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Top1. Introduction
Emotion management is a process used to modify one’s emotional expressions, experiences, and physiology and the circumstances eliciting the emotions to produce appropriate responses to environmental and organizational demands (Aldao, 2013; Hochschild, 1990). The use of emotion management is especially true in the service industry, where there are rules for emotional expression (Diefendorff, Richard, & Croyle, 2006) and the workplace will govern when and how specific emotions should be expressed. The process of emotion management typically involves two practices: behaviors suppressing any negative emotions one is feeling and faking positive emotions that one is not truly feeling (Glomb & Tews, 2004; Sliter, Jex, Wolford, & McInnerney, 2010).
One reason an employee may have the need to engage in behaviors where faking positive emotions is required is when dealing with rudeness and incivility, a growing problem that can have notable consequences at the individual, group and organization level (Porath, 2018). Researchers (e.g., Pearson Andersson, & Porath, 2000; Sears & Humiston, 2015) have found that nearly half of workers report having been treated rudely at work weekly, while Reio and Ghosh (2009) discovered that 54% of respondents in their study admitted to instigating uncivil behaviors, such as saying something hurtful towards someone in the workplace, once a year or more. Workplace incivility is defined as low-intensity deviant behavior that departs from norms of mutual respect, with ambiguous intentions to harm (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Workplace incivility can come from a number of sources, ranging from supervisors and coworkers (Reio & Sanders-Reio, 2011) to customers and vendors (Hochschild, 1990). Importantly, it has been shown to have negative influences on those who either witness, directly experience, or instigate it (Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout, 2001; Reio & Ghosh, 2009). As posited by Andersson and Pearson’s Tit-for-Tat Theory of Incivility, isolated instances of uncivil behavior can lead to responses-in-kind to instigators. For example, Rosen, Koopman, Gabriel, & Johnson, (2016), using an experience-sampling design, found experiencing incivility earlier in the day was linked to decreased self-control (ego depletion), which in in turn was linked to instigated behavior later in the day. Overall, these responses-in-kind from targets to instigators can lead to the escalation of more intentional, harmful patterns of behavior like bullying, and eventually physical violence, as predicted by incivility theory (Andersson & Porath, 1999; Cortina et al., 2001).
Incivility has been associated with many negative occupational, psychological, and organizational outcomes, as well as issues with physical health (Lim & Cortina, 2005; Sears & Humiston, 2015). Regulating emotion is associated with stress, emotional exhaustion and negative physical symptoms (Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000) that can dampen job satisfaction (Welbourne Gangadharan, & Esparza, 2016).