Employee's Reciprocation of Supervisor's Gratitude and Anger

According to Lawler’s (2001) social exchange theory of emotion and moral theories of emotions, favorable treatment received by subordinates, including positive emotions and their enactment through helping behavior, should elicit gratitude and organizational citizenship behavior. Conversely, unfavorable treatment, including negative emotions and their enactment through the mistreatment of subordinates, should elicit anger and withdrawal behavior. This study investigated how supervisor gratitude and anger influenced subordinate gratitude and anger and subordinate outcomes involving leader-member exchange quality and behaviors such as organizational citizenship behaviors directed toward the supervisor, task performance, and withdrawal. I administered surveys to supervisor-subordinate dyads at three time points. I found that the supervisor’s emotions at Time 1 were not related to subordinate emotions at Time 2. However, subordinate perceptions of supervisor gratitude and anger were associated with their own gratitude and anger at Time 2. Subordinate gratitude was also positively related to task performance and negatively to withdrawal at Time 3. These findings reveal ways in which gratitude and anger function within and impact the supervisor-subordinate relationship