Social Dominance Orientation and Emotion Regulation: A Parallel Multiple Mediator Model of Instigated Incivility Moderated By Workgroup Civility Climate

While most of the existing research on the topic of workplace incivility has focused upon its consequences on employee and organizational well-being, researchers are recognizing the need for research on predictors, mediators, and moderators of uncivil workplace behavior. The current study contributes to this new wave of workplace incivility research by emphasizing the links among variables not previously explored in incivility research. This nonexperimental correlational study (N = 1027) developed and tested a parallel multiple mediator model of instigated incivility. The model examined the mediation of the emotion regulation strategies – cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression – on the relation of two types of social dominance orientation – intergroup dominance (SDO-D) and intergroup antiegalitarianism (SDO-E) – on the outcome of instigated incivility, and tested the moderating effects of workgroup civility climate on the paths of the proposed model. An Internet-based self-report survey battery was administered to a sample drawn from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk worker population. Hypotheses were tested though structural equation modeling analytic procedures. Findings suggest that intergroup dominance (SDO-D) increases instigated incivility and the relationship is not moderated by workgroup civility climate norms. In contrast, intergroup antiegalitarianism (SDO-E) decreases instigated incivility. Further, this study found that SDO-D had an indirect effect on instigated incivility through the emotion regulation strategy of expressive suppression. Additional findings suggest that the emotion regulation strategy of cognitive reappraisal has the potential to reduce uncivil workplace behavior. Future research was proposed to test the model examined in this study in different cultural settings, with additional mediators and moderators, and longitudinally. The practical findings suggest that HRD practitioners may find emotion regulation and civility trainings useful to reduce the likelihood of uncivil workplace behavior