in conjunction with high levels of supervisor communality, decreased overall employee feedback-seeking from another source. As mentioned previously, it could be that because image-defense motives decrease the likelihood of feedback-seeking behavior in general (Anseel et al., 2003), image-defense motives have the strongest relationship here. Additionally, if a supervisor’s level of communality is indicative of an overall organizational other-focused culture, someone with high implicit sexism, who does not implicitly perceive women’s communal characteristics as “fitting” in the workplace, may not go to others to seek feedback because they do not want to hurt their image of appearing to trust feedback from a communal source. Again, these results do not suggest that an employee seeks more or less feedback from his/her supervisor in comparison to another source.
For employees with little to no implicit biases against women, image-defense motives did not relate to feedback-seeking from another source when supervisor communality was high. Continuing with the idea that supervisor communality, especially as it includes both women and men supervisors, contributes to feedback-seeking behaviors because of an open, other-focused environment, someone who holds little to no biases against women would welcome the opportunity to seek feedback from others in such an environment. This theory holds in supporting the finding that the lower one’s supervisor communality and the higher one’s image-defense motives, the less likely that person will seek feedback from another source. Essentially, if the organizational culture
137 does not support other-focused behavior, those with higher levels of image-defense motives are less likely to seek feedback from others to protect their own images.
Hostile Sexism
When investigating hostile sexism’s relationship with feedback-seeking behaviors, two trends appeared. First was hostile sexism’s relationship with feedback- seeking from another source based upon supervisor level of communality. Second was hostile sexism’s relationship with feedback-seeking from one’s own supervisor based on the employee’s ego-defense motives.
Hostile sexism and communality. As anticipated, hostile sexism positively influenced feedback-seeking from another person the more communal the supervisor behaved. What is important about this finding is that it includes all supervisors, regardless of gender, who engaged in communal behaviors. Essentially, employees who openly believe that women’s gender-prescribed behaviors do not belong in power actively sought feedback from another source the more communal their woman or man supervisor behaved. There could be a dominance issue at play here in that employees high in hostile sexism, who perceive supervisors as having traditional male roles, which include aspects of dominance, but as their supervisors are behaving communally, this may lead the employee to seek feedback from another source more often! In these situations, the employee could be missing out on feedback that could improve his/her performance.
Additionally, such behavior based upon sexism is detrimental not only to subordinates, but to supervisors as well. Sexist attitudes have a negative relationship with feedback-seeking behaviors of the employee, which could potentially lead to employees
138 not receiving information important for job performance (e.g., Anseel et al., 2015).
Displays of sexist behavior, such as an employee actively seeking feedback from another source due to sexist beliefs, can also harm woman supervisors, as well as other women who witness such events by lowering women’s levels of self-esteem and career aspirations (Bradley-Geist et al., 2015). While it is important to recognize that stronger sexist attitudes increases the likelihood of seeking feedback from another source, it is unlikely that this is the only action in which they engage in response to sexist attitudes.
Hostile sexism and ego-defense motives. In alignment with previous literature, the current study demonstrated the lower one’s ego-defense motives, the more likely employees are to seek feedback from a supervisor (e.g., Anseel et al., 2015). However, the current study found this relationship to be conditional on hostile sexism, a variable not examined in previous studies: the more hostile sexist attitudes employees held and the more ego-defense motives they held, the more likely they sought feedback from their supervisor. In comparison, employees with lower levels of hostile sexism and higher levels of ego-defense motives sought less feedback. These findings are in opposition to the anticipated direction. Employees who are high in hostile sexism and also very ego- defensive may feel more threat or insecurity regarding their standing in the workplace and, hence, are more likely to seek feedback as a way of getting validation. Future research should investigate this in more detail.
Stress and Anxiety: Outcomes
Overall, the present study did not observe feedback-seeking to be related to the anticipated outcomes of stress and anxiety as predicted in the hypotheses. However, the
139 results did demonstrate important relationships to consider regarding sexism, supervisor communality, and workplace stress and anxiety.
Hostile Sexism and Anxiety
As expected, the more hostile sexist attitudes employees held, and the more communal their supervisors behaved, the more anxiety the employee reported. These findings are important for the workplace literature as they suggest that, when the employee is high in hostile sexism, having a supervisor who acts more kind and communal may be particularly difficult for the employee because that supervisor (man or woman) is acting in a way the employee believes is not appropriate for supervisors. This negative experience for the employee holding the hostile sexism attitudes, combined with negative experiences of employees who observe behavior stemming from hostile sexism attitudes calls for organizational action. One thing companies can do is have training sessions to reduce employees’ hostile sexist beliefs, similar to trainings successfully conducted for marriage and therapy therapists (Leslie & Clossick, 1996), in classrooms focused on prejudice (Pettijohn & Walzer, 2008), and in the military to help reduce sexual harassment (Buchanan, Settles, Hall, & O’Connor, 2014). Doing so could potentially lower the employee’s anxiety level, which a company would want if the employee is productive and otherwise adds to the organization. With regard to emotional contagion (EC), this option can also prove beneficial to the organization as the shared levels of anxiety could decrease with the decrease in individual levels of anxiety.
However, if the employee holding higher levels of hostile sexism is not productive and not a good fit with the organization, it may be better to allow the employee to turn over.
140 Furthermore, anxiety was highest and similar across levels of hostile sexism when supervisor communality was low. Thus, this brings back the question about how being other-focused can benefit people in the workplace. If it is clear that supervisors are engaging in communal behaviors, for instance being concerned for the welfare of the employee and engaging in conversations focused on kindness (Bem, 1975), employees may feel less anxious because they perceive their supervisor to care about them.
Implicit Sexism and Stress
Something to explore in future research is the unexpected finding of lower levels of supervisor communality interacting with lower levels of implicit sexism to predict higher levels of employee stress. This finding could be driven by the relationship that supervisory communality has with stress levels; the less communal a supervisor, the more stressed an employee may feel as they may not believe he/she will provide warm, reaffirming feedback. Such a finding adds credence to the aforementioned idea that supervisors being other-focused can help increase overall employee well-being.
Of note was the fact that supervisor communality did not make a difference regarding stress when employees held higher levels of implicit sexism. At high levels of implicit sexism, employees reported experiencing low-to-moderate stress at work regardless of their supervisor’s communality. As implicit attitudes are unknown to employees, it could be that employees are feeling slight levels of stress without necessarily knowing “why,” or attributing it to supervisor behaviors. As such, it may be beneficial for organizations to promote trainings for supervisors on how to be other- focused and engage in behaviors which make the employees feel valued within their organization.
141 Feedback-Seeking Behavior and Employee Well-Being
A meta-analysis conducted by Humphrey and colleagues (2007) determined that the more feedback that exists within a workplace, the less stress and anxiety an employee will experience. The present study was designed to expand on those results by investigating whether these findings extended to the act of seeking feedback. Contrary to expectations, asking for feedback from either one’s supervisor or another source had no relationship with employee levels of stress or anxiety at work. These findings are significant because past research demonstrated feedback given to employees is related to lower levels of employee stress and anxiety. The act of feedback-seeking, in comparison to receiving feedback, does not predict the same experience of lower stress or anxiety.
Supervisor Credibility
One of the main facets of sexism is the fact that women are considered more incompetent than men, especially in the workplace (e.g., Glick & Fiske, 1996). The fact that sexism did not relate to perceptions of perceived supervisor credibility in the present study is in direct contrast with the very definition of sexism. In the present study, the average level of credibility reported in the present study is neutral, and is almost one full marking lower than the average credibility reported in the original study by Steelman et al. (2004) assessing full-time employed workers. While there is variance in the level of perceived credibility of one’s supervisor within the sample, the overall levels may be lower than what is needed to demonstrate relationships with the hypothesized constructs.
Furthermore, there was no relationship between perceived credibility and feedback-seeking behaviors conditional upon an employee’s instrumental motive. This finding also goes against prior literature in that main effects are often found indicating the
142 more information-seeking an employee is the more likely that employee will ask for feedback (e.g., Ashford et al., 1986; Ashford et al., 2003; Ashford & Tsui, 1991) and that supervisor credibility is positively correlated with feedback-seeking behavior (Anseel et al., 2015). It could be that it is not a joint influence of these two variables that relates to feedback-seeking behavior but that they each separately relate to feedback-seeking above and beyond each other. For instance, an employee may have higher levels of instrumental motives and perceive the supervisor to be credible, but also perceive there to be too big of a risk to ask for feedback (e.g., low feedback environment, Steelman et al., 2004).
Limitations and Future Research
There are a few limitations which are important to discuss within the present study. First, recruitment of only employed students may have affected the results. A majority of the participants reported that they were not likely to stay in the same job or industry in the forthcoming years, which may influence their likelihood of feedback- seeking in their current jobs. Indeed, feedback-seeking in this sample was lower than observed in other samples of full-time employees (e.g., Ashford, 1986; Dahling &
Whitaker, 2016; Niemann et al., 2015). Collecting data from employees in full-time positions who plan to stay within a particular job or industry throughout their working years may yield different results. Thus, recruiting additional participants (working non- student adults) is a goal for continued work in this area. It is important to note, however, that of people employed in 2016, 18.27% of the population aged 16 and over worked part-time (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). Thus the present study to the literature because it represents a significant portion of the workforce in the United States.
Additionally, given the observed relationships between sexism and feedback-seeking
143 using a part-time sample where feedback-seeking may be less likely, examinations within full-time samples may yield even stronger relationships.
Also from a methodological perspective, the present study took place as a cross- sectional assessment of variables, thus limiting the ability to make causal inferences about relationships. While limiting the ability to test implied causal relationships, this cross-sectionality may also be a strength to the present design in that it permitted me to have a direct glimpse into employees’ current feelings about their workplace and relationships with supervisors, without the ramifications of having a new supervisor or other event occur between the two study time periods. Future research should, though, use a two-time period measurement system to help further our perspective of how the variables interact to influence feedback-seeking behavior over time. To truly assess causal relationships, experimental designs manipulating supervisor gender and agency/communality are needed.
The low internal reliability for the scale developed to measure agentic behaviors also needs to be examined. A low reliability (α = .61) indicates that the measure developed for this study and based on previous literature to assess agency may need adjustment, and could have contributed to few significant findings of agency predicting hypothesized outcomes. An item-analysis within the present study did not indicate that dropping an item within the agency scale would raise the alpha level above .64. Three particular items in this scale may be problematic. In line with agentic behaviors, for the scale participants indicate the degree to which their supervisors are affectionate
(negatively scored), aggressive, and controlling. Leadership and management literature suggests that managers who engage in aggressive and controlling behaviors are harmful
144 to others and considered to reflect bad management styles (see Schyns & Schilling, 2013, for a meta-analysis). Thus, there appears to be a disconnect in the current measure for agency between agentic behaviors that are acceptable in the workplace, such as
“assertive,” and general agentic behaviors that are inappropriate, such as “aggressive.”
Rather than piecing together various agentic and communal descriptive words, as was done in the current and in previous studies (e.g., Rudman & Glick, 2001; Wessel et al.,
2008), future studies measuring agentic and communal behaviors should focus on developing a more comprehensive communion/agency scale that is applied directly to the workplace.
Relatedly, the hostile and benevolent sexism scales were first created in 1996 by
Glick and Fiske. While multiple global studies are still finding these scales valid (e.g.,
Glick & Fiske, 2011; Young & Nauta, 2013), this scale may not accurately reflect current benevolent or hostile sexist attitudes toward women within the workplace specifically.
For instance, agreement with the following statement, “when women lose to men in a fair competition, they typically complain about being discriminated against,” may not best fit a present view of workplace sexism. Thus, there is a need to investigate whether these scales should be updated to reflect sexism in the workplace, rather than overall in society, should be considered. Even so, the current study demonstrated significant relationships between measures of hostile, benevolent, and implicit sexism with feedback-seeking, anxiety and stress at work.
Further, there was a low response rate among supervisors who were invited to participate by employees who completed their personal surveys. Study design allowed for
Qualtrics to immediately send the supervisor an e-mail notifying them of the study, which
145 could have actually hindered response rates for a handful of reasons. First, the e-mail was sent from Qualtrics and could have automatically ended up in the supervisor’s spam folder. Second, with the e-mail being sent right after the completion of the study, the supervisor could have received the e-mail notifying them of participation prior to hearing from the employee that he/she was being asked for input. If the e-mail was sent to the supervisor’s main inbox, that person could have deleted it assuming it was spam prior to knowing the e-mail contained important information.
Additionally, the e-mail account to which the supervisor e-mails were sent may not be the property of just one person at the organization. For instance, employees would include the generic e-mail address for a particular organization (e.g., [email protected]), to which any number of managers within the organization have access. Some employees did not write in their first name or last initial on the survey, thus sending an e-mail to a supervisor without notification of the employee about whom the supervisor should complete the survey. Other employees did not know the e-mail addresses of their supervisors to send them a message. These issues could be addressed in future studies by providing all participants with a pre-stamped envelope including the survey to hand directly to their supervisors or more directly managing communication with the supervisor through personalized, researcher-driven communication (e.g., e-mails sent directly from the researcher). This would facilitate observation of the focal variables incorporating the supervisor’s perspective.
Another limitation to note is the smaller sample size with regard to completion of the implicit sexism measure. Participants with usable IAT data differed from those who did not have usable IAT data on five key variables. Those who completed the IAT were
146 lower in benevolent sexism, hostile sexism, and image-defense motives, and were higher in instrumental motives and perceptions of supervisor credibility. It is not surprising that people higher in benevolent and hostile sexism were less likely to complete the IAT measure as they might have felt uncomfortable demonstrating their bias. Had these participants completed the IAT, the range of IAT scores would likely have been greater.
However, even with a potentially smaller range, the present study found significant effects of implicit sexism on feedback-seeking behaviors and well-being outcomes. Due to the smaller sample size and unique characteristics of the sample, caution must be used in terms of generalizability. Future studies need to assess the replicability of the current findings with other samples.
One way to help fix the issue of non-respondence on the IAT in the future is to have participants complete the study within a lab setting using software such as E-Prime which has a more user-friendly IAT interface. Completing the IAT using E-Prime software also minimizes the risk of data or wireless internet connection interruptions and it allows for a research to be present to answer any questions. Another way to address this issue is to create a different measurement of implicit attitudes which does not take as much time or appear as abstract to the participant, if possible. Creating such a measure is important to the future of researching implicit attitudes.
Practically, there are many new directions in which the findings from the present study can take the field of Industrial-Organizational Psychology. One finding that needs to be further understood is the consistent positive outcomes associated with communal behaviors of supervisors. Similar to training supervisors to take more of an incrementalist rather than an entitist approach to providing feedback and coaching (e.g., Heslin,
147 VandeWalle, & Latham, 2006), future research can focus on training people to act in a more communal manner in their roles. Such communality can be likened to some behaviors inherent in servant leadership, which has been shown to be related to increased self-actualization, team effectiveness, social responsibility, and individual job performance (van Dierendonck, 2011).
The findings of the present study contrast with previous studies that indicated communal traits were more often perceived to be best suited for women to display, whereas agentic traits were best suited for men to display as measured by participant’s expectations of how men and women should behave (e.g., Rudman & Glick, 2001). Bias often occurs against women and people exhibiting feminine traits in jobs that are not stereotypically feminine (e.g., Phelan et al., 2008). It is important to research whether the findings within the present study have external validity in other populations of employees. Additionally, conducting research studies about the impacts of communal behavior solely based in male-dominated jobs, such as stem fields where women represent less than 30% of the workforce (Landivar, 2013) could provide some important information regarding whether the external validity of the present study extends to different types of jobs.
The present study focused on two of five important aspects involved in feedback- seeking behavior: the method used to seek feedback and the target of feedback-seeking behavior (Ashford, 1986; Ashford & Tsui, 1991; Ashford et al., 2003). Future studies would be remiss if they did not include three other key aspects of feedback-seeking behavior: frequency, timing, and topic of feedback. There is a strong likelihood that employee sexism and the behavior of one’s supervisor can predict the frequency, timing,
148
and topic of the feedback. For instance, an employee may approach a supervisor who behaves more communally more frequently for feedback because that employee trusts the other-focused direction of that supervisor. Investigating these five aspects using employee sexism and feedback-seeking behaviors from both direct supervisors and other sources could help organizations piece together when an employee will go to another source versus a direct supervisor for feedback information.
Lastly, future studies measuring feedback-seeking behavior need to include monitoring as well as inquiry as a means of seeking feedback. First and foremost, the literature on monitoring for feedback within the workplace is lacking (e.g., Anseel et al.,
2015). However, we also know that someone with a high ego- or image-defensive motive may not be likely to seek feedback through verbal means from another source (e.g.,
Anseel et al., 2007; Ashford et al., 2003; Northcraft & Ashford, 1990). Thus, it may be that levels of agency have more of an relationship with seeking feedback through monitoring than they do on seeking feedback through inquiry; the more agentic someone behaves, the more likely someone may monitor that person for feedback.
Conclusion
The findings of the present study both support and contradict findings from existing research on feedback-seeking behavior in the workplace. Of particular importance, the present study suggests that employee levels of sexism, supervisor communality and agency, and ego- and image-defense motives relate to feedback-seeking behaviors. Organizations can develop trainings on how to decrease employee sexism and increase supervisor communality to obtain the highest levels of well-being and higher levels of feedback-seeking behavior.
149 The present findings also suggest that employees’ implicit sexism may be an important factor that is overlooked by researchers for their doubts of its validity (e.g.,
Greenwald et al., 2009). These results provide more evidence that researchers need to place a larger focus on implicit biases that employees may hold and how those can negatively impact organizational culture and function. Present study findings open new doors to how organizations should approach employee feedback-seeking behaviors, but more research is necessary.
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165 APPENDICES
166 APPENDIX A
EMPLOYEE QUESTIONNAIRE MEASURES
Demographics
1. Age (in years) 2. Gender (Man; Woman; I do not gender identify; Transgender, Man to Woman; Transgender, Woman to Man) 3. Ethnicity (African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian, Latina/Latino, Middle Eastern, White/Caucasian, Multiracial, Other [please specify], Do not wish to disclose) 4. What is your average yearly household income? ($1-$9,999, $10,000-$19,999, $20,000-$29,999, $30,000-$49,999, $50,000-$69,999, $70,000-$89,999, $90,000- $99,999, Greater than $100,000) 5. Are you currently employed at an organization within the United States? (Yes, No) 1. If yes: On average, how many hours per week do you work? 2. If yes: How long have you worked with your current organization? Years & Months (Organizational Tenure) 3. If yes: Which of the following best describes the industry in which you work (US Census Bureau, 2013)? i. Administrative Support ii. Agriculture iii. Arts/Entertainment/Recreation iv. Construction v. Educational Services vi. Finance & Insurance vii. Food Services viii. Health Care ix. Information x. Manufacturing xi. Military xii. Professional, Scientific, & Technical Sciences xiii. Public Administration
167 xiv. Real Estate xv. Retail xvi. Social Assistance xvii. Student xviii. Transportation xix. Utilities xx. Warehouse xxi. Waste Management xxii. Wholesale Trade xxiii. Other: ______4. If yes: What is your current job title? 5. If yes: How long have you held this job title? Years and months (job tenure) 6. Think about your current job. On a scale of 1 (Not very likely) to 5 (Very likely), how likely do you see yourself in a job similar to your current job in 10 years? This can include promotions within the same company (e.g., promoted from Manager of Hiring to Executive Manager of Hiring) OR moving to a different company but still holding a similar role (e.g., maintain role as an auto mechanic in a different organization). 7. What is the gender of your direct supervisor? (Man; Woman; Does not gender identify; Transgender, Man to Woman; Transgender, Woman to Man).
Connecting information between subordinate and supervisor surveys All information will be deleted once the subordinate/supervisor data are matched or upon the conclusion of the study, whichever comes first. 1. Please enter your direct supervisor's email. This will be used to send them a link to their part of this survey. 2. Please enter your first name and last initial (e.g. Mary S.) so that we can inform your supervisor who they are filling out their survey for. Your name will be deleted from all records once the study has concluded. 3. Please enter your direct supervisor's name. This name will be deleted from all records once the study has concluded. Participants will then be presented with a list of the questions their supervisor will complete.
168 Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) Glick & Fiske (1996)
Below is a series of statements concerning men and women and their relationships in contemporary society. Please indicate the degree to which you agree or disagree with each statement using the following scale: 0 = disagree strongly, 1 = disagree somewhat, 2 = disagree slightly, 3 = agree slightly, 4 = agree somewhat, 5 = agree strongly. BS ơ = .90, HS ơ =.87 1. No matter how accomplished he is, a man is not truly complete as a person unless he has the love of a woman. 2. Many women are actually seeking special favors, such as hiring policies that favor them over men, under the guise of asking for “equality.” 3. In a disaster, women ought to be rescued before men. 4. Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist. 5. Women are too easily offended. 6. People are often truly happy in life without being romantically involved with a member of the other sex. (R) 7. Feminists are seeking for women to have more power than men. 8. Many women have a quality of purity that few men possess. 9. Women should be cherished and protected by men. 10. Most women fail to appreciate fully all that men do for them. 11. Women seek to gain power by getting control over men. 12. Every man ought to have a woman whom he adores. 13. Men are complete without women. (R) 14. Women exaggerate problems they have at work. 15. Once a woman gets a man to commit to her, she usually tries to put him on a leash. 16. When women lose to men in a fair competition, they typically complain about being discriminated against. 17. A good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man. 18. There are actually very few women who get a kick out of teasing men by seeming sexually available and then refusing male advances. (R) 19. Women, compared to men, tend to have a superior moral sensibility. 20. Men should be willing to sacrifice their own well-being in order to provide financially for the women in their lives. 21. Feminists are making entirely reasonable demands of men. (R) 22. Women, as compared to men, tend to have a more refined sense of culture and good taste.
Scoring: Hostile Sexism Score = average of the following items: 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21. Benevolent Sexism Score = average of the following items: 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, 22
169 Feedback-seeking Behaviors from SUPERVISOR Ashford (1986)
Scale ranges from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently). These next questions refer to your direct supervisor. How often do you: Inquiry 1. Seek feedback from your direct supervisor about your work performance? 2. Seek feedback from your direct supervisor about potential for advancement within the company?
Williams & Johnson (2000; as used in Whitaker 2007 Dissertation). Participants will rate these items on a scale from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very infrequently). How often do you: Inquiry 1. Ask your direct supervisor for information about what is required of you to function successfully on the job? 2. Ask your direct supervisor how well you are performing on the job?
Additional question regarding feedback from one’s supervisor that I created for the current study: 1. To what degree does your supervisor provide feedback on your job performance without you asking for such feedback? a. Scale of 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently)
170 Feedback-seeking Behaviors from OTHER SOURCE
First question: Other than your direct supervisor, from whom do you seek the most feedback about your job performance within your organization? 1. Colleague/co-worker (same level within organization) 2. Another supervisor (someone who is not your assigned, direct supervisor) 3. A subordinate (someone underneath you within the organization) 4. Customer/Client 5. A different person within the organization (Please write in the person’s relationship to your current position: ______)
What is the gender of this person? a. Man b. Woman c. Person does not gender-identify d. Person is transgender, Man to Woman e. Person is transgender, Woman to Man
Please answer the following questions with regards to the person you indicated above from whom you seek the most feedback (not your direct supervisor)
(Adapted from Ashford, 1986): Scale ranges from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently). How often do you: Inquiry 1. Seek feedback from this person about your work performance? 2. Seek feedback from this person about potential for advancement within the company?
Williams & Johnson, 2000 (adapted from Whitaker 2007 Dissertation). Participants will rate these items on a scale from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very infrequently). How often do you: Inquiry 1. Ask this person for information about what is required of you to function successfully on the job? 2. Ask this person how well you are performing on the job?
171 Motives for Seeking Feedback Tuckey et al. (2002)
Please rate the extent to which each statement below is true for you in a work context, with 1 being extremely untrue and 6 being extremely true. Desire for useful information ơ = .82 1. It is important to me to obtain useful information about my performance. 2. Receiving feedback about my performance helps me to improve my skills. 3. I would like to obtain more information to let me know how I am performing. 4. I would like to receive more useful information about my performance. 5. I’m not really concerned whether or not I receive useful information about my performance. (R) 6. Feedback is not really useful to help me improve my performance. 7. Obtaining useful feedback information is not very important to me. (R) 8. I don’t really require more feedback to let me know how I am performing. (R) Ego Defense ơ = .85 1. If I received negative feedback I would have a negative attitude towards myself, so I try to avoid criticism. 2. Negative feedback doesn’t really lower my self-worth, so I don’t go out of my way to avoid it. (R) 3. Receiving negative feedback wouldn’t really change the way I feel about myself. (R) 4. It’s hard to feel good about myself when I receive negative feedback. 5. I try to avoid negative feedback because it makes me feel bad about myself. 6. I worry about receiving feedback that is likely to be negative because it hurts to be criticized. 7. Negative feedback doesn’t really worry me because I still have a positive attitude towards myself. (R) Defensive Impression Management ơ = .91 1. I am not really worried about what people will think of me if I ask for feedback about my performance. (R) 2. I’m concerned about what people would think of me if I were to ask for feedback. 3. I am worried about the impression I would make if I were to ask for feedback. 4. I don’t really worry about what others would think of me if I asked for feedback. (R) 5. I don’t really care if people know the type of feedback I get. (R) 6. If I sought feedback about my performance, I wouldn’t want other people to know what type of feedback I received. 7. I am usually concerned about other people hearing the content of the individual feedback I receive. 8. It doesn’t worry me if people know how I’ve performed at something. (R)
172 Feedback Environment Scale – Supervisor Credibility Steelman, Levy, & Snell (2004)
Please answer the following questions regarding your perceptions of your current direct supervisor Source Credibility ơ = .88 1. I perceive that my supervisor would be generally familiar with my performance on the job. 2. In general, I would respect my supervisor’s opinions about my job performance. 3. With respect to job performance feedback, I usually would not trust my supervisor. (R) 4. I perceive that my supervisor will be fair when evaluating my job performance. 5. In general, I would have confidence in the feedback my supervisor gives me.
Learning Goal Orientation from the Work Domain Goal Orientation Scale VandeWalle (1997)
Please rate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements, where 1 = strongly agree and 6 = strongly disagree 1. I am willing to select a challenging work assignment that I can learn a lot from. 2. I often look for opportunities to develop new skills and knowledge. 3. I enjoy challenging and difficult tasks at work where I’ll learn new skills. 4. For me, development of my work ability is important enough to take risks. 5. I prefer to work in situations that require a high level of ability and talent.
173 Job Anxiety Parker & DeCotiis (1983)
I adapted the five items from the “Job-Related Feelings of Anxiety” scale (Parker & DeCotiis, 1983) for the current study to measure participants’ job anxiety. Responses for the scale range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). “Please think about your current job and rate the extent to which you agree with the following statements:” 1. Within the past month, I have felt fidgety or nervous as a result of my job. 2. Within the past month, my job got to me more than it should. 3. Within the past month, there were lots of times when my job drove me right up the wall. 4. Within the past month, sometimes when I thought about my job I got a tight feeling in my chest. 5. Within the past month, I felt guilty when I took time off from my job.
174
Supervisor Characteristics Scale developed based on Bem (1974); Duehr & Bono (2006); Wessel et al. (2015)
For employees to rate: In the workplace, to what degree is your supervisor a. Concerned for the welfare of others? b. Affectionate? c. Confident? d. Helpful? e. Aggressive? f. Ambitious? g. Kind? h. Sympathetic? i. Assertive? j. Controlling? k. Nurturing?
Scale: 1 (a very low degree) to 5 (a very high degree).
Communality: A, B, D, G, H, K Agency: C, E, F, I, J
Participants will also be asked the same agency/communality questions for the other source of feedback whom they indicated within the survey. “In the workplace, to what degree is this person:”
175 Feedback Orientation Scale Linderbaum & Levy (2010)
Overall ơ = .91 Please answer the following questions based upon how strongly you agree or disagree with the following statements: 1 (strongly disagree) – 5 (strongly agree).
Utility α = .88 1. Feedback contributes to my success at work. 2. To develop my skills at work, I rely on feedback. 3. Feedback is critical for improving performance. 4. Feedback from supervisors can help me advance in a company. 5. I find that feedback is critical for reaching my goals. Accountability α = .73 1. It is my responsibility to apply feedback to improve my performance. 2. I hold myself accountable to respond to feedback appropriately. 3. I don’t feel a sense of closure until I respond to feedback. 4. If my supervisor gives me feedback, it is my responsibility to respond to it. 5. I feel obligated to make changes based on feedback. Social Awareness α = .85 1. I try to be aware of what other people think of me. 2. Using feedback, I am more aware of what people think of me. 3. Feedback helps me manage the impression I make on others. 4. Feedback lets me know how I am perceived by others. 5. I rely on feedback to help me make a good impression. Feedback Self-Efficacy α = .78 1. I feel self-assured when dealing with feedback. 2. Compared to others, I am more competent at handling feedback. 3. I believe that I have the ability to deal with feedback effectively. 4. I feel confident when responding to both positive and negative feedback. 5. I know that I can handle the feedback that I receive.
176 Perceived Stress Scale Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein (1983)
The questions in this scale ask you about your feelings and thoughts during the last month. Please answer the following questions based upon your experiences with regard to your feelings at work. In each case, you will be asked to indicate how often you felt or thought a certain way. Although some of the questions are similar, there are differences between them and you should treat each one as a separate question. The best approach is to answer each question fairly quickly. That is, don’t try to count up the number of times you felt a particular way, but rather indicate the response option that seems like a reasonable estimate. For each question choose from the following alternatives: 0. never 1. almost never 2. sometimes 3. fairly often 4. very often
1. In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly at work? 2. In the last month, how often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things at work? 3. In the last month, how often have you felt nervous and "stressed" at work? 4. In the last month, how often have you dealt successfully with irritating work hassles?* 5. In the last month, how often have you felt that you were effectively coping with important changes that were occurring in your workplace?* 6. In the last month, how often have you felt confident about your ability to handle your personal problems at work?* 7. In the last month, how often have you felt that things were going your way at work?* 8. In the last month, how often have you found that you could not cope with all the things that you had to do at work? 9. In the last month, how often have you been able to control irritations in your work life?* 10. In the last month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things at work?* 11. In the last month, how often have you been angered because of things that happened at work that were outside of your control? 12. In the last month, how often have you found yourself thinking about things that you have to accomplish at work? 13. In the last month, how often have you been able to control the way you spend your time at work?* 14. In the last month, how often have you felt difficulties at work were piling up so high that you could not overcome them? *Indicates reverse scoring
177 Attention Grabbing Items Huang et al. (2014)
Eight attention grabbing items developed by Huang et al. (2014) were interspersed throughout the study. All answers should be on the “disagreement” side of the potential response options. 1. I can run 2 miles in 2 min. 2. I eat cement occasionally. 3. I can teleport across time and space. 4. I am interested in pursuing a degree in parabanjology. 5. I have never used a computer. 6. I work fourteen months in a year. 7. I will be punished for meeting the requirements of my job. 8. I work twenty-eight hours in a typical work day. Two attention grabbing items were created based upon the study’s requirements. The answers to these items should lie on the “agreement” side of the potential response options. 1. I work more than 20 hours per week. 2. I am at least 18 years old.
178 Implicit Attitudes Test Nosek et al. (2002)
Words come from Project Implicit and verified by Nosek et al., 2002.
179 APPENDIX B
SUPERVISOR QUESTIONNAIRE
Supervisor Demographics
1. Please indicate your age 2. Please indicate your gender (Man; Woman; I do not gender identify; Transgender, Man to Woman; Transgender, Woman to Man) 3. Please indicate your race/ethnicity (African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian, Latina/Latino, Middle Eastern, White/Caucasian, Multiracial, Other [please specify], Do not wish to disclose) 4. Please indicate your level of education (Some high school, High school degree, Associate degree, Some college, College degree, Some graduate school, Graduate degree (Masters, PhD, JD, MD, etc.) 5. Please indicate how many months you have worked as the supervisor for the employee on whom this survey is focused? 6. What is your job title? 7. Which of the following best describes the industry in which you work (US Census Bureau, 2013)? i. Administrative Support ii. Agriculture iii. Arts/Entertainment/Recreation iv. Construction v. Educational Services vi. Finance & Insurance vii. Food Services viii. Health Care ix. Information x. Manufacturing xi. Military xii. Professional, Scientific, & Technical Sciences xiii. Public Administration xiv. Real Estate xv. Retail
180 xvi. Social Assistance xvii. Student xviii. Transportation xix. Utilities xx. Warehouse xxi. Waste Management xxii. Wholesale Trade xxiii. Other: ______8. How many direct reports do you supervise? 9. How often do you interact with the employee on whom this survey is focused? (Infrequently or not at all; Somewhat infrequently; Somewhat frequently; Frequently; Very frequently or all the time).
181 Job Performance Williams & Anderson (1991)
Supervisors were asked to answer the following questions about the employee. They were asked “On a scale of 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently), how often does the employee…” In-Role Behaviors: 1. Adequately completes assigned duties. 2. Fulfills responsibilities specified in job description. 3. Performs tasks that are expected of him/her. 4. Meets formal performance requirements of the job. 5. Engages in activities that will directly affect his/her performance evaluation. 6. Neglects aspects of the job he/she is obligated to perform. (R) 7. Fails to perform essential duties. (R) Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (Individual) 8. Helps others who have been absent. 9. Helps others who have heavy workloads. 10. Assists supervisor with his/her work (when not asked). 11. Takes time to listen to co-workers’ problems and worries. 12. Goes out of way to help new employees. 13. Takes a personal interest in other employees. 14. Passes along information to co-workers. Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (Organizational) 15. Attendance at work is above the norm. 16. Gives advance notice when unable to come to work. 17. Takes undeserved work breaks. (R) 18. Great deal of time spent with personal phone conversations. (R) 19. Complains about insignificant things at work. (R) 20. Conserves and protects organizational property. 21. Adheres to informal rules devised to maintain order.
(R) indicates reverse scoring
182 Feedback-seeking Behaviors from SUPERVISOR PERSPECTIVE Ashford (1986) and Williams & Johnson (2000) (as used by Whitaker 2007 Dissertation)
Scale ranges from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very frequently). How often does this employee: Inquiry 1. Seek feedback from you about his/her work performance? 2. Seek feedback from you about his/her potential for advancement within the company?
Williams & Johnson, 2000 (As used in Whitaker 2007 Dissertation). Participants will rate these items on a scale from 1 (very infrequently) to 5 (very infrequently). How often does this employee: Inquiry 1. Ask you for information about what is required of him/her to function successfully on the job? 2. Ask you how well he/she is performing on the job?
Survey Connection
For the purposes of connecting your survey with the one completed by your subordinate, please type your name below. This information will be deleted from all records once the data are matched.
Please type the first name and last initial (e.g., Sara G.) of your subordinate below. This information will be deleted from all records once the data are matched.
183 APPENDIX C
IRB APPROVAL
184 185 186