For Poor Performance Abusive Bosses Often Blame A Worker’s Lack Of Effort Or Care When It’s Their Own Biases That May Be The Problem
Managers may mistreat employees who perform poorly because they assume it results from a lack of diligence rather than other factors, according to research we published in September 2021.
Surveys show that about 1 in 7 U.S. workers feel that their manager engages in hostile behaviors toward them. Abusive supervision may range from relatively mild behaviors such as lying or not giving credit for work to more severe actions, such as insults or ridicule.
While past research has suggested that it’s the poor performance of workers provoking managers’ abusive reactions, we wanted to examine whether the faulty perception of the supervisor deserves at least some of the blame.
So we conducted two studies, drawing on research showing that people are prone to perceptual errors when judging negativ...