This explored how the contagion of emotions triggers moral disengagement and its impact on work-related injuries. Contagion is said to be “the implicit process through which individuals are involuntarily and automatically “infected” by emotion of others that virally spreads in large social communities” (p2).
Specifically, they look at how the contagion of both positive and negative emotions among employees act as antecedents of safety-related moral disengagement.
Higher contagion of anger, defined as “a negative emotion that raises defenses, distorts reality and enables inappropriate behavior” (p2) is reasoned to lead to a higher tendency to depart from rules or not report accidents etc and allow one to justify their current behaviours (moral disengagement).
Higher contagion of positive emotions like joy (“accompanied by adequate information processing, constructive activities and appropriate behavior”, p2) is reasoned to be associated with a lower tendency to depart from rules and leading to less moral disengagement.
Moral disengagement is predicted to be related to higher rates of work-related injuries. Data was from 503 US employees and 538 Italian employees.
The authors discuss the application of the link based on another recent study. That looked at contagion of anger at work and how it was particularly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the psychological effects of COVID-19 led to shared effects of emotional pressure shared among people at work. Here it’s discussed that contagion of anger among medical teams working under these shared pressures can increase the likelihood of incivility behaviours, like immoral conduct, and also to impacted performance.
In discussing human agency in contagion, it’s said that while research indicates that emotions are automatically and involuntarily spread among people and also influenced and regulated by cultural norms, individuals still have active agency and their behaviour “is also the result of agentic and transformative capacities of human mind, which actively elaborates the experience (e.g., emotions absorbed by others) rather than merely react to it” (p2).
Results:
In both the US and Italian employees, emotional contagion of anger positively predicted moral disengagement whereas the emotional contagion of joy negatively predicated moral disengagement. Relating to injuries, moral disengagement positively predicted experienced injuries and found to partially mediate the relationship between contagion of anger and joy (respectively) and injuries.
Specifically, emotional contagion of anger may “trigger later employees use of [moral disengagement] mechanisms, whereas emotional contagion of joy may discourage the need to morally self-exonerate safety violations”. That is, workplaces beset with negative emotions and interactions lead people to rely more on self-exoneration and self-justification for their moral disengagement and for departing from established processes and norms. This moral disengagement may then lead to people experiencing more work-related injuries.
The authors note that contagion of positive emotions at work may help disrupt negative emotions, which can be particularly problematic since “virally circulating” negative emotions among employees may lead some to become morally disengaged via “second-hand anger”.
The authors provide some guidance on what to do with this data. One is focusing on the spread of positive emotions and interactions and dampening negative emotions. Another is fostering ethical business practices and “create an environment of employee loyalty which may fostered by the employer’s efforts to develop safety and occupational health programs in order to create a workplace environment in which employees feel safe going to work” (p9).
Authors: Laura Petitt, Tahira M.Probst, Valerio Ghezzi, Claudio Barbaranelli, 2021, Safety Science.
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2021.105317
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/emotional-contagion-trigger-moral-disengagement-ben-hutchinson
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