Interpersonal Dynamics and Necessary Evils

Download or read book Interpersonal Dynamics and Necessary Evils written by Boris Genzer and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior literature shows that professionals who must, as part of their job, cause psychological or physical harm to another person for a perceived greater good sometimes complete the task without engaging in behavior in an interpersonally sensitive manner, which attends to other person's needs and feelings. The focus of this dissertation is to explore the extent to which victim's emotional displays in response to receiving bad news predict the tendency to deliver bad news in an interpersonally sensitive way. To test this theory, 103 students provided face-to-face feedback containing bad news to a confederate who expressed sad, anger, or no emotion by manipulating facial, auditory, and postural non-verbal expressions. Participants were video-recorded and the feedback was coded for interpersonally sensitive behaviors. Although the overall results did not support the mediation hypotheses, several significant relationships revealed that victim's emotional displays influenced the deliverer's interpersonally sensitive behavior. Individuals who observed sad, compared to anger (but not neutral), emotional displays treated victims with greater dignity and respect. Furthermore, supplemental analysis revealed that participants were more likely to sugarcoat bad news when speaking only with angry victims. Thus, victims were treated differently depending on the emotional displays they expressed during the necessary evil task. Future research on necessary evil should incorporate the interpersonal aspects of emotions in their model as it may influence the deliverer's behaviors towards the victims. Furthermore, employees should be trained in delivering necessary evil type tasks with interpersonally sensitive behaviors.