The Mediating Role of Gratitude in the Influence of Children' and Adolescents' Empathy and Guilt on Helping Behavior

Interpersonal helping behaviors, i.e., voluntarily assisting colleagues for their workplace related problems, have received immense amount of scholarly attention due to their significant impacts on organizational effectiveness. Among several other factors, authoritarian leadership style could influence helping behavior within organizations. Furthermore, this relationship could be mediated by workplace stressor such as rumination, known as a critical psychological health component leading to depressive symptoms, hopelessness and pessimism. In the meantime, less research attention has devoted to probe the crucial role of psychological ownership, which can buffer the adverse effects of authoritarian leadership upon rumination. Building on conservation of resources theory, this study investigates the adverse impacts of authoritarian leadership on employees' helping behaviors through mediating role of rumination, and also examines the moderating effect of psychological ownership between the relationship of authoritarian leadership and rumination. The data were collected from 264 employees in education and banking sectors and the results show: (i) authoritarian leadership has adverse impacts on helping behavior, (ii) rumination mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employees' helping behaviors, and (iii) psychological ownership moderates the positive relationship between authoritarian leadership and rumination. This study concludes that authoritarian leadership has adverse impacts upon helping behavior, which needs to be controlled/minimized. The findings are of great significance for managers, employees, and organizations in terms of policy implications. The limitations and future research directions are also discussed.

Download Full-text

Overcoming organizational politics with tenacity and passion for work: benefits for helping behaviors

Personnel Review ◽

10.1108/pr-09-2020-0699 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Dirk De Clercq ◽

Chengli Shu ◽

Menglei Gu

Keyword(s):

Affective Commitment ◽

Organizational Politics ◽

Helping Behavior ◽

Amazon Mechanical Turk ◽

Personal Resources ◽

Content Type ◽

Mediating Role ◽

Helping Behaviors ◽

Passion For Work

PurposeThis study unpacks the relationship between employees' perceptions of organizational politics and their helping behavior, by explicating a mediating role of employees' affective commitment and moderating roles of their tenacity and passion for work.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative survey data were collected from 476 employees, through Amazon Mechanical Turk.FindingsBeliefs that the organizational climate is predicated on self-serving behaviors diminish helping behaviors, and this effect arises because employees become less emotionally attached to their organization. This mediating role of affective commitment is less salient to the extent that employees persevere in the face of challenges and feel passionate about working hard.Practical implicationsFor human resource managers, this study pinpoints a lack of positive organization-oriented energy as a key mechanism by which perceptions about a negative political climate steer employees away from assisting organizational colleagues on a voluntary basis. They can contain this mechanism by ensuring that employees are equipped with energy-boosting personal resources.Originality/valueThis study addresses employees' highly salient emotional reactions to organizational politics and pinpoints the critical function of affective commitment for explaining the escalation of perceived organizational politics into diminished helping behavior. It also identifies buffering effects linked to two pertinent personal resources.

Download Full-text

“(I Think) My Mother Thinks I Am, Therefore I Am.” The Looking-glass Self in Maltreated Children and Adolescents

Journal of Interpersonal Violence ◽

10.1177/08862605211016352 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 088626052110163

Author(s):

Carla Sofia Silva ◽

Maria Manuela Calheiros

Keyword(s):

Children And Adolescents ◽

Significant Others ◽

Multiple Mediation ◽

Mediation Effects ◽

Maltreated Children ◽

Reflected Appraisals ◽

Mediating Role ◽

Adolescent Maltreatment ◽

Looking Glass

Children and adolescents with maltreatment experiences show worse representations of themselves, as compared to their nonmaltreated counterparts. According to the looking-glass self hypothesis (LGSH), individuals’ self-representations (SR) stem from interactions with significant others, reflecting associations between what significant others think of them (i.e., actual appraisals), individuals’ perceptions of significant others’ appraisals of them (i.e., reflected appraisals), and SR. However, little is known about the looking-glass self process in maltreated children and adolescents. This multi-informant study aimed to test the LGSH within the mother–child relationship with children and adolescents with maltreatment experiences. Specifically, including maltreatment experiences as co-predictors, this study analyzed the mediating role of mothers’ reflected appraisals (MRA) in associations between mothers’ actual appraisals (MAA) and children/adolescents’ SR. Participants were 203 children/adolescents (52.5% boys), 8–16 years old ( M = 12.6; SD = 2.49), assisted by children and youth protection committees (CYPC), their mother, and their CYPC case workers. Case workers reported on child/adolescent maltreatment, children/adolescents reported on SR and MRA, and mothers reported on MAA. A multiple mediation path analysis revealed significant mediation effects of MRA between MAA and child/adolescent SR in instrumental, social, emotional, intelligence, and opposition SR, thus supporting the LGSH in the context of child/adolescent maltreatment. Also, psychological neglect was associated to worse intelligence SR, mediated by intelligence reflected appraisals. Findings emphasize the importance of the role of MRA on maltreated children and adolescents’ SR construction process, and provide useful clues to incorporate in prevention and intervention strategies targeting maltreated children and adolescents.

Download Full-text

From Faux-Social to Pro-Social: The Mediating Role of Copresence in Developing Expectations of Social Support in a Game

Presence Teleoperators & Virtual Environments ◽

10.1162/pres_a_00246 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 61-74 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Donghee Yvette Wohn

Keyword(s):

Social Support ◽

Social Network ◽

Perceived Social Support ◽

Explanatory Power ◽

Helping Behavior ◽

Instrumental Support ◽

Network Games ◽

Mediating Role ◽

Simple Action

Social network games—games that incorporate network data from social network sites—heavily rely on helping behavior between players as a central mechanism of play. Does this “faux social” behavior still generate expectations of social support among players? An experiment (N = 88) was conducted to examine the effect of helping on copresence and perceived social support between strangers playing the Facebook game Cityville. Three types of social support were examined: instrumental support within the game, instrumental support outside of the game, and emotional support. Findings indicate that the simple action of being helped in a game generates copresence, the feeling of proximity in a virtual environment. Copresence was a positive predictor of all three types of perceived social support but had highest explanatory power for instrumental support within the game.

Download Full-text