Year: 2020
Type: dissertation
Abstract: I explored how people react to employees who express boredom at work. I consider boredom expression as a social signal that the current situation does not adequately stimulate the expresser. The expression may then propel others to help stimulate the expresser, depending partly on others’ initial appraisals and reactions to the expression, and on the surrounding context. In Study 1, using qualitative surveys, I uncovered various affective, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to employees who expressed boredom. In Study 2, using experimental vignettes, I manipulated the emotion expressed by a “subordinate” (boredom, enthusiasm, or no emotion) and the manager’s beliefs about the task at hand (as interesting, boring, or neither) to examine managers’ emotions (anger, guilt), cognitions (inferences about the expresser’s job apathy), and behaviors (punishment, individualized consideration) following subordinates’ emotional expressions. I found that relative to other emotion expressions, boredom expressions led to greater anger, guilt, and inferences of job apathy. Expressions of boredom and enthusiasm both led to stronger desires to punish the expresser, relative to no expression. Lastly, boredom expressions indirectly led to more punishment and less individualized consideration toward the expresser via inferences of the expresser’s job apathy. My dissertation thus illuminates how expressions of boredom influence reactions to bored employee in favorable or unfavorable ways for the expresser and the organization.
Author: Manuel F. Gonzalez
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3112178561