A Social Mindfulness Approach to Understanding Experienced Customer … · 2017. 9. 5. · experience of customer mistreatment and afternoon negative mood, could reduce dysfunctional

A Social Mindfulness Approach to Understanding Experienced Customer Mistreatment: A Within-Person Field Experiment

Journal: Academy of Management Journal

Manuscript ID AMJ-2016-0448.R3

Manuscript Type: Revision

Keywords:

Stress, strain, and well-being < Attitudes, Cognitions, and Affect < Organizational Behavior < Topic Areas, Mood and emotions < Attitudes, Cognitions, and Affect < Organizational Behavior < Topic Areas, Field experiment < Quantitative Orientation < Research Methods

Abstract:

We apply a social mindfulness lens (Van Doesum, Van Lange, & Van Lange, 2013) to understand the phenomenon of perceived customer mistreatment. Recognizing that both recall of prosocial acts and perspective taking invoke the motivation to be mindful in social

interactions, we investigated whether these two types of interventions affect customer service employees’ experience of customer mistreatment. Additionally, we investigated whether these two interventions might also buffer the relation of employees’ daily experience of customer mistreatment and their negative mood at the end of the workday. Finally, we examined whether the interventions, via their effects on daily experience of customer mistreatment and afternoon negative mood, could reduce dysfunctional coping responses in the evening (i.e., employee rumination and maladaptive shopping). We conducted a within-person field experiment utilizing a daily experience sampling approach with 94 customer service employees whom we surveyed for 15 consecutive workdays. Consistent with our expectations, both interventions significantly

reduced the daily experience of customer mistreatment compared to a control condition. Recall of prosocial action also significantly buffered the positive relation of daily experience of customer mistreatment with afternoon negative mood. Moreover, both interventions had significant indirect effects on dysfunctional coping responses in the evening. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Academy of Management Journal

1

A Social Mindfulness Approach to Understanding Experienced

Customer Mistreatment: A Within-person Field Experiment

YIFAN SONG

University of Florida

Stuzin Hall, P.O. Box 117165

Gainesville, FL 32611-7165

[email protected]

YIHAO LIU

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

504 E. Armory Avenue

Champaign, IL 61820

[email protected]

MO WANG




[email protected]

KLODIANAN LANAJ




[email protected]

RUSSELL E. JOHNSON

Michigan State University

632 Bogue St., Office N438

East Lansing, MI 48824-1121

[email protected]

JUNQI SHI (corresponding author)

Sun Yat-sen University

Lingnan College

Guangzhou, 510275

[email protected]

Page 1 of 59 Academy of Management Journal

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

2

A SOCIAL MINDFULNESS APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING

EXPERIENCED CUSTOMER MISTREATMENT:

A WITHIN-PERSON FIELD EXPERIMENT

ABSTRACT

We apply a social mindfulness lens (Van Doesum, Van Lange, & Van Lange, 2013) to

understand the phenomenon of perceived customer mistreatment. Recognizing that both recall of

prosocial acts and perspective taking invoke the motivation to be mindful in social interactions,

we investigated whether these two types of interventions affect customer service employees’

experience of customer mistreatment. Additionally, we investigated whether these two

interventions might also buffer the relation of employees’ daily experience of customer

mistreatment and their negative mood at the end of the workday. Finally, we examined whether

the interventions, via their effects on daily experience of customer mistreatment and afternoon

negative mood, could reduce dysfunctional coping responses in the evening (i.e., employee

rumination and maladaptive shopping). We conducted a within-person field experiment utilizing

a daily experience sampling approach with 94 customer service employees whom we surveyed

for 15 consecutive workdays. Consistent with our expectations, both interventions significantly

reduced the daily experience of customer mistreatment compared to a control condition. Recall

of prosocial action also significantly buffered the positive relation of daily experience of

customer mistreatment with afternoon negative mood. Moreover, both interventions had

significant indirect effects on dysfunctional coping responses in the evening. We discuss

theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Keywords: Social mindfulness; Customer mistreatment; Prosocial motivation; Perspective

taking; Negative mood; Rumination; Maladaptive shopping

Given the significant growth of the service economy over the past decades, interest in

improving frontline service employees’ performance and well-being has increased (Groth &

Goodwin, 2011). One topic related to service employees’ performance and well-being that has

received extensive attention is customer mistreatment, which is defined as low-quality

interpersonal treatment that employees receive from customers (Wang, Liao, Zhan, & Shi, 2011).

Numerous studies have documented negative effects of customer mistreatment on service

employees. For example, customer mistreatment has been shown to negatively influence service

employees’ cognition, such as impairing their working memory (e.g., Rafaeli, Erez, Ravid,

Derfler-Rozin, Treister, & Scheyer, 2012) and threatening their self-efficacy (e.g., Dormann &

Zapf, 2004), which in turn results in lower performance (e.g., Choi, Kim, Lee, & Lee, 2014;

Page 2 of 59Academy of Management Journal

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

3

Goldberg & Grandey, 2007) or even increasing customer-directed sabotage (e.g., Skarlicki, van

Jaarsveld, Shao, Song, & Wang, 2016; Skarlicki, van Jaarsveld, & Walker, 2008; Wang et al.,

2011). To make matters worse, customer mistreatment may also culminate in poor employee

physical health (e.g., Sliter, Pui, Sliter, & Jex, 2011), negative emotions (e.g., Rupp & Spencer,

2006; Zapata-Phelan, Colquitt, Scott, & Livingston, 2009), and exhaustion (e.g., Grandey,

Dickter, & Sin, 2004; Zhan, Wang, & Shi, 2016).

Although not explicitly stated, most studies assume that employees’ subjective

experience of customer mistreatment is a true reflection of actual customer mistreatment

behaviors. The experience of customer mistreatment, however, is based on complex perceptual

and evaluative judgments that may vary substantially within and across people (e.g., Skarlicki et

al., 2008). Given the inherently subjective nature of experienced customer mistreatment (Bies,

2001) and the relevance of employees’ own perceptions at work, the current study focuses on

understanding employees’ subjective experience of customer mistreatment. Our emphasis on

employees’ subjective experience of mistreatment is aligned with the original conceptualization

of customer mistreatment from Bies (2001) as a type of interactional injustice experience, which

by nature involves “perceptions” and “judgements”.

Furthermore, the well-documented associations between employees’ experience of

customer mistreatment and subsequent negative consequences also beg for studies that provide

insights on how to reduce subjective experiences of customer mistreatment and its concomitant

outcomes. Although previous studies have identified various personal characteristics (e.g., moral

identity, Skarlicki et al., 2008; negative affectivity, Walker, van Jaarsveld, & Skarlicki, 2014)

and contextual variables (e.g., perceived organization support, Wang, Liu, Liao, Gong,

Kammeyer-Mueller, & Shi, 2013; organizational climate of support, Shih, Lie, Klein, & Jiang,


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

4

2014) that buffer the negative effects of customer mistreatment, it would be especially useful to

learn what could be done to reduce the experience of customer mistreatment in the first place.

We aim to address the above-mentioned issues by integrating a social mindfulness

framework (Van Doesum, Van Lange, & Van Lange, 2013) with motivated information

processing theory (Kunda, 1990; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978) to better understand how experienced

costumer mistreatment affects employees. A social mindfulness framework is particularly

relevant to our work because it recognizes the importance of other-orientedness in social

interactions by highlighting the need to both “see” others’ perspectives and “do” prosocial acts

for others (Van Doesum et al., 2013: 86). We capture social mindfulness’ aspects of seeing and

doing with perspective taking and recall of prosocial acts, respectively, because these are

intricately related to other-orientedness and key drivers of prosocial orientation (Batson, Sager,

Garst, Kang, Rubchinsky, & Dawson, 1997; Grant & Dutton, 2012; Van Doesum et al., 2013).

Furthermore, the social mindfulness framework is particularly well-aligned with customer

service contexts such as ours where managing distressed customers while protecting one’s own

well-being are equally important goals for employees (e.g., Groth & Grandey, 2012; Koopmann,

Wang, Liu, & Song, 2015).1

Whereas the social mindfulness framework speaks more directly to why perspective

taking and prosocial recall as forms of other-orientedness matter in social interactions, motivated

information processing theory (Kunda, 1990; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978) speaks to how such

prosocial orientation can shape the way employees process and interpret other people’s behaviors

in interdependent contexts (e.g., Dutton, Workman, & Hardin, 2014; Grant & Sumanth, 2009).

According to motivated information processing theory, employees’ motivation shapes how they

1 Consistent with recent research, our theorizing does not assume that being other-oriented (e.g., showing concern

for customers) precludes the possibility of self-interest (e.g., protecting employees’ own well-being) (e.g., Bolino &

Grant, 2016; Grant & Berry, 2011).


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

5

attend to and process information, interactions, and contextual cues (Kunda, 1990; Salancik &

Pfeffer, 1978). This theory suggests that – as the two primary ways of evoking prosocial

motivation (Grant & Dutton, 2012; Maner, Lucer, Neuberg, Ciadini, Brown, & Sagarin, 2012;

Stocks, Lishner, & Decker, 2009; Tasimi & Young, 2016; Van Lange, 2008; Young, Chakroff,

& Tom, 2012) – perspective taking and prosocial recall are likely to shape employees’

experience of customer mistreatment. Employees exposed to the two prosocial interventions are

likely to notice, encode, and retain information that is consistent with their prosocial motives and

downplay information that is inconsistent with these motives in ways that impact their

subsequent perceptions and behaviors.

Consistent with information processing theory, a related goal of our research is to

investigate whether these two prosocial interventions buffer the relationship between service

employees’ experience of customer mistreatment and negative affective reactions. Work events

are proximal causes of people’s affective reactions (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) and appraisal

processes of events play a critical role in determining such reactions (Lazarus, 1991).

Specifically, an event first triggers a primary appraisal process that evaluates whether the event

is goal-relevant. This initial appraisal is followed by a secondary appraisal process that evaluates

the expected consequences of the event, which shape people’s emotional reactions. According to

motivated information processing theory, customer mistreatment experiences will be appraised

as less negative when employees are exposed to the prosocial interventions (e.g., Brewer, 2012;

Van Doesum et al., 2013). For these reasons, we expect that the two prosocial interventions will

protect employees’ mood from being severely harmed by experienced customer mistreatment.

The current study also aims to enrich the customer mistreatment literature by extending

the criterion space of service employees’ customer mistreatment experience. Specifically, we


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

6

examine two self-focused maladaptive emotion regulation strategies that are intended to reduce

people’s negative emotion reactions, namely rumination and maladaptive shopping (e.g.,

LeMoult, Arditte, D’Avanzato, & Joormann, 2013; Saintives & Lunardo, 2016; Tice &

Bratslavsky, 2000). Rumination represents a psychological indicator and maladaptive shopping a

behavioral indicator of employees’ self-focused and maladaptive reactions to customer

mistreatment. Examining these two variables extends the range of after-work spillover outcomes

of work-related experiences (e.g., Barnes & Wagner, 2009; Frone, 2008; Liu, Wang, Bamberger,

Shi, & Bacharach, 2015), and aligns well with our purpose of investigating the effectiveness of

other-oriented interventions that reduce the detrimental effects of customer mistreatment

experiences. Because rumination and maladaptive shopping are self-focused strategies for coping

with negative emotions, using other-oriented interventions to shift employees’ attention from the

self to others may prove especially effective for mitigating the emotion-based costs of customer

mistreatment. The model we propose and test is illustrated in Figure 1.

Taken together, the current study offers several key contributions. First, integrating the

social mindfulness framework with motivated information processing theory, the current study

sheds light on the subjective processes involved in service employees’ experience of customer

mistreatment. Second, our focus on prosocial orientation as captured by perspective taking and

prosocial recall introduces a potentially valuable theoretical lens for understanding the benefits

of other-oriented processes involved in service employees’ interaction with customers. Third, the

current study not only furthers our theoretical understanding of the social information processing

mechanisms underlying employees’ experience of customer mistreatment, but also identifies

feasible means for leveraging these theoretical insights for practice. Similar to other intervention

studies in the field of organizational behavior (e.g., Bono, Glomb, Shen, Kim, & Koch, 2013),


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

7

we provide examples of actionable steps that can be taken to protect employees from suffering

the detrimental consequences of negative work experiences. Finally, to ensure generalizability

and ecological validity, we utilized a within-person field experiment design and implemented

daily interventions among a sample of customer service employees. In doing so, we address the

call for employing experimental designs in field settings to simultaneously strengthen internal

and external validity (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002).

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT

Social Mindfulness Framework

The social mindfulness framework posits that motivation and ability to be socially

mindful enable individuals to pay attention to the needs and interests of others in social

interactions (Brewer, 2012; Van Doesum et al., 2013). Customer mistreatment is a prevalent

daily phenomenon in customer service contexts (Wang et al., 2011). For this reason, we focus on

motivation to be socially mindful rather than on ability because ability is less malleable at the

day level (e.g., Decety & Batson, 2007), and may take time to develop (e.g., Allen, Fonagy, &

Bateman, 2008). Our approach is consistent with dual-process studies that focus either only on

motivation effects or only on ability effects even though both may be relevant in a particular

context (e.g., Bless & Schwarz, 1999; Chaiken & Trope, 1999). Based on the social mindfulness

framework, we expect that how employees experience and react to customer mistreatment is

determined in part by their prosocial orientation, which we manipulate via recall of prosocial

action and perspective taking interventions.

The social mindfulness framework posits that to be mindful of others means to both see

others’ needs and to act in ways that help others, which are well captured by perspective taking

and prosocial recall, respectively (Van Doesum et al., 2013). Both interventions enable a focus


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

8

on the needs and interests of others and are the two fundamental types of other-oriented

interventions utilized in the prosocial literature (e.g., Dutton et al., 2014; Gilin, Maddux,

Carpenter, & Galinsky, 2013). Furthermore, both interventions afford participants psychological

and behavioral benefits, such as reduced interpersonal biases and increased social capital via the

performance of other-oriented behaviors (e.g., Grant & Dutton, 2012; Ku, Wang, & Galinsky,

2015), and are likely to have implications for how employees perceive as well as respond to

mistreatment from their customers.

Recall of Prosocial Action

People who exhibit the motivation to act prosocially tend to focus on protecting and

promoting others’ welfare (e.g., Grant, 2007; Kim, Van Dyne, Kamdar, & Johnson, 2013). Given

that service employees’ work largely requires them to attend to and care about customers’ needs

and to help meet customers’ demands, we expect that asking service employees’ to recall a time

when they were prosocial may influence how employees interpret customers’ behaviors that

could otherwise be construed as aggressive or unreasonable. This is because recalling a time

when one was socially mindful of others triggers empathetic interests and concerns that are

aligned with the needs of their interaction partners (Bolino, Harvey, & Bachrach, 2012). When

employees recall a time when they were prosocial and mindful of the needs and interests of

others, they are likely to subsequently interpret customers’ mistreatment behaviors as a signal for

needing help, rather than norm-violating interpersonal treatment towards them. Additionally,

activating prosocial motivation can lead people to engage in context-dependent processing, such

that they pay greater attention to social cues and consider situational variance in the actions of

others (Kühnen & Oyserman, 2002). A consequence of such processing is that employees will

empathize with customers and attribute any perceived mistreatment from them to unfortunate


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

9

circumstances that customers experienced. Such attributions reduce the perception and potency

of mistreatment behavior.

Based on the arguments above, we expect that an intervention which activates employees’

motivation to be socially mindful will subsequently reduce their subjective experience of

customer mistreatment. Recalling past prosocial actions can remind individuals that they are

prosocially motivated (Conway & Peetz, 2012), and is also likely to initiate a self-verification

process by which individuals tend to regulate their behavior in ways that are consistent with their

other-oriented tendencies in the past (Burke, 1991; Mayfield & Taber, 2009; Swann, 1983).

Indeed, research suggests that when prosocial activities are recalled, people become more

committed to helping (Farmer & Van Dyne, 2010; Nelson & Norton, 2005) and may pay less

attention to negative interpersonal events that contradict their other-orientedness, such as

customer mistreatment. Thus, since recalling a prosocial action activates service employees’

motivation to be socially mindful of others, we expect that it will reduce their subjective

experience of customer mistreatment:

Hypothesis 1: On days when employees receive the recall of prosocial action intervention

in the morning, they will perceive less daily customer mistreatment compared to when

they do not receive any intervention.

Moderating Effect of the Recall of Prosocial Action

Although the motivation to be socially mindful may lessen the customer mistreatment

experience, it is unlikely to completely eliminate such experience. Therefore, we further propose

that the motivation to be socially mindful may also buffer the relation of such mistreatment

experience with service employees’ subsequent negative mood. Work events elicit proximal

affective reactions, which in turn shape distal attitudes and behaviors (Weiss & Cropanzano,

1996). Two appraisal processes (i.e., primary appraisal and secondary appraisal) are involved in


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

10

the generation of emotional reactions to work events (Lam & Chen, 2012; Weiss & Cropanzano,

1996). Upon receipt of customer mistreatment, employees are likely to experience negative

emotions if the mistreatment is appraised as personally relevant (primary appraisal) and yields

negative consequences (secondary appraisal; Dormann & Zapf, 2004). Many empirical studies

report positive relations of experienced customer mistreatment with negative emotional reactions.

For example, customer mistreatment is linked to anger (e.g., Rupp & Spencer, 2008; Spencer &

Rupp, 2009), anxiety (e.g., Wegge, Van Dick, & von Bernstorff, 2010; Zhan, Wang, & Shi,

2013), and general negative emotions (e.g., Groth & Grandey, 2012; Volmer, Binnewies,

Sonnentag, & Niessen, 2012). Therefore, in line with existing empirical evidence, we expect that

daily customer mistreatment will be positively related to afternoon negative mood.

Building on our framework of social mindfulness, we expect that the recall of prosocial

action intervention will buffer the positive relationship between customer mistreatment and

afternoon negative mood. This is because when individuals are motivated to help others, they

will show more understanding when interpreting others’ behaviors (Reed & Aquino, 2003).

Owing to the context-dependent processing associated with an activated prosocial motivation

(Kühnen & Oyserman, 2002), customer mistreatment is unlikely to be interpreted as personally

targeting the employee. Instead, such mistreatment will likely be interpreted in terms of the

broader context and attributed to unfavorable circumstances, thus reducing its emotional potency.

Therefore, we expect that with the recall of prosocial action intervention, employees will be less

likely to experience negative mood elicited by customer mistreatment:

Hypothesis 2: Recall of prosocial action intervention will moderate the positive relation

of daily perceived customer mistreatment with afternoon negative mood, such that this

relation will be weaker on days when employees receive the recall of prosocial action

intervention in the morning compared to days when there is no intervention.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

11

Perspective Taking

One of the main ways to be socially mindful of others is to try and take their perspective.

Thus, apart from recalling past prosocial behaviors, prosocial motivation can also be activated by

taking others’ perspective (Baston et al., 1997). Indeed, a number of studies have revealed that

imagining how one would feel in another person’s situation evokes individuals’ empathic

concern and motivates people to help others (Batson et al., 1997; Batson, Chang, Orr, &

Rowland, 2002; Galinsky, Ku, & Wang, 2005; Van Lange, 2008). Building on motivated

information processing theory, we expect that the perspective taking intervention will motivate

service employees to attend, encode, process, and subsequently react to customer behaviors in

ways that are consistent with their prosocial orientation.

Perspective taking can prompt service employees to show more empathic concern to

customers and provide more satisfying customer service, which may result in reduced customer

mistreatment experiences. That is, taking customers’ perspective may motivate employees to

consider customers’ needs and welfare as more personally relevant and meaningful (Parker &

Axtell, 2001) and attach more importance to solving customers’ problems (Axtell, Parker,

Holman, & Totterdell, 2007). As a result, perspective taking likely enhances employees’ service

performance, thus reducing customers’ dissatisfaction with the service quality and customers’

mistreatment behaviors.

Further, the prosocial motivation evoked by taking customers’ perspective may also

prompt service employees to perceive and interpret customer mistreatment behaviors in a less

negative light. Employees with activated prosocial motivation tend to pay less attention to social

information that is not aligned with their prosocial intention. Therefore, perspective taking will

motivate employees to pay less attention to negative interactions with customers. In addition,


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

12

employees may also feel empathy and concern toward customers and think of them in terms of

being in an unfortunate situation rather than as rude or abusive individuals (Davis, 1983). Indeed,

there is some evidence showing that experimentally manipulated perspective taking is associated

with better psychological and physical synchrony among partners who experience conflict

(Nelson, Laurent, Bernstein, & Laurent, 2017). For these reasons, we hypothesize that

perspective taking will decrease employees’ negative appraisal of customers’ behaviors:

Hypothesis 3: On days when employees receive the perspective taking intervention in the

morning, they will perceive less daily customer mistreatment compared to when they do

not receive any intervention.

Moderating Effect of Perspective Taking

Given that the reduced customer mistreatment experience resulting from perspective

taking may still lead to undesired employee consequences (e.g., negative mood), we further

expect that the perspective taking intervention may also buffer the effect of perceived customer

mistreatment on employees’ negative mood. In the situation of customer mistreatment,

customers tend to perceive their own behaviors as legitimate responses to unpleasant service

(Groth & Grandey, 2012), whereas employees are likely to interpret customers’ behaviors as

unfair actions targeted at themselves (Rupp & Spencer, 2006). As a result, in the absence of

other-oriented motivation, employees tend to experience negative mood following mistreatment

(Wang et al., 2013; Zhan et al., 2013). In contrast, motivated information processing theory

suggests that the perspective taking intervention may motivate service employees to process their

customer’s perspective in a prosocial manner, and thus direct employees’ attention to situational

factors that drive customer behaviors, thereby viewing mistreatment as less personally relevant

(Vescio et al., 2003; Vorauer, Martens, & Sasaki, 2009; Wegner & Finstuen, 1977). Perspective

taking lessens the extent to which people experience self-oriented feelings like anxiety and


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

13

distress in response to tense interpersonal interactions (Davis, 1983). When mistreatment is seen

as less personally relevant, then employees’ negative emotional response to mistreatment may be

muted. Therefore, we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 4: Perspective taking intervention will moderate the positive relation of daily

perceived customer mistreatment with afternoon negative mood, such that this relation

will be weaker on days when employees receive the perspective taking intervention in the

morning compared to days when there is no intervention.

Customer Mistreatment and Employee Self-Focused Maladaptive Outcomes

Affective reactions elicited by work events have downstream influences on cognition and

behavior (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). It is not surprising, then, that the negative emotion

induced by customer mistreatment can be detrimental for service employees (Koopmann et al.,

2015). For instance, service employees who experience negative mood may engage in emotion-

based maladaptive coping (Spector & Fox, 2002), which refers to reactions to negative emotions

that produce long-term dysfunctional outcomes (Brown, Westbrook, & Challagalla, 2005). In

this study we examine two such self-focused, emotion-based maladaptive outcomes: rumination

and maladaptive shopping.

Conceptualized as a self-focused form of maladaptive cognition, rumination refers to

persistent thoughts that focus on one’s failures and negative mood for extended periods of time

(Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008). Research has robustly reported that negative

affect leads to ruminative self-focused attention (e.g., Mor & Winquist, 2002; Smith & Alloy,

2009) and that rumination is a maladaptive outcome of customer mistreatment (Baranik, Wang,

Gong, & Shi, 2017; Wang et al., 2013). Unlike problem-solving or distraction strategies that

remove focus away from the self, rumination keeps the negative thoughts accessible in memory,

which perpetuates people’s negative mood rather than diminishing it (e.g., Wang et al., 2013).

Cognitive theories of rumination suggest that rumination is triggered by goal failure (Martin &


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

14

Tesser, 1996). Because emotional reactions serve as feedback for the effectiveness of on-going

goal pursuits (e.g., Johnson, Howe, & Chang, 2013; Johnson, Chang, & Lord, 2006), it is

conceivable that negative mood may signal goal failure for service employees, thus precipitating

rumination.

Apart from rumination, shopping can also serve as a self-focused, emotion-based coping

behavior that is used to regulate one’s mood states (Hama, 2001; Jacobs, 1986). Dittmar, Long,

and Bond (2007) investigated the motivation behind online shopping, and found that mood

enhancement was a key driver of people’s personal shopping behavior. Such shopping is also a

self-focused behavior, as impulsive consumption behaviors are positively associated with an

individualistic self-construal (e.g., Chen, Ng, & Rao, 2005). Although shopping is not

necessarily maladaptive, it can lead to financial and/or mental problems when it occurs without

proper self-control (Carver & Scheier, 1998). Self-regulation perspectives posit that individuals

draw from a limited pool of self-regulatory resources to control their cognition and behavior

(Beal, Weiss, Barros, & MacDermid, 2005; Johnson, Muraven, Donaldson, & Lin, 2017). When

employees experience customer mistreatment, self-regulatory resources are consumed as they try

to avoid the distraction of negative mood while performing in-role tasks (Carver, Scheier, &

Weintraub, 1989; Grandey et al., 2004). As a result, these employees will have impaired

regulatory resources by the end of the workday, making it difficult to regulate subsequent mood-

enhancing behaviors (e.g., shopping) at appropriate levels (Fabes & Eisenberg, 1997; Liu, Song,

Koopmann, Wang, Chang, & Shi, in press).

Shopping as a maladaptive behavior has received little attention from organizational

researchers yet it is a prime example of how negative work experiences can spillover to non-

work domains. Indeed, personal shopping is a common after-work activity for employees


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

15

(Browne, Durrett, & Wetherbe, 2004) and people tend to rely on maladaptive shopping in

misguided efforts to manage their negative mood (Dittmar et al., 2007; Donnelly, Ksendzova, &

Howell, 2013). Such shopping can also be maladaptive by causing serious financial problems

and threatening individuals’ mental health in the long run (e.g., when people lack control over

shopping impulses; Baumeister, 2002; Edwards, 1993). Based on the above, we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 5: Negative mood will mediate (a) the positive relation of daily perceived

customer mistreatment with employee evening rumination, and (b) the positive relation of

daily perceived customer mistreatment with employee evening maladaptive shopping.

Combining all of the hypotheses above, we propose that the recall of prosocial action and

perspective taking interventions will reduce the maladaptive self-focused evening outcomes (i.e.,

rumination and maladaptive shopping) of customer mistreatment, via their effects on employees’

perceived customer mistreatment and the concomitant negative mood. By shifting employees’

attention away from the self and toward others, these social mindfulness interventions may prove

especially effective at curbing self-focused cognitions and impulsive behaviors later in the day.

Thus, we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 6: Compared to the control condition, (a) recall of prosocial action and (b)

perspective taking will reduce evening rumination via their effects on perceived customer

mistreatment and afternoon negative mood.

Hypothesis 7: Compared to the control condition, (a) recall of prosocial action and (b)

perspective taking will reduce evening maladaptive shopping via their effects on

perceived customer mistreatment and afternoon negative mood.

METHOD

Sample and Procedure

We collected data from a call center of a large bank located in southeast China. The

bank’s retail business department assisted us in distributing the study announcement to every call

center customer service employee (N = 96), along with a letter assuring them that their responses


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

16

would be kept confidential and only used for third-party research purposes. Ninety-four

employees agreed to participate in our study (response rate = 97.92 %). Of the 94 participants,

86.2% were female, they had an average age of 21.1 years (SD = 2.8), an average organizational

tenure of 1.7 years (SD = 1.6), and an average of 13.1 (SD = 1.8) years of education. Participants’

major work responsibilities included responding to customers’ requests, dealing with complaints,

and providing other customer service support via phone. On average, they received about 80

calls from customers per day during the study period. Given that participants’ daily work

involves frequent interactions with customers, and that mistreatment is more likely in less

personal (i.e., non-face-to-face) exchanges, the likelihood that they were exposed to daily

customer mistreatment is quite high (Grandey et al., 2004). This specific sample is therefore

ideal for the purposes of our study. Further, since the call center industry is among the fastest-

growing segments of the economy, and organizations are increasingly moving service

interactions to call centers (Batt, 2002; van Jaarsveld, Walker, & Skarlicki, 2010), our call center

setting is relevant for many organizations (Wang et al., 2011).

Data collection occurred in two phases. In the first phase, all participants completed a

brief questionnaire about demographics (i.e., gender, age, and organizational tenure). A month

later, in the second phase, participants completed daily surveys 4 times per workday (i.e.,

morning, noon, afternoon, and evening) for 3 consecutive weeks. Across the 15 survey days (i.e.,

5 workdays × 3 weeks), the compliance rate was 100%, thus we received 1410 responses in total

from participants (i.e., 4 daily surveys × 5 workdays × 3 weeks × 94 participants). The unusually

high compliance rate owes to company sponsorship of the study, use of company time to fill out

the daily surveys, and financial incentives for completing all surveys.

Regarding the timing of survey administration, the morning survey (measuring negative


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

17

mood) was distributed to the participants when they first arrived at work in the morning. When

participants finished their morning work around noon, the noon survey (measuring customer

mistreatment experienced during the morning work) was distributed and completed prior to the

lunch break. At the end of the afternoon before participants left work, they completed the

afternoon survey (measuring customer mistreatment experienced during the afternoon work and

employee afternoon negative mood). After participants handed in the afternoon survey, the

evening survey (measuring rumination and maladaptive shopping) was distributed to them to

bring home. Participants were instructed to complete the evening survey prior to going to bed.

Participants turned in the completed evening surveys as soon as they arrived at work the next

morning (with the exception that Friday evening surveys were turned in on the following

Monday morning). Each survey took around 5-10 minutes to complete, which is consistent with

the recommended survey length for daily diary studies (Fisher & To, 2012).

During the 5 workdays of the first week, all participants were assigned to the control

condition and thus did not receive any intervention in the morning. In the second week, we

randomly assigned half of the participants to the recall of prosocial action intervention and these

participants then received perspective taking intervention during the third week. The other half of

the sample were assigned to the perspective taking intervention during the second week, and then

to the recall of prosocial action intervention during the third week. We did this to counter-

balance the sequence of experimental treatment at the week level, which we also controlled for in

our analyses. Interventions were administered in the morning after the participants completed the

morning surveys, thus we captured morning baseline mood prior to the intervention.

Social Mindfulness Interventions

Recall of prosocial action. The recall of prosocial action intervention was adapted from


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

18

Weinstein and Ryan (2010). Specifically, participants in this condition were instructed to recall

and describe one of their recent prosocial behaviors: “Please describe an act where you helped

someone else or did something for a good cause in your work or everyday life recently. Describe

the nature of the helping act, your relation to the person or persons whom you helped, and your

feelings after the helping behaviors. Please include as many details as possible. Please do not

refer to the same event that you have described in the past.” The participants wrote their

responses in the survey booklet, which covered both work and non-work prosocial behaviors. In

our data analysis, recall of prosocial action intervention was coded as a dummy variable at the

day level (1 = “received the recall treatment” vs. 0 = “did not receive the recall treatment”).

Perspective taking. The perspective taking intervention was adapted from Weyant (2007).

Specifically, participants in this condition were asked to recall and answer a few questions about

a rude phone conversation they had with a customer during the previous day. Questions included

“How did you feel about the phone call in general?”, “What was the customer’s problem in terms

of products/service?”, and “How did you assist him/her with the problem?” Then, participants

were instructed to imagine that they were in the position of the customer and to answer a few

questions from the perspective of the customer. Questions included “Please describe the problem

about which you are calling”, “What kind of products and information do you need?”, “How do

you want to be treated during the phone call?”, and “What kind of service will make you feel

satisfied?” The participants wrote their answers to all questions in the survey booklet. In our data

analysis, the perspective taking intervention was coded as a dummy variable at the day level (1 =

“received the perspective taking treatment” vs. 0 = “did not receive the perspective taking

treatment”).

Manipulation check. We conducted two manipulation check pilot studies to verify the


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

19

effectiveness of our social mindfulness interventions. In the first pilot, we recruited a sample of

120 university students (average age = 20.9 years with a SD of 0.7; 63.1% were female) from a

major Chinese university located in the same city as the bank call center to examine the

effectiveness of the recall of prosocial action intervention. Participants were randomly assigned

into either a recall of prosocial action condition or control condition (we used the same recall of

prosocial action manipulation as reported above). Following Lyubomirsky, Sousa, and

Dickerhoof (2006), participants in the control condition did not recall or write down anything

before responding to the survey. Following the manipulation, participants responded to a survey

containing manipulation check items (i.e., prosocial motivation) and filler items (i.e., positive

mood, negative mood, and vigor). In particular, we used the 5-item scale developed by Grant and

Sumanth (2009) to measure prosocial motivation (α = .74; e.g., “I get energized by working on

tasks that have the potential to benefit others”). We measured positive mood (α = .70; e.g.,

“excited”) and negative mood (α = .89; e.g., “angry”) using 10 items each that were developed

by Watson, Clark, and Tellegan (1988). We used the 6-item scale developed by Schaufeli,

Bakker, and Salanova (2006) to measure vigor (α = .78; e.g., “I feel strong and vigorous now”).

Results revealed that participants in the recall of prosocial action condition (M = 4.23, SD = .47)

reported higher levels of prosocial motivation than those in the control condition (M = 4.06, SD

= .48; t = 2.01, p < .05; Cohen’s d = .36). In addition, they did not differ on the other measures

(i.e., positive mood, negative mood, and vigor). These findings are encouraging with respect to

the efficacy of our intervention for improving participants’ prosocial motivation.

In the second pilot, we recruited a separate sample of 120 students (average age = 21.1

years with a SD of 0.8; 54.2% were female) from the same university to examine the efficacy of

the perspective taking intervention. Participants were randomly assigned into either a perspective


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

20

taking condition or control condition. Since the participants were not service employees, we

followed Rafaeli et al.’s (2012) procedure and asked participants from both conditions to read

the transcripts of an aggressive service call as a simulation of a real customer mistreatment

experience. In the perspective taking condition, participants answered questions regarding the

service call first from the perspective of the service employee and then from the perspective of

the customer. Participants in the control condition only answered questions from the perspective

of the service employee (they were not instructed to take the customer’s perspective). Afterwards,

participants responded to a survey containing manipulation check items (i.e., perspective taking,

α = .67) and the same filler items as those used in the first pilot study (i.e., positive mood, α = .76;

negative mood, α = .87; and vigor, α = .85). Perspective taking was measured by the 7-item scale

developed by Miller, Birkholt, Scott, and Stage (1995; e.g., “I try to look at everybody’s side of a

disagreement before I make a decision”). Results indicated that participants in the perspective

taking condition (M = 3.75, SD = .62) reported greater perspective taking than those in the

control condition (M = 3.53, SD = .55; t = 2.04, p < .05; Cohen’s d = .38). No differences were

found for positive mood, negative mood, and vigor. These results suggest that our intervention

successfully increased participants’ intention to take other peoples’ perspective.

Measures

We followed Brislin’s (1980) translation-back translation procedure to translate the

measures from English to Chinese. Unless noted otherwise, participants responded to each item

using a 5-point response scale (from 1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree; see all

measurement items in Appendix).

Negative mood. On both the morning and afternoon surveys, negative mood was

measured using an 8-item scale developed by Mohr et al. (2005). Participants were asked to


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

21

indicate the extent to which they agreed that each of the eight items described their current mood

states (e.g., “hostile” and “angry”). Across the 15 survey days, the mean Cronbach’s alpha for

this scale was .86 on the morning survey (with a range of [.78, .89]; SD = .03) and .89 on the

afternoon survey (with a range of [.83, .92]; SD = .02).

Customer mistreatment. On both the noon and afternoon surveys, employees’ experience

of customer mistreatment was measured using an 18-item scale developed by Wang et al. (2011).

Participants rated how frequently they experienced customer mistreatment in the morning or

afternoon on a 5-point scale (0 = never, 1 = a few times, 2 = half of the time, 3 = a majority of the

time, and 4 = all of the time). Across the 15 surveyed days, the mean Cronbach’s alpha was .95

for the noon survey (with a range of [.93, .96]; SD = .01) and .95 for the afternoon survey (with a

range of [.93, .96]; SD = .01). We used the average score of morning and afternoon customer

mistreatment ratings to represent employees’ daily customer mistreatment, which helps in part to

alleviate potential retrospective biases. The distribution of daily customer mistreatment was

positively skewed (skewness = 1.61; kurtosis = 3.52), which is not surprising given its low base-

rate nature (Grandey, Foo, Groth, & Goodwin, 2012).

Rumination. On the evening survey, rumination was measured using an 8-item scale

developed by Wang et al. (2013; e.g., “I could not stop thinking about the bad experience my

clients gave me today” and “Thoughts and feelings about how my clients hurt me today kept

running through my head”). Across the 15 surveyed days, the mean Cronbach’s alpha was .96

(with a range of [.93, .97]; SD = .01). The distribution of evening rumination was positively

skewed (skewness = 1.36; kurtosis = 1.29) due to its low base-rate feature (e.g., Wang et al.,

2013).

Maladaptive shopping. To measure maladaptive shopping behavior, we used two items


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

22

from the compulsive shopping scale developed by Edwards (1993) and one item from the

impulse buying scale developed by Verplanken and Herabadi (2001). The reason we did not use

the full scales is because most of the items from the scales confound individuals’ feelings about

the shopping experience during or after shopping (e.g., “I feel guilty or ashamed after I go on a

buying binge” from Edwards [1993]; “I can become very excited if I see something I would like

to buy” from Verplanken and Herabadi [2001]). In addition, the scales are comprised of too

many items to feasibly include in daily surveys. The three items we used were “After work, I

bought things that I do not need or will not use,” “After work, I bought things even though I

couldn’t afford them,” and “After work, I went shopping despite the fact that I did not have spare

time or the money.” Across the 15 surveyed days, the mean Cronbach’s alpha was .84, ranging

from .70 to .90 (SD = .05). The distribution of evening maladaptive shopping was positively

skewed (skewness = .82; kurtosis = .13) due to its low base-rate feature (e.g., Manolis & Roberts,

2008). Additionally, because the skewness and kurtosis values of our dependent variables are all

within the suggested cutoffs for multivariate skewness (|3.00|) and kurtosis (|10.00|)

recommended by Kline (2011, p. 63; the same criterion has also been used by Mawritz,

Greenbaum, Butts, & Graham, in press), we did not normalize these variables for the analyses

reported in the manuscript.2

To verify the validity of our maladaptive shopping measure, we recruited a sample of 148

employees using Amazon Mechanical Turk (participants received one dollar as payment for

completing the survey). Of the 148 participants, 43.9% were female, their average age was 36.2

2 In supplementary analyses, we used square-root-transformed dependent variables, and log-transformed dependent

variables to correct for their skewness. Both sets of analyses replicated our results reported in this manuscript. These

tests indicate that our findings are robust and unlikely to be driven by non-normal distributions of the dependent

variables. We also applied multiple approaches to detecting potential outliers in our dependent variables (i.e., 2 SDs

around the mean, Kline, 2011; Median absolute deviation approach, Leys, Ley, Klein, Bernard, & Licata, 2013), yet

our pattern of findings remained the same. Interested readers can contact the first author for detailed information.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

23

years (SD = 11.3), and their average organizational tenure was 16.5 years (SD = 10.8). We

checked respondents’ locations according to their IP address-based longitudes and latitudes at the

time when they responded to our survey, which revealed that 143 of 148 respondents were based

in the US. The online survey was conducted in the morning, and participants reported their after-

work maladaptive shopping from the previous day (α = .87) as well as their mood regulation

motivation for shopping using a 7-item scale developed by Dittmar et al. (2007; α = .93; e.g.,

“Buying things arouses my emotions and feelings”). Participants also directly reported how

much money they spent after work during the previous day and what percentage of this money

was unnecessary. Results revealed that participants’ responses on maladaptive shopping were

positively related to mood regulation motivation (r = .73, p < .01), their total expenses (r = .29, p

< .01), and their reported percentage of unnecessary spending (r = .33, p < .01), all of which

provide support for the validity of our maladaptive shopping measure.

Order of intervention. We created a dummy variable to represent the order of the two

interventions for each participant. This variable was coded as 0 for participants who received the

recall of prosocial action intervention first, and 1 for those who received the perspective taking

intervention first.

Analytic Strategy

We used multilevel modeling to estimate the hypothesized model in Mplus 7.2 (Muthén

& Muthén, 2012) because of the nested data structure. We tested the mediation hypotheses using

Monte Carlo simulation procedures in the open-source software R (http://www.quantpsy.org).

This method accurately reflect the asymmetric nature of the sampling distribution of the indirect

effect (Preacher, Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010).


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

24

We specified a two-level model to examine the hypothesized model.3 At Level-1 (i.e.,

within-person level), we specified the fixed effects of both interventions on daily customer

mistreatment, afternoon negative mood, evening rumination, and evening maladaptive shopping.

We also specified the effects of daily customer mistreatment on afternoon negative mood,

evening rumination, and evening maladaptive shopping. The effects of afternoon negative mood

on evening rumination and evening maladaptive shopping were also specified. In addition, the

effects of the interaction terms between the social mindfulness interventions and daily customer

mistreatment (i.e., daily customer mistreatment × recall of prosocial action intervention, and

daily customer mistreatment × perspective taking intervention) on afternoon negative mood,

evening rumination, and evening maladaptive shopping were specified. Further, we controlled

for the effects of morning negative mood on daily customer mistreatment and afternoon negative

mood. The effect of Day T – 1’s evening rumination on Day T’s evening rumination, as well as

the effect of Day T – 1’s evening maladaptive shopping on Day T’s evening maladaptive

shopping were also controlled. At Level-2 (i.e., between-person level), we controlled for the

effects of intervention order on all Level-1 endogenous variables. Recall of prosocial action

intervention, perspective taking intervention, daily customer mistreatment, and morning negative

mood were group-mean centered to remove between-person variance in estimating the within-

person effect of our model (Enders & Tofighi, 2007). The interaction terms were created after

group-mean centering the two intervention dummy variables and daily customer mistreatment.

3 Following an anonymous reviewer’s suggestion, we also estimated a 3-level model (daily surveys nested in weekly

intervention conditions, which are further nested in persons) to test our hypotheses. The 3-level model yields similar

results to our 2-level model. We also tested our 2-level model using the MLR (Maximum likelihood estimation with

robust standard errors) to mitigate concerns of potential unmodeled heterogeneity (Curran, West, & Fince, 1996;

Hox, Maas, & Brinkhuis, 2010), and the results of these analyses were similar to our current results. Interested

readers can contact the first author for detailed information.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

25

RESULTS

Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and correlations for the

focal variables. One-way random-factor ANOVA results showed that the between-person

variance was significant for daily customer mistreatment (ICC [1] = .73, F (93, 1,316) = 40.71, p

< .01), afternoon negative mood (ICC [1] = .57, F (93, 1,316) = 21.26, p < .01), evening

maladaptive shopping (ICC [1] = .54, F (93, 1,316) = 18.79, p < .01), and evening rumination

(ICC [1] = .50, F (93, 1,316) = 15.98, p < .01). These results indicate that there is substantial

variance in the mediators and outcome variables at the between- and within-person levels,

therefore warranting the use of multilevel modeling to analyze our data.

Hypothesis Testing

The coefficients in the hypothesized model are presented in Table 2 and Figure 2.4 We

used Snijders and Bosker’s (1999) formulas to calculate pseudo-R2 (~R

2) for the effect sizes for

predicting outcomes. Predictors included in the model accounted for 13% of the within-person

variance in employee daily experience of customer mistreatment, 16% in afternoon negative

mood, 24% in evening rumination, and 28% in evening maladaptive shopping. As is shown in

Table 2, both interventions – recall of prosocial action (γ = -.09, p < .05) and perspective taking

(γ = -.10, p < .01) – were negatively related to service employees’ daily experience of customer

4 We also controlled for time effects (whether there is linear trend in study variables across the 15 surveyed days)

and day-of-the-week effects (using Monday as the reference, four dummy variables for Tuesday, Wednesday,

Thursday, and Friday were controlled) on all the endogenous variables in our model. Findings were virtually

identical with and without these two effects. For the sake of brevity, we report results without these control variables.

In addition, in order to investigate whether our intervention effects changed over time, we tested the moderation

effect of time on the two intervention effects. Specifically, we created a variable (i.e., day of the week as a

continuous variable) to represent time. We then created two interaction terms (i.e., time × recall of prosocial

intervention and time × perspective taking intervention) and tested their effects on customer mistreatment

experience. Results showed that time did not significantly moderate recall of prosocial action’s effect on customer

mistreatment experience (γ = .02, p > .05) or perspective taking’s effect on customer mistreatment experience (γ

= .01, p > .05). Therefore, it does not appear that our intervention effects changed over time.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

26

mistreatment.5 This finding indicates that on the days when employees received either

intervention in the morning, they experienced less customer mistreatment compared to the days

without any intervention. Therefore, Hypotheses 1 and 3 were supported.6

In addition, participants’ daily experience of customer mistreatment was positively

related to their afternoon negative mood (γ = .25, p < .01), and this positive relation was

moderated by recall of prosocial intervention (γ = -.27, p < .05). Following Cohen, Cohen, West,

and Aiken’s (2003) procedure, we plotted the effect of daily customer mistreatment on afternoon

negative mood at conditional values of recall of prosocial action interventions (i.e., 0 vs. 1) in

Figure 3. As shown in the figure, the effect of daily customer mistreatment on afternoon negative

mood was not significant when there was the prosocial action intervention in the morning (γ

= .07, p > .10), but positive and significant when there was no intervention in the morning (γ

= .34, p < .01). Thus, Hypothesis 2 was supported. The perspective intervention, however, did

not moderate the relation of daily customer mistreatment with afternoon negative mood (γ = -.14,

p > .10). Thus, Hypothesis 4 was not supported.

Afternoon negative mood was positively related to both evening rumination (γ = .24, p

< .01) and evening maladaptive shopping (γ = .22, p < .01). The indirect effect of perceived daily

customer mistreatment on evening rumination via afternoon negative mood was .066, with a 95%

CI of [.018, .122]. The indirect effect of daily customer mistreatment on evening maladaptive

5 To test the indirect effects of the interventions on outcome variables, our main analyses reported here are based on

multilevel modeling. We also conducted repeated-measure ANOVAs and found that the means of employee daily

experience of customer mistreatment were significantly different across experimental and control conditions, F(2,

938) = 16.12, p < .01, ω2 = .10. According to Keppel (1991: 66), a .10 value of ω

2 indicates a medium effect size

(typically ranging from .06 to .15) for the repeated-measure design. Further probing within-person paired-

differences across experimental and control conditions, we found that daily experience of customer mistreatment

was higher in the control condition (Mcontrol condition = .63, SD = .60) than in the recall of prosocial action condition

(Mrecall of prosocial action condition = .54, SD = .56; t = 3.98, p < .01; Cohen’s d = .18), and in the perspective taking condition

(Mperspective taking condition = .53, SD = .51; t = 5.13, p < .01; Cohen’s d = .25).

6 We also compared the two interventions’ effects on employees’ daily experience of customer mistreatment, and

observed that the difference between the two was .014, with 95% confidence interval (CI) of [-.072, .101]. Because

the CI contains zero, the two intervention effects are not significantly different from each other.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

27

shopping via afternoon negative mood was .056, with a 95% confidence interval (CI) of

[.016, .104]. Because these CIs do not contain zero, Hypotheses 5a and 5b were both supported.

The indirect effects of the two interventions on the distal outcomes are summarized in

Table 3. Specifically, the indirect effect of the prosocial action intervention on afternoon

negative mood via daily customer mistreatment was -.022, with a 95% CI of [-.048, -.004].

Similarly, the indirect effect of the prosocial action intervention on evening rumination via daily

customer mistreatment and afternoon negative mood was -.005, with a 95% CI of [-.014, -.001].

The indirect effect of the prosocial action intervention on evening maladaptive shopping via

daily customer mistreatment and afternoon negative mood was -.005, with a 95% CI of [-.012,

-.001]. Given that these CIs do not contain zero, Hypotheses 6a and 7a were both supported.

The indirect effect of the perspective taking intervention on afternoon mood via daily

customer mistreatment was -.025, with a 95% CI of [-.050, -.006]. The indirect effect of the

perspective taking intervention on evening rumination via daily customer mistreatment and

afternoon negative mood was -.006, with a 95% CI of [-.012, -.001]. Lastly, the indirect effect of

the perspective taking intervention on evening maladaptive shopping via daily customer

mistreatment and afternoon negative mood was -.006, with a 95% CI of [-.014, -.001]. Because

the CIs do not contain zero, Hypotheses 6b and 7b were both supported. Above all, results

indicated that both other-oriented interventions––recall of prosocial action and perspective

taking––decreased employees’ daily experience of customer mistreatment, which in turn reduced

afternoon negative mood and, later on, reduced evening rumination and maladaptive shopping.

DISCUSSION

This study breaks new ground by investigating the effects of two daily prosocial

interventions on employees’ experiences of and responses to customer mistreatment in a field


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

28

experiment. We found that on days when service employees were instructed to recall a prosocial

action in the morning (vs. control condition), they experienced less (vs. more) customer

mistreatment during the day, and in turn, lower (vs. higher) negative mood in the afternoon,

which was associated with less (vs. more) rumination and maladaptive shopping in the evening.

We observed comparable intervention effects for perspective taking in the morning. Further, we

found that the prosocial action intervention also buffered the relation of employees’ experience

of customer mistreatment with afternoon negative mood.

Theoretical and Practical Implications

We discuss six theoretical implications of our findings. First, our study extends the

customer mistreatment literature by highlighting the distinction between actual customer

mistreatment and employees’ subjective experience of customer mistreatment and by

investigating the antecedents of employees’ experience of customer mistreatment following a

social mindfulness framework (Van Doesum et al., 2013). Previous research has mainly focused

on the detrimental effects of customer mistreatment and moderators of such effects (e.g.,

Dormann & Zapf, 2004; Grandey et al., 2004; Wang et al., 2013), while overlooking the

processes that potentially drive employees’ experience of customer mistreatment. Drawing from

the social mindfulness framework, our study demonstrates how two other-oriented daily

interventions (viz., recall of prosocial action and perspective taking) help mitigate employees’

experience of customer mistreatment. In doing so, we applied and examined the social

mindfulness framework in customer service setting and thus contributed to both the social

mindfulness and customer mistreatment literatures.

On the one hand, we highlighted how the integration of social mindfulness with

motivated information processing theory is fruitful for understanding customer mistreatment


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

29

experiences. This integrated approach is particularly relevant because whether people respond to

prickly interpersonal interactions in maladaptive ways largely depends on their motivation of

being socially mindful (Van Doesum et al., 2013). On the other hand, we also responded to

recent calls to identify antecedents of customer mistreatment experience (e.g., Koopmann et al.,

2015) and provided insights to an important but unaddressed question: “How can we reduce

employees’ experience of customer mistreatment?” Specifically, our findings demonstrate that

employees’ prosocial orientation plays important roles in the formation of customer mistreatment

perceptions as well as employee reactions to such perceptions. These findings are consistent with

prior arguments that prosocial mindfulness motivates employees to have empathetic interests that

are aligned with customer needs (Bolino et al., 2012; Van Doesum et al., 2013).

Second, our research also contributes to the work-to-nonwork spillover literature.

Specifically, we focused on a prevalent yet rarely studied maladaptive self-focused behavior –

evening maladaptive shopping – and showed that employees’ daily experience of customer

mistreatment led to more maladaptive shopping in the evening via the mediating effect of

afternoon negative mood. While shopping is a popular topic in fields like marketing (e.g.,

Hausman, 2000) and clinical psychology (e.g., Dittmar, 2004), it is overlooked in the

management literature. Previous studies on maladaptive shopping have either focused on

individual differences as antecedents (e.g., Bosnjak, Galesic, & Tuten, 2007; Wang & Yang,

2008) or examined maladaptive shopping as a consequence of traumatic stress (e.g., Mandel &

Smeesters, 2008; Somer & Ruvio, 2014). It is surprising that associations of work experiences

with after-work maladaptive shopping are rarely explored, especially given that work comprises

one-third of employees’ daily lives and impacts various after-work maladaptive behaviors (e.g.,

Barnes & Wagner, 2009; Liu, Wang, Chang, Shi, Zhou, & Shao, 2015; Liu, Wang, Zhan, & Shi,


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

30

2009). Despite being rarely explored, maladaptive shopping is relevant to consider within a

social mindfulness and motivated information processing framework because impulsive

consumption behaviors are symptomatic of an individualistic self-focus (Chen et al., 2005).

Becoming more prosocial, which shifts attention away from the self, should therefore reduce

impulsive and individualistic acts. For this reason we positioned maladaptive shopping as an

example of a self-focused maladaptive coping outcome of customer mistreatment experiences,

and our study is among the first to link work-related experiences to maladaptive shopping. Our

findings therefore extend the range of spillover consequences of employees’ work-related

experiences and provide initial insight into maladaptive shopping. Further research that identifies

the impact of work-related experiences on maladaptive shopping and other impulsive self-

focused behaviors is warranted.

Third, our within-person field experiment design alleviates common concerns about

internal validity and ecological validity (e.g., Cook & Campbell, 1979; Rafaeli et al., 2012).

Specifically, our within-person experiment design removes the potential confounding effects of

individual differences and variations in organizational contexts, enabling us to focus exclusively

on the effects of the interventions. Additionally, our field experiment design has advantages over

laboratory studies using student samples in that our research setting and sample match the target

setting and potential users of the interventions (Dipboye & Flanagan, 1979). When possible,

future research ought to use a similar research design to obtain clear causal inferences and

generalizable findings. Future research can build upon our study by exploring possible boundary

conditions of the reported intervention effects, including moderation effects of individual

differences and organizational contexts. For instance, while we manipulated employees’ other-

orientedness by treating prosocial motivation as a malleable state, it can also have chronic, trait-


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

31

like counterparts (e.g., Grant & Sumanth, 2009; Meglino & Korsgaard, 2004; Parker & Axtell,

2001). It may be that the trait-like characteristics might augment or perhaps diminish the effects

of the social mindfulness interventions. In addition, as indicated by the high ICC in customer

mistreatment experience, such mistreatment tended to vary greatly between employees. Although

it is not clear whether these differences are driven by personalities that may impact perception

(e.g., neurotic employees may perceive more mistreatment), or by general customer service

quality (e.g., employees providing low-quality service are more likely to be mistreated), it is

important to take individual differences into consideration (Koopmann et al., 2015). As such, one

direction for future research is to examine possible interaction effects between individual

differences and the prosocial interventions. In addition, the effects of the interventions may also

vary across different contexts, given that supportive (Shih et al., 2014) and empowering (Yagil &

Ben-Zur, 2009) organizational contexts impact employees’ motivation, cognition, and behavior.

Thus, it would also be fruitful to consider whether and how organizational contexts bound the

effects of the recall of prosocial action and perspective taking interventions.

Fourth, our finding did not support our hypothesis about the buffering effect of the

perspective taking intervention on the positive relation of customer mistreatment with negative

mood. On the one hand, perspective taking may reduce negative affective reactions by increasing

service employees’ other-orientation and causing them to attribute customer mistreatment to

non-self (e.g., situational) factors (Vescio et al., 2003). On the other hand, perspective taking

may also reduce self-serving thinking (Miller & Ross, 1975), making employees more aware of

their failures to provide satisfactory service (as inferred from customer mistreatment). These goal

failure experiences may subsequently lead to rumination and persistent negative mood states

(e.g., Wang et al., 2013). If both of these mechanisms operate concurrently, then it would be


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

32

difficult to detect the moderation effect of the perspective taking intervention. Future research

that directly examines potential mechanisms (and possibly counteracting ones) underlying

perspective taking would be useful.

Fifth, although we did not hypothesize full mediation effects of negative mood in linking

daily experience of customer mistreatment to evening maladaptive coping outcomes, our results

suggest a full mediation pattern. Such a finding supports our choice of negative mood as the

critical mediation mechanism. Specifically, drawing from self-regulation perspectives, we

theorized and showed that employees’ experienced negative events (i.e., customer mistreatment)

first triggered their affective responses (i.e., negative mood), which subsequently resulted in

maladaptive coping (i.e., rumination and maladaptive shopping). This is consistent with prior

studies that conceptualized affective reactions as the critical mechanism linking customer

mistreatment to negative outcomes (e.g., Groth & Grandey, 2012; Spencer & Rupp, 2009). In

addition, we also did not find significant moderation effects of the two interventions on the direct

effects of experienced customer mistreatment on maladaptive coping outcomes, suggesting that

the buffering impacts of our interventions appeared to work on reducing the effect of customer

mistreatment on negative mood, and subsequently influencing maladaptive coping.

Sixth, in our manipulation check study, recall of prosocial actions intervention was found

to have no effect on participants’ positive mood, which appears counterintuitive and contrary to

the largely reported positive association between prosocial behaviors and positive mood (e.g.,

Lyubomirsky & Layouts, 2013). However, recent studies (e.g., Lanaj, Johnson, & Wang, 2016;

Weinstein & Ryan, 2010) also indicate that relationships between helping and helpers’ positive

mood might be more complicated than a simple positive association, due to employees’ various

motivations and the potential costs of helping behaviors. For instance, according to self-


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

33

determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), prosocial actions driven by intrinsic motivation are

more likely to lead to satisfaction, compared to those driven by extrinsic motivation.

Consistently, Weinstein and Ryan (2010) found that autonomous helping was positively

associated with helper positive affect whereas controlled helping was negatively associated with

helper positive affect. Additionally, prosocial behaviors may also result in personal cost, which

can make the prosocial activity an unpleasant experience. For example, engaging in prosocial

behaviors consumes employees’ regulatory resources, possibly leaving them too depleted to

effectively perform other work activities (Lanaj et al., 2016; Lin & Johnson, 2015; Lin, Ma, &

Johnson, 2016). Given that we did not distinguish between autonomous versus controlled helping

or solicit details about helping-related costs in our recall of prosocial action intervention, it

should not be expected that this recall intervention would necessarily induce positive mood.

More research is needed to investigate the underlying mechanisms and unpack the seemingly

complicated effect that the recall of prosocial action intervention has on positive mood.

We now turn our attention to the practical implications of our findings. While customer

mistreatment’s damaging effect on service employees’ well-being is well-established, this

phenomenon remains a headache for organizations because organizations have little control over

customers and thus cannot directly prevent them from exhibiting norm-violating behaviors

(McColl-Kennedy, Patterson, Smith, & Brady, 2009). To alleviate such concerns, our findings

point to some rather easily implementable strategies to improve service employees’ well-being.

For example, instructing service employees to recall recent prosocial actions prior to beginning

the workday produced a meaningful decrease in their daily experience of customer mistreatment

and negative mood in the afternoon. Moreover, the effects of this intervention persisted into the

evening, resulting in less self-focused maladaptive coping at home. Accordingly, organizations


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

34

could develop formal programs encouraging employees to build daily routines of deliberately

reflecting on their prosocial behaviors before they start working so as to improve their work

experience during the day and well-being after work. Moreover, a recall prosocial action

intervention would also mitigate the extent to which customer mistreatment elicits negative

emotional reactions in employees, on days when such mistreatment occurs. As such, it is likely

that by applying such a daily intervention, service employees’ well-being may be improved in

the long run.

In a similar vein, our study suggests that instructing employees to take the perspective of

customers would also lessen employees’ experience of customer mistreatment and negative

mood during the day, and their self-focused maladaptive coping during the evening. While there

are many reasons to encourage employees to exercise greater perspective taking (e.g., greater

cooperation), the improvements in daily well-being and reductions in maladaptive coping that we

observed in this study are especially important given that they are closely relevant to employees

physical and mental health (Sliter et al., 2011). Having said that, we also want to emphasize the

importance of exercising caution with the above-mentioned interventions. There is always a risk

that some organizations may improperly use these interventions to compel service employees to

view customer mistreatment as acceptable. Executives and managers should practice these

interventions with good intentions and aim to improve employees’ well-being, instead of trying

to desensitize employees to customers’ abusive behaviors. In addition, these employee-oriented

interventions should be implemented in combination with other practices that increase supervisor

support to prevent potential escalation of customer mistreatment due to employees’ improved

resilience.

Finally, our study documented that negative mood was the linchpin that linked customer


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

35

mistreatment experience during the day with self-focused maladaptive coping after work. This

finding, along with previous research, highlights the importance of effective emotion regulation

following negative work events (Doerwald, Scheibe, Zacher, & van Yperen, 2016; Scheibe,

Spieler, & Kuba, 2016; Zhan et al., 2013). To this end, Hargrove, Winslow, and Kaplan (2013)

summarized various exercises that can be used to promote service employees’ emotion

regulation, including self-distancing (Kross & Ayduk, 2011) and mindfulness (Erisman &

Roemer, 2010) activities. Organizations can leverage this knowledge by developing training

programs involving these emotion regulation activities to improve service employees’ well-being.

Limitations and Future Directions

Despite the important theoretical and practical implications of our findings, they should

be interpreted in light of some limitations. First, except for the interventions, all other variables

were self-reported by employees, which may be biased owing to common method variance.

However, we took several steps to mitigate common method and source bias (e.g., Johnson,

Rosen, & Djurdjevic, 2011; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). First, we measured

the mediator and outcome variables at different times. Second, we controlled for baseline levels

of the outcome variables from prior times, enabling us to assess change in affect and maladaptive

coping, which also mitigates concerns with common method variance. Third, we used group-

mean centering for our level 1 variables, which removes potential between-person confounds

such as social desirability. Thus, it is unlikely that our results are driven by method artifacts.

Future studies could build upon our work by using objective measures (e.g., customer service

monitoring records) and other-reports (e.g., family-reported rumination).

Second, both our manipulation check and model estimation results suggest that the

prosocial recall intervention activates employees’ prosocial motivation. Although this idea is


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

36

well-aligned with previous research findings (e.g., Reed, Aquino, & Levy, 2007), the recall of

prosocial action can also lead to moral licensing, which paradoxically reduces prosocial behavior

and increases deviant behavior (e.g., Klotz & Bolino, 2013; Lin et al., 2016; Miller & Effron,

2010). For instance, Lin, Ma, and Johnson (2016) found that managers acted more abusive after

exhibiting ethical behavior due to moral licensing. In a similar vein, Mazar and Zhong (2010)

found that people gained moral license after purchasing organic products and thus acted less

altruistically. These theorizing and findings would suggest a positive relation of recalling

prosocial actions with maladaptive behaviors in our study, such that recalling prosocial actions

would give employees license to engage in impulsive self-serving shopping. This inconsistency

hints at the presence of potential moderating factors that are worthy of further investigation. For

example, Conway and Peetz (2012) leveraged construal level and action identification theories to

argue that recalling distant (abstract) moral action would make moral identity more salient and

induce people to act consistent with this identity, whereas recalling recent (concrete) moral

action reminds people that they have already fulfilled moral goals and thus are free to act less

morally. Future research is needed to identify situations where the recall of prosocial action is

beneficial versus detrimental.

Third, the generalizability of the current findings may be limited by our Chinese call

center sample. Although call center operations and managerial practices in China are similar to

other countries, China’s collectivistic culture, which emphasizes the importance of societal

norms and culturally-defined roles, may have shaped our interventions’ effects. Additionally,

Takaku, Weiner, and Ohbuchi (2001) found that the effects of a perspective taking intervention

were significant in an American sample but not a Japanese one. The authors ascribed this

inconsistency to differences in individualism–collectivism. Further, given that the experience of


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

37

customer mistreatment involves complex perceptual and cognitive processing, it is possible that

cultural differences also play a role in shaping service employees’ experience of customer

mistreatment. As such, our two other-oriented interventions may operate somewhat differently in

individualistic cultures, which creates a need for samples from other cultures to cross-validate

the current findings.

Fourth, similar to other experimental studies, our findings may be subject to potential

confounds such as practice effects, Hawthorne effects, and demand effects (Shadish et al., 2002).

For example, due to our within-person design, a practice effect may have occurred such that

participants’ perceptions of customer mistreatment were altered by filling out surveys repeatedly

in the first week (i.e., the control condition). Further, participants might have reported more

favorable outcomes in the intervention conditions just because any intervention was

implemented (i.e., Hawthorne effect), or because they speculated that researchers expected

different responses in the intervention conditions (i.e., demand effect). Despite these potential

alternative explanations, from a post hoc perspective, our findings may to some extent rule out

the possibility that the reported intervention effects were purely due to practice effects.

Specifically, as reported in Footnote 4, our results still hold when we control for time and day-of-

the-week effects, which is unlikely to occur if the intervention effects are influenced by repeated

practices. Nevertheless, we encourage future studies to apply more rigorous designs that can

overcome the potential confounding effects (Cook & Campbell, 1979).

Fifth, we applied a crossover design where only the order of the two intervention

conditions was counterbalanced in order to guarantee an uncontaminated baseline-control

measure of focal variables (Shadish et al., 2002). Although such a design has several advantages

(e.g., providing no-treatment baseline for assessing later intervention effects, avoiding the


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

38

situation where some participants were given more things to do than others), it cannot

completely rule out the alternative explanation that our intervention effects were partly driven by

participants’ general reactions to any interventions (compared to no intervention at all). Such a

concern may be addressed by using a fully-counterbalanced design, where the order of all

conditions (both the control condition and the intervention conditions) is counterbalanced (Crano

& Brewer, 2014). However, it is important to note that a fully-counterbalanced design may create

other issues that can jeopardize the internal validity of the findings (e.g., participants in one

intervention condition could have spoken to participants in the control condition).

Sixth, although we found significant direct and indirect intervention effects, the reported

effect coefficients appear small, which might raise concerns regarding the meaningfulness and

replicability of our findings. We report effect sizes (e.g., Cohen’s d, pseudo-R2, andω2

) to assist

with interpreting our intervention effects’ magnitude. These effect sizes are comparable to other

studies using similar designs (e.g., Liu, Song, Li, & Liao, 2017; Matta, Scott, Colquitt,

Koopman, & Passantino, 2017; Uy, Lin, & Ilies, in press). In addition, the small three-path

indirect effect coefficients are actually not surprising, given that by definition they are products

of three regression coefficients that are usually smaller than 1 (Taylor, MacKinnon, & Tein,

2007). Therefore, a small raw point estimate of indirect effect does not necessarily indicate a

small effect size of the mediation effect. Further, following recommendations by Preacher and

Kelley (2011), the reported intervention effects (both direct and indirect effects) need to be

interpreted considering the scaling and ranges of the focal variables, especially given that the

outcome variables we focused on were low-base-rate negative experiences. Moreover, the

seemingly small effects may still be practically useful considering the low cost of the

interventions and the relatively long time lapse between the interventions and the outcome


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

39

variables. According to Cortina and Landis (2009: 299), for a low-cost intervention, “any

nonzero relationship has important implications.” Similarly, Prentice and Miller (1992) also

suggested that small effect sizes are particularly meaningful when a minimal manipulation of the

independent variable or a difficult-to-influence dependent variable is involved. As such, we

believe that our findings are informative and practically meaningful despite the seemingly small

effects. Having said that, we should still be careful not to draw overly strong conclusions about

the intervention effects that prosocial recall and perspective taking may have in practical

application. Future studies applying similar design are needed to further validate our findings and

help relieve the concern about our seemingly small intervention effect.

Finally, one remaining question is whether or not the effects of the two interventions

extend beyond the evening. Although we observed that the effects are robust enough to affect

evening consequences of customer mistreatment on the same day the daily intervention was

administered, we have no direct evidence to support whether and how long our intervention

effects persist after the intervention is stopped. Nevertheless, we speculate that our interventions

will endure beyond the same day based on prior findings on the frequency and effect durations of

self-reflection interventions (e.g., Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005; Seligman, Steen,

Park, & Peterson, 2005). For example, Grant and Dutton (2008) found that after recalling

experiences as a benefactor (vs. beneficiary) for 15 min per day for 2 to 4 days, individuals

exhibited more prosocial behavior two weeks later. We encourage future research to extend the

study window and investigate how persistent the effects of our two interventions are. This is

especially important from an applied perspective because practitioners would be interested to

know with what frequency and duration the interventions are most effective.

A second question is whether or not our interventions impact actual customer


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

40

mistreatment, given our focus on service employees’ experience of (vs. actual) customer

mistreatment. Nevertheless, based on Groth and Grandey’s (2011) negative exchange spiral

model in employee–customer interactions, it is possible that our interventions may also reduce

actual customer mistreatment. Specifically, this model posits that customer mistreatment tends to

ignite employees’ negative emotions or even antisocial behaviors, which may in turn result in

service delivery failure (Wang et al., 2011). Once customers perceive the low-quality service,

they are more likely to respond by mistreating service employees, creating a negative spiral.

Such incivility spirals are ubiquitous in work settings (Rosen, Koopman, Gabriel-Rossetti, &

Johnson, 2016). However, our interventions may break this negative spiral by weakening the link

between customer mistreatment and employees’ negative reaction (e.g., negative mood).

Therefore, implementing our interventions may also produce effects that extend to customer

outcomes. We hope that future studies will test such potential intervention effects by

incorporating measures of actual mistreatment behaviors and customer outcomes.

A final question is whether the two interventions only impact employees’ processing of

customer behaviors via our theorized mechanism. Although past research has established that

both recall of prosocial behaviors and perspective taking consistently invoke individuals’ other-

oriented motivation (Batson et al., 1997; Grant & Dutton, 2012; Maner et al., 2012; Stocks et al.,

2009; Tasimi & Young, 2016; Van Lange, 2008; Young et al., 2012), we did not provide a direct

test of this mechanism in the current study (except for the manipulation check for recall of

prosocial action), nor did we test potential alternative mechanisms (e.g., interventions’ effects on

the ability of being socially mindful). Future studies may want to build on our findings and

examine whether recall of prosocial action and perspective taking may also function through

different mechanisms. Nonetheless, our findings indicate that there are practical and low-cost


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

41

interventions available that leverage social mindfulness and motivated information processing

theories to aid the well-being of employees who experience customer mistreatment.

REFERENCES Allen, J. G., Fonagy, P., & Bateman, A. 2008. Mentalizing in clinical practice. Arlington, VA:

American Psychiatric Publishing.

Axtell, C. M., Parker, S. K., Holman, D., & Totterdell, P. 2007. Enhancing customer service:

Perspective taking in a call centre. European Journal of Work and Organizational

Psychology, 16: 141-168.

Barnes, C. M., & Wagner, D. T. 2009. Changing to daylight saving time cuts into sleep and

increases workplace injuries. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94: 1305-1317.

Baranik, L. E., Wang, M., Gong, Y., & Shi, J. 2017. Customer mistreatment, employee health,

and job performance: Cognitive rumination and social sharing as mediating mechanisms.

Journal of Management, 43: 1261-1282.

Batson, C. D., Chang, J., Orr, R., & Rowland, J. 2002. Empathy, attitudes, and action: Can

feeling for a member of a stigmatized group motivate one to help the group? Personality

and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28: 1656-1666.

Batson, C. D., Sager, K., Garst, E., Kang, M., Rubchinsky, K., & Dawson, K. 1997. Is empathy-

induced helping due to self–other merging? Journal of Personality and Social


Batt, R. 2002. Managing customer services: Human resource practices, quit rates, and sales

growth. Academy of Management Journal, 45: 587-597.

Baumeister, R. F. 2002. Yielding to temptation: Self‐control failure, impulsive purchasing, and

consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 28: 670-676.

Beal, D. J., Weiss, H. M., Barros, E., & MacDermid, S. M. 2005. An episodic process model of

affective influences on performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90: 1054-1068.

Bies, R. J. 2001. Interactional (in)justice: The sacred and the profane. In J. Greenberg & R.

Cropanzano (Eds.), Advances in organizational behavior: 89-118. Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press.

Bless, H., & Schwarz, N. 1999. Sufficient and necessary conditions in dual-process models. In S.

Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual-process theories in social psychology: 423-440. New

York: Guilford.

Bolino, M. C., & Grant, A. M. 2016. The bright side of being prosocial at work, and the dark

side, too: a review and agenda for research on other-oriented motives, behavior, and

impact in organizations. The Academy of Management Annals, 10: 599-670.

Bolino, M. C., Harvey, J., & Bachrach, D. G. 2012. A self-regulation approach to understanding

citizenship behavior in organizations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision

Processes, 119: 126-139.

Bono, J. E., Glomb, T. M., Shen, W., Kim, E., & Koch, A. J. 2013. Building positive resources:

Effects of positive events and positive reflection on work stress and health. Academy of

Management Journal, 56: 1601-1627.

Bosnjak, M., Bratko, D., Galesic, M., & Tuten, T. 2007. Consumer personality and individual

differences: Revitalizing a temporarily abandoned field. Journal of Business


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

42

Research, 60: 587-589.

Brewer, M. B. 2012. Optimal distinctiveness theory: Its history and development. In P. A. M.

Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social

psychology, vol. 2: 81-98. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Brislin, R. W. 1980. Translation and content analysis of oral and written material. Handbook of

Cross-cultural Psychology, 2: 349-444.

Brown, S. P., Westbrook, R. A., & Challagalla, G. 2005. Good cope, bad cope: adaptive and

maladaptive coping strategies following a critical negative work event. Journal of

Applied Psychology, 90: 792-798.

Browne, G. J., Durrett, J. R., & Wetherbe, J. C. 2004. Consumer reactions toward clicks and

bricks: investigating buying behaviour on-line and at stores. Behaviour & Information

Technology, 23: 237-245.

Burke, P. J. 1991. Identity processes and social stress. American Sociological Review, 56: 836-

849.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. 1998. On the self-regulation of behavior. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. 1989. Assessing coping strategies: A

theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56: 267-

283.

Chaiken, S., & Trope, Y. 1999. Dual process theories in social psychology. New York: Guilford

Press.

Chen, H., Ng, S., & Rao, A. R. 2005. Cultural differences in consumer impatience. Journal of

Marketing Research, 42: 291-301.

Choi, C. H., Kim, T. T., Lee, G., & Lee, S. K. 2014. Testing the stressor–strain–outcome model

of customer-related social stressors in predicting emotional exhaustion, customer

orientation and service recovery performance. International Journal of Hospitality

Management, 36: 272-285.

Cohen, J., Cohen, P., West, S., & Aiken, L. 2003. Applied multiple regression/correlation

analysis for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Conway, P., & Peetz, J. 2012. When does feeling moral actually make you a better person?

Conceptual abstraction moderates whether past moral deeds motivate consistency or

compensatory behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38: 907-919.

Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. 1979. Quasi-experimentation: Design & analysis issues for

field settings. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Cortina, J. M., & Landis, R. S. 2009. When small effect sizes tell a big story, and when large

effect sizes don’t. Statistical and methodological myths and urban legends: Doctrine,

verity and fable in the organizational and social sciences, 287-308.

Crano, W. D., Brewer, M. B., & Lac, A. 2014. Principles and methods of social research.

Routledge.

Curran, P. J., West, S. G., & Finch, J. F. 1996. The robustness of test statistics to nonnormality

and specification error in confirmatory factor analysis. Psychological Methods, 1: 16-29.

Davis, M. H. 1983. Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a

multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44: 113-126.

Decety, J., & Batson, C. D. 2007. Social neuroscience approaches to interpersonal sensitivity.

Social Neuroscience, 2: 151-157.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. 2000. The" what" and" why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

43

self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11: 227-268.

Dipboye, R. L., & Flanagan, M. F. 1979. Research settings in industrial and organizational

psychology: Are findings in the field more generalizable than in the laboratory?

American Psychologist, 34: 141-150.

Dittmar, H., Long, K., & Bond, R. 2007. When a better self is only a button click away:

associations between materialistic values, emotional and identity-related buying motives,

and compulsive buying tendency online. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 26:

334-361.

Doerwald, F., Scheibe, S., Zacher, H., & Van Yperen, N. W. 2016. Emotional competencies

across adulthood: State of knowledge and implications for the work context. Work,

Aging and Retirement, 2: 159-216.

Donnelly, G., Ksendzova, M., & Howell, R. T. 2013. Sadness, identity, and plastic in over-

shopping: The interplay of materialism, poor credit management, and emotional buying

motives in predicting compulsive buying. Journal of Economic Psychology, 39: 113-

125.

Dormann, C., & Zapf, D. 2004. Customer-related social stressors and burnout. Journal of

Occupational Health Psychology, 9: 61-82.

Dutton, J. E., Workman, K. M., & Hardin, A. E. 2014. Compassion at work. Annual Review of

Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. 1: 277-304.

Edwards, E. A. 1993. Development of a new scale for measuring compulsive buying

behavior. Financial Counseling and Planning, 4: 67-84.

Enders, C. K., & Tofighi, D. 2007. Centering predictor variables in cross-sectional multilevel

models: a new look at an old issue. Psychological Methods, 12: 121-138.

Erisman, S. M., & Roemer, L. 2010. A preliminary investigation of the effects of experimentally

induced mindfulness on emotional responding to film clips. Emotion, 10: 72-82.

Fabes, R. A., & Eisenberg, N. 1997. Regulatory control and adults' stress-related responses to

daily life events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73: 1107-1117.

Farmer, S. M., & Van Dyne, L. 2010. The idealized self and the situated self as predictors of

employee work behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95: 503-516.

Fisher, C. D., & To, M. L. 2012. Using experience sampling methodology in organizational

behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33: 865-877.

Frone, M. R. 2008. Are work stressors related to employee substance use? The importance of

temporal context assessments of alcohol and illicit drug use. Journal of Applied


Galinsky, A. D., Ku, G., & Wang, C. S. 2005. Perspective-taking and self-other overlap:

Fostering social bonds and facilitating social coordination. Group Processes &

Intergroup Relations, 8: 109-124.

Gilin, D., Maddux, W. W., Carpenter, J., & Galinsky, A. D. 2013. When to use your head and

when to use your heart the differential value of perspective-taking versus empathy in

competitive interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(1): 3-16.

Goldberg, L. S., & Grandey, A. A. 2007. Display rules versus display autonomy: Emotion

regulation, emotional exhaustion, and task performance in a call center

simulation. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12: 301-318.

Grandey, A. A., Dickter, D. N., & Sin, H. P. 2004. The customer is not always right: Customer

aggression and emotion regulation of service employees. Journal of Organizational

Behavior, 25: 397-418.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

44

Grandey, A. A., Foo, S. C., Groth, M., & Goodwin, R. E. 2012. Free to be you and me: a climate

of authenticity alleviates burnout from emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health

Psychology, 17, 1-14.

Grant, A. M. 2007. Relational job design and the motivation to make a prosocial

difference. Academy of Management Review, 32: 393-417.

Grant, A. M., & Berry, J. W. 2011. The necessity of others is the mother of invention: Intrinsic

and prosocial motivations, perspective taking, and creativity. Academy of Management

Journal, 54: 73-96.

Grant, A. M., & Dutton, J. 2012. Beneficiary or benefactor are people more prosocial when they

reflect on receiving or giving? Psychological Science, 23: 1033-1039.

Grant, A. M., & Sumanth, J. J. 2009. Mission possible? The performance of prosocially

motivated employees depends on manager trustworthiness. Journal of Applied


Groth, M., & Goodwin, R. E. 2011. Customer service. APA Handbook of industrial and

organizational psychology, vol. 3: 329-357. Washington, DC: American Psychological

Association.

Groth, M., & Grandey, A. 2012. From bad to worse: Negative exchange spirals in employee–

customer service interactions. Organizational Psychology Review, 2: 208-233.

Hama, Y. 2001. Shopping as a coping behavior for stress. Japanese Psychological Research, 43:

218-224.

Hargrove, A. K., Winslow, C., & Kaplan, S. 2014. Self-guided activities for improving employee

Emotions and emotion regulation. Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being, 11:

75-102.

Hausman, A. 2000. A multi-method investigation of consumer motivations in impulse buying

behavior. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 17: 403-426.

Hox, J. J., Maas, C. J., & Brinkhuis, M. J. 2010. The effect of estimation method and sample size

in multilevel structural equation modeling. Statistica Neerlandica, 64: 157-170.

Jacobs, D. F. 1986. A general theory of addictions: A new theoretical model. Journal of

Gambling Behavior, 2: 15-31.

Johnson, R. E., Chang, C.-H., & Lord, R. G. 2006. Moving from cognition to behavior: What the

research says. Psychological Bulletin, 132: 381-415.

Johnson, R. E., Howe, M. D., & Chang, C.-H. 2013. The importance of velocity, or why speed

may matter more than distance. Organizational Psychology Review, 3: 62-85.

Johnson, R. E., Muraven, M., Donaldson, T., & Lin, S.-H. 2017. Self-control in work

organizations. In D. L. Ferris, R. E. Johnson, & C. Sedikides (Eds.), The self at work:

Fundamental theory and research. New York: Routledge.

Johnson, R. E., Rosen, C. C., & Djurdjevic, E. 2011. Assessing the impact of common method

variance on higher-order multidimensional constructs. Journal of Applied Psychology,

96: 744-761.

Keppel, G. 1991. Design and analysis: A researcher’s handbook. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall.

Kim, Y. J., Van Dyne, L., Kamdar, D., & Johnson, R. E. 2013. Why and when do motives

matter? An integrative model of motives, role cognitions, and social support as predictors

of OCB. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 121: 231-245.

Kline, R. B. 2011. Principles and practice of Structural Equation Modeling. New York: The

Guilford Press.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

45

Klotz, A. C., & Bolino, M. C. 2013. Citizenship and counterproductive work behavior: A moral

licensing view. Academy of Management Review, 38: 292-306.

Koopmann, J., Wang, M., Liu, Y., & Song, Y. 2015. Customer mistreatment: A review of

conceptualizations and a multilevel theoretical model. Research in Occupational Stress

and Well Being, 13: 33-79.

Kross, E., & Ayduk, O. 2011. Making meaning out of negative experiences by self-

distancing. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20: 187-191.

Ku, G., Wang, C. S., & Galinsky, A. D. 2015. The promise and perversity of perspective-taking

in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 35: 79-102.

Kühnen, U., & Oyserman, D. 2002. Thinking about the self influences thinking in general:

Cognitive consequences of salient self-concept. Journal of Experimental Social


Kunda, Z. 1990. The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108: 480-498.

Lam, W., & Chen, Z. 2012. When I put on my service mask: Determinants and outcomes of

emotional labor among hotel service providers according to affective event

theory. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31: 3-11.

Lanaj, K., Johnson, R. E., & Wang, M. 2016. When lending a hand depletes the will: The daily

costs and benefits of helping. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101: 1097-1110.

Lazarus, R. S. 1991. Progress on a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of

emotion. American Psychologist, 46: 819-834.

LeMoult, J., Arditte, K. A., D'Avanzato, C., & Joormann, J. 2013. State rumination: associations

with emotional stress reactivity and attention biases. Journal of Experimental

Psychopathology, 4: 471 - 484

Leys, C., Ley, C., Klein, O., Bernard, P., & Licata, L. 2013. Detecting outliers: Do not use

standard deviation around the mean, use absolute deviation around the median. Journal

of Experimental Social Psychology, 49: 764-766.

Lin, S.-H., & Johnson, R. E. 2015. A suggestion to improve a day keeps your depletion away:

Examining promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors within a regulatory focus and ego

depletion framework. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100: 1381-1397.

Lin, S.-H., Ma, J., & Johnson, R. E. 2016. When ethical leader behavior breaks bad: How ethical

leader behavior can turn abusive via ego depletion and moral licensing. Journal of


Liu, S., Wang, M., Bamberger, P., Shi, J., & Bacharach, S. B. 2015. The dark side of

socialization: A longitudinal investigation of newcomer alcohol use. Academy of


Liu, S., Wang, M., Zhan, Y., & Shi, J. 2009. Daily work stress and alcohol use: Testing the

cross-level moderation effects of neuroticism and job involvement. Personnel


Liu, W., Song, Z., Li, X., & Liao, Z. 2017. Why and when leader's affective states influence

employee upward voice. Academy of Management Journal, 60: 238-263.

Liu, Y., Song, Y., Koopmann, J., Wang, M., Chang, C. H., & Shi, J. in press. Eating your

feelings? Testing a model of employees’ work-related stressors, sleep quality, and

unhealthy eating. Journal of Applied Psychology.

Liu, Y., Wang, M., Chang, C. H., Shi, J., Zhou, L., & Shao, R. 2015. Work–family conflict,

emotional exhaustion, and displaced aggression toward others: The moderating roles of

workplace interpersonal conflict and perceived managerial family support. Journal of


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

46


Lyubomirsky, S., & Layous, K. 2013. How do simple positive activities increase well-being?

Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22: 57-62.

Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. 2005. Pursuing happiness: The architecture of

sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9:111-131.

Lyubomirsky, S., Sousa, L., & Dickerhoof, R. 2006. The costs and benefits of writing, talking,

and thinking about life's triumphs and defeats. Journal of Personality and Social


Mandel, N., & Smeesters, D. 2008. The sweet escape: Effects of mortality salience on

consumption quantities for high-and low-self-esteem consumers. Journal of Consumer

Research, 35: 309-323.

Maner, J. K., Luce, C. L., Neuberg, S. L., Cialdini, R. B., Brown, S., & Sagarin, B. J. 2002. The

effects of perspective taking on motivations for helping: Still no evidence for

altruism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1601-1610.

Manolis, C., & Roberts, J. A. 2008. Compulsive buying: Does it matter how it’s

measured? Journal of Economic Psychology, 29: 555-576.

Martin, L. L., & Tesser, A. 1996. Some ruminative thoughts. Advances in Social Cognition, 9:

1-47.

Matta, F. K., Scott, B., Colquitt, J., Koopman, J., & Passantino, L. 2017. Is consistently unfair

better than sporadically fair? An investigation of justice variability and stress. Academy

of Management Journal, 60: 743-770.

Mawritz, M., Greenbaum, R., Butts, M. M., & Graham, K. A. in press. I Just Can't Control

Myself: A Self-Regulation Perspective on the Abuse of Deviant Employees. Academy of

Management Journal.

Mayfield, C. O., & Taber, T. D. 2010. A prosocial self-concept approach to understanding

organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 25: 741-763.

Mazar, N., & Zhong, C. B. 2010. Do green products make us better people? Psychological

Science. 21: 494-498.

McColl-Kennedy, J. R., Patterson, P. G., Smith, A. K., & Brady, M. K. 2009. Customer rage

episodes: emotions, expressions and behaviors. Journal of Retailing, 85: 222-237.

Meglino, B. M., & Korsgaard, A. 2004. Considering rational self-interest as a disposition:

organizational implications of other orientation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89: 946-

959.

Miller, D. T., & Effron, D. A. 2010. Chapter three-psychological license: When it is needed and

how it functions. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 43: 115-155.

Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. 1975. Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or

fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82: 213-225.

Miller, K., Birkholt, M., Scott, C., & Stage, C. 1995. Empathy and burnout in human service

work an extension of a communication model. Communication Research, 22: 123-147.

Mohr, C. D., Armeli, S., Tennen, H., Temple, M., Todd, M., Clark, J., & Carney, M. A. 2005.

Moving beyond the keg party: A daily process study of college student drinking

motivations. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 19: 392-403.

Mor, N., & Winquist, J. 2002. Self-focused attention and negative affect: A meta-analysis.

Psychological Bulletin, 128: 638-662.

Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. 2012. Mplus user’s guide (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Muthén

& Muthén.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

47

Nelson, B. W., Laurent, S. M., Bernstein, R., & Laurent, H. K. 2017. Perspective-taking

influences autonomic attunement between partners during discussion of conflict. Journal

of Social and Personal Relationships, 34: 139-165.

Nelson, L. D., & Norton, M. I. 2005. From student to superhero: Situational primes shape future

helping. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41: 423-430.

Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., & Lyubomirsky, S. 2008. Rethinking

rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3: 400-424.

Parker, S. K., & Axtell, C. M. 2001. Seeing another viewpoint: Antecedents and outcomes of

employee perspective taking. Academy of Management Journal, 44: 1085-1100.

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. 2003. Common method

biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended

remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88: 879-903.

Preacher, K. J., & Kelley, K. 2011. Effect size measures for mediation models: quantitative

strategies for communicating indirect effects. Psychological Methods, 16: 93-115.

Preacher, K. J., Zyphur, M. J., & Zhang, Z. 2010. A general multilevel SEM framework for

assessing multilevel mediation. Psychological Methods, 15: 209-233.

Prentice, D. A., & Miller, D. T. 1992. When small effects are impressive. Psychological

Bulletin, 112: 160-164.

Rafaeli, A., Erez, A., Ravid, S., Derfler-Rozin, R., Treister, D. E., & Scheyer, R. 2012. When

customers exhibit verbal aggression, employees pay cognitive costs. Journal of Applied


Reed II, A., & Aquino, K. F. 2003. Moral identity and the expanding circle of moral regard

toward out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84: 1270-1286.

Reed II, A., Aquino, K., & Levy, E. 2007. Moral identity and judgments of charitable

behaviors. Journal of Marketing, 71: 178-193.

Rosen, C. C., Koopman, J., Gabriel-Rossetti, A. S., & Johnson, R. E. 2016. Who strikes back? A

daily investigation of when and why incivility begets incivility. Journal of Applied

Psychology, 101: 1620-1634.

Rupp, D. E., & Spencer, S. 2006. When customers lash out: the effects of customer interactional

injustice on emotional labor and the mediating role of discrete emotions. Journal of


Saintives, K., & Lunardo, R. 2016. How guilt affects consumption intention: the role of

rumination, emotional support and shame. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 33: 41 – 51.

Salancik, G. R., & Pfeffer, J. 1978. Uncertainty, secrecy, and the choice of similar others. Social


Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A. B., & Salanova, M. 2006. The measurement of work engagement

with a short questionnaire a cross-national study. Educational and Psychological

Measurement, 66: 701-716.

Scheibe, S., Spieler, I., & Kuba, K. 2016. An older-age advantage? Emotion regulation and

emotional experience after a day of work. Work, Aging and Retirement, 2: 307-320.

Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. 2005. Positive psychology progress:

empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60: 410-421.

Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. 2002. Experimental and quasi-experimental

design for generalized causal inference. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Shih, S. P., Lie, T., Klein, G., & Jiang, J. J. 2014. Information technology customer aggression:

The importance of an organizational climate of support. Information &


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

48

Management, 51: 670-678.

Skarlicki, D. P., van Jaarsveld, D., Shao, R., Song, Y., & Wang, M. 2016. Extending the

multifoci perspective: The role of supervisor justice and moral identity in the relationship

between customer justice and customer-directed sabotage. Journal of Applied


Skarlicki, D. P., van Jaarsveld, D. D., & Walker, D. D. 2008. Getting even for customer

mistreatment: the role of moral identity in the relationship between customer

interpersonal injustice and employee sabotage. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93: 1335-

1347.

Sliter, M. T., Pui, S. Y., Sliter, K. A., & Jex, S. M. 2011. The differential effects of interpersonal

conflict from customers and coworkers: Trait anger as a moderator. Journal of


Smith, J. M., & Alloy, L. B. 2009. A roadmap to rumination: A review of the definition,

assessment, and conceptualization of this multifaceted construct. Clinical Psychology

Review, 29: 116-128.

Snijders, T. A. A., & Bosker, R. J. 1999. Multilevel analysis: An introduction to basic and

advanced multilevel modeling. London: Sage.

Somer, E., & Ruvio, A. 2014. The going gets tough, so let's go shopping: On materialism,

coping, and consumer behaviors under traumatic stress. Journal of Loss and

Trauma, 19: 426-441.

Spector, P. E., & Fox, S. 2002. An emotion-centered model of voluntary work behavior: Some

parallels between counterproductive work behavior and organizational citizenship

behavior. Human Resource Management Review, 12: 269-292.

Spencer, S., & Rupp, D. E. 2009. Angry, guilty, and conflicted: injustice toward coworkers

heightens emotional labor through cognitive and emotional mechanisms. Journal of


Stocks, E. L., Lishner, D. A., & Decker, S. K. 2009. Altruism or psychological escape: Why does

empathy promote prosocial behavior? European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 649-

665.

Swann, Jr., W. B. 1983. Self-verification: Bringing social reality into harmony with the

self. Social Psychological Perspectives on the Self, 2: 33-66.

Takaku, S., Weiner, B., & Ohbuchi, K. I. 2001. A cross-cultural examination of the effects of

apology and perspective taking on forgiveness. Journal of Language and Social


Tasimi, A., & Young, L. 2016. Memories of good deeds past: The reinforcing power of prosocial

behavior in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 147: 159-166.

Taylor, A. B., MacKinnon, D. P., & Tein, J. Y. 2007. Tests of the three-path mediated

effect. Organizational Research Methods, 11: 241-269.

Tice, D. M., & Bratslavsky, E. 2000. Giving in to feel good: The place of emotion regulation in

the context of general self-control. Psychological Inquiry, 11: 149-159.

Uy, M., Lin, K., & Ilies, R. in press. Is it better to give or receive? The role of help in buffering

the depleting effects of surface acting. Academy of Management Journal.

Van Doesum, N. J., Van Lange, D. A., & Van Lange, P. A. 2013. Social mindfulness: Skill and

will to navigate the social world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105:

86-103.

Van Jaarsveld, D. D., Walker, D. D., & Skarlicki, D. P. 2010. The role of job demands and


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

49

emotional exhaustion in the relationship between customer and employee incivility.

Journal of Management, 36: 1486-1504.

Van Lange, P. A. 2008. Does empathy trigger only altruistic motivation? How about selflessness

or justice? Emotion, 8: 766-774.

Verplanken, B., & Herabadi, A. 2001. Individual differences in impulse buying tendency:

Feeling and no thinking. European Journal of Personality, 15: 71-83.

Vescio, T. K., Sechrist, G. B., & Paolucci, M. P. 2003. Perspective taking and prejudice

reduction: The mediational role of empathy arousal and situational

attributions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33: 455-472.

Volmer, J., Binnewies, C., Sonnentag, S., & Niessen, C. 2012. Do social conflicts with

customers at work encroach upon our private lives? A diary study. Journal of


Vorauer, J. D., Martens, V., & Sasaki, S. J. 2009. When trying to understand detracts from trying

to behave: effects of perspective taking in intergroup interaction. Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, 96: 811-827.

Walker, D. D., van Jaarsveld, D. D., & Skarlicki, D. P. 2014. Exploring the effects of individual

customer incivility encounters on employee incivility: The moderating roles of entity (in)

civility and negative affectivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99: 151-161.

Wang, C. C., & Yang, H. W. 2008. Passion for online shopping: The influence of personality and

compulsive buying. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 36:

693-706.

Wang, M., Liao, H., Zhan, Y., & Shi, J. 2011. Daily customer mistreatment and employee

sabotage against customers: Examining emotion and resource perspectives. Academy of


Wang, M., Liu, S., Liao, H., Gong, Y., Kammeyer-Mueller, J., & Shi, J. 2013. Can’t get it out of

my mind: Employee rumination after customer mistreatment and negative mood in the

next morning. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98: 989-1004.

Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. 1988. Development and validation of brief measures of

positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 54: 1063-1070.

Wegge, J., Van Dick, R., & Von Bernstorff, C. 2010. Emotional dissonance in call centre

work. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 25: 596-619.

Wegner, D. M., & Finstuen, K. 1977. Observers' focus of attention in the simulation of self-

perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35: 56-62.

Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. 2010. When helping helps: autonomous motivation for prosocial

behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 98: 222-244.

Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. 1996. Affective events theory. Research in Organizational

Behavior, 18: 1-74.

Weyant, J. M. 2007. Perspective taking as a means of reducing negative stereotyping of

individuals who speak English as a second language. Journal of Applied Social


Yagil, D., & Ben-Zur, H. 2009. Self-serving attributions and burnout among service

employees. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 17: 320-338.

Young, L., Chakroff, A., & Tom, J. 2012. Doing good leads to more good: The reinforcing

power of a moral self-concept. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 3: 325-334.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

50

Zapata-Phelan, C. P., Colquitt, J. A., Scott, B. A., & Livingston, B. 2009. Procedural justice,

interactional justice, and task performance: The mediating role of intrinsic

motivation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108: 93-105.

Zhan, Y., Wang, M., & Shi, J. 2013. Lagged influences of customer mistreatment on employee

mood: Moderating roles of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. Research on

Emotion in Organizations, 9: 203-224.

Zhan, Y., Wang, M., & Shi, J. 2016. Interpersonal process of emotional labor: The role of

negative and positive customer treatment. Personnel Psychology, 69: 525-557.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

51

TABLE 1

Means, Standard Deviations, Reliabilities, and Correlations among the Focal Variables

Variables Means Within

SD

Between

SD

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Morning negative mood 1.82 .41 .51 (.86) -- -- .32** .93** .62** .45**

2. Recall of prosocial action intervention vs. control .33 -- -- -.05* -- -- -- -- -- --

3. Perspective taking intervention vs. control .33 -- -- -.04 -.50** -- -- -- -- --

4. Daily customer mistreatment experience .57 .28 .48 .09** -.06* -.10** (.95) .38** .30** .36**

5. Afternoon negative mood 1.83 .44 .53 .38** -.07** -.02 .14** (.89) .64** .49**

6. Evening rumination 1.74 .63 .67 .13** -.07* .02 .14** .21** (.84) .44**

7. Evening maladaptive shopping 1.97 .58 .67 .10** -.12** -.04 .13** .19** .10** (.96)

Notes. * p < .05, ** p < .01. Between-person correlations are above the diagonal (N = 94) and within-person correlations are below the diagonal (N = 1,410). The

average Cronbrach’s alpha coefficients are in parentheses along the diagonal. No between-person correlations are reported for prosocial intervention and

perspective taking intervention since the variables do not have between-person variance.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

52

TABLE 2

Simultaneous Multilevel Path Model Tests and Results

Variables Daily customer

mistreatment

experience

Afternoon negative

mood

Evening rumination

(Day T)

Evening maladaptive

shopping (Day T)

Estimate SE Estimate SE Estimate SE Estimate SE

Level-1 (Within-person level)

Intercept .65** .08 1.68** .09 .60** .22 .57** .21

Morning negative mood .05† .03 .39** .05

Recall of prosocial action intervention

vs. control

-.09* .03 -.05 .04 -.04 .05 -.16** .05

Perspective taking intervention

vs. control

-.10** .03 -.02 .03 .02 .05 -.10* .05

Daily customer mistreatment experience .25** .09 .11 .13 .05 .09

Daily customer mistreatment experience ×

Recall of prosocial action intervention

-.27* .14 .30 .21 .20 .14

Daily customer mistreatment experience ×

Perspective taking intervention

-.14 .10 .14 .21 .30 .19

Afternoon negative mood .24** .05 .22** .05

Evening rumination (Day T-1) .15** .04

Evening maladaptive shopping (Day T-1) .13** .04

Residual variance at Level 1 .08** .01 .17** .01 .39** .05 .33** .03

Level-2 (Between-person level)

Manipulation order -.16 .10 -.13 .10 .03 .12 -.10 .11

Residual variance at Level 2 .22** .05 .23** .03 .29** .06 .23** .05

Notes. N = 1,410. †p <.10, * p < .05, ** p < .01.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

53

TABLE 3

Summary of Hypothesized Indirect Effects

Hypothesized Indirect Effect Point

Estimate

95% Confidence

Interval

Proportion of

Mediation (Pm)

Hypothesis 5a

Daily customer mistreatment experience � Afternoon negative mood � Evening

rumination

.066* [.018, .122] 21%

Hypothesis 5b

Daily customer mistreatment experience � Afternoon negative mood � Evening

maladaptive shopping

.056* [.016, .104] 20%

Hypothesis 6a

Recall of prosocial action intervention � Daily customer mistreatment experience �

Afternoon negative mood � Evening rumination

-.005* [-.014, -.001] 9%

Hypothesis 6b

Perspective taking intervention � Daily customer mistreatment experience �

Afternoon negative mood � Evening rumination

-.006* [-.012, -.001] 8%

Hypothesis 7a

Recall of prosocial action intervention � Daily customer mistreatment experience �

Afternoon negative mood � Evening maladaptive shopping

-.005* [-.012, -.001] 8%

Hypothesis 7b

Perspective taking intervention � Daily customer mistreatment experience�

Afternoon negative mood � Evening maladaptive shopping

-.006* [-.014, -.001] 9%

Note.* Significant based on 95% confidence interval.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

54

FIGURE 1

Hypothesized Model.

Daily experience of

customer mistreatment

(Noon survey and

afternoon survey)

Recall of prosocial action

intervention

(Morning)

Perspective taking

intervention

(Morning)

Afternoon negative mood

(Afternoon survey)

H5a/H6

Evening rumination

(Evening survey)

H1/H6a/H7a

H3/H6b/H7b

H5b/H7 Evening maladaptive

shopping

(Evening survey)

H2

H4

H5/H6/H7


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

55

FIGURE 2

Multilevel Path Model Estimation Results

Notes. N = 1,410. †p <.10, * p < .05, ** p < .01. For the sake of brevity, we do not present direct effects in the current model. Please

refer to Table 2 for the direct effects of the intervention variables on afternoon negative mood and evening rumination and

maladaptive shopping, as well as the direct effects of daily customer mistreatment on evening rumination and maladaptive shopping.

Daily experience of

customer mistreatment

(Day T Noon and

Afternoon)

Recall of prosocial action

intervention

(Day T Morning)

Perspective taking

intervention

(Day T Morning)

Afternoon negative mood

(Day T Afternoon)

.24**

Evening rumination

(Day T Evening)

-.09*

-.10**

.22** Evening maladaptive

shopping

(Day T Evening)

-.27*

-.14

.25**

Morning negative

mood

(Day T Morning)

.05† .39**

Evening rumination

(Day T-1 Evening)

Evening maladaptive

shopping

(Day T-1 Evening)

.13**

.15**


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

56

FIGURE 3

Recall of Prosocial Action Intervention Moderates the Effect of Daily Customer

Mistreatment on Afternoon Negative Mood

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

low high

Aft

ern

oon

Neg

ati

ve

Mood

Daily Experience of Customer Mistreatment

Control Condition

Recall of Prosocial Action

Intervention


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

57

APPENDIX

Customer Mistreatment:

“How frequently did you experience the following this morning (afternoon)? Please respond on

a 5-point scale, with 0 = Never, 1 = A few times, 2 = Half of the times, 3 = A majority of the time,

and 4 = All of the time”.

1. Clients demanded special treatment.

2. Clients thought they were more important than others.

3. Clients asked you to do things they could do by themselves.

4. Clients vented their bad mood out on you.

5. Clients did not understand that you had to comply with certain rules.

6. Clients complained without reason.

7. Clients made exorbitant demands.

8. Clients were impatient

9. Clients yelled at you.

10. Clients spoke aggressively to you.

11. Clients got angry at you even over minor matters.

12. Clients argued with you the whole time throughout the call.

13. Clients refused to listen to you.

14. Clients cut you off mid-sentence.

15. Clients made demands that you could not deliver.

16. Clients insisted on demands that are irrelevant to your service.

17. Clients doubted your ability.

18. Clients used condescending language to you.

Negative Mood:

“To what extent do you agree that the following items describe your current mood states? Please

respond on a 5-point scale, with 1 = Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree.”

1. Jittery

2. Ashamed

3. Nervous


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

58

4. Hostile

5. Guilty

6. Angry

7. Dejected

8. Sad

Rumination:

“To what extent do you agree with the following statements describing your experience this

evening? Please respond on a 5-point scale, with 1 = Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree.”

1. I couldn’t stop thinking about the bad experiences I had with my clients today.

2. Thoughts and feelings about how my clients hurt me today kept running through my head.

3. Strong feelings about what my clients did to me today kept bubbling up.

4. Images of today’s bad experiences with my clients kept coming back to me.

5. I brooded about how my clients treated me badly today.

6. I found it difficult not to think about the bad experiences that I had with my clients today.

7. I found myself replaying the bad experiences with my clients over and over in my mind.

8. Even when I was engaged in other tasks, I thought about the bad experiences with my clients

today.

Maladaptive Shopping:

“To what extent do you agree with the following statements describing your behaviors this

evening? Please respond on a 5-point scale, with 1 = Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree.”

1. After work, I bought things that I do not need or will not use.

2. After work, I bought things even though I couldn’t afford them.

3. After work, I went shopping despite the fact that I did not have spare time or the money.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

59

Biographical Sketches

Yifan Song ([email protected]) is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Warrington College of

Business at University of Florida. Her current research interests include newcomer socialization,

leadership and power in teams, employee well-being, and migrant worker adjustment.

Yihao Liu ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor at the School of Labor &

Employment Relations and Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. in management from University of Florida. His primary

research interests include occupational stress and well-being, workplace interpersonal behaviors,

and newcomer socialization and adjustment.

Mo Wang ([email protected]) is the Lanzilotti-McKethan Eminent Scholar Chair

and the Director of Human Resource Research Center at the Warrington College of Business at

University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology and

developmental psychology from Bowling Green State University. His research interests include

older worker employment and retirement, newcomer and expatriate adjustment, occupational

health psychology, teams and leadership, and advanced quantitative methods.

Klodiana Lanaj ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor in the

Warrington College of Business at University of Florida. She received her PhD from Michigan

State University. Her research focuses on leadership, self-regulation, and team processes and

performance.

Russell E. Johnson ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor of Management in the

Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. He received his PhD in Industrial and

Organizational Psychology from the University of Akron. His research explores cognitive and

affective processes that underlie organizational behavior.

Junqi Shi ([email protected]) is a Full Professor in the Lingnan College at Sun Yat-sen

University, China. He received his Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from Peking

University. His current research interests include leadership, work stress, occupational

health, and emotional labor.


123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960

Documents

A Social Mindfulness Approach to Understanding Experienced Customer … · 2017. 9. 5. · experience of customer mistreatment and afternoon negative mood, could reduce dysfunctional