Social undermining is the expression of negative emotions directed towards a particular person or negative evaluations of the person as a way to prevent the person from achieving their goals.
This behavior can often be attributed to certain feelings, such as dislike or anger. The negative evaluation of the person may involve criticizing their actions, efforts or characteristics.Joseph, N. T., Myers, H. F., Schettino, J. R., Olmos, N. T., Bingham-Mira, C., Lesser, I. M., & Poland, R. E. (2011). Support and undermining in interpersonal relationships are associated with treatment response to a trial of antidepressant medication. Psychiatry: Interpersonal And Biological Processes, 74(3), 240-254. Social undermining is seen in relationships between family members, friends, personal relationships and co-workers. Social undermining can affect a person's mental health, including an increase in depressive symptoms. This behavior is only considered social undermining if the person's perceived action is intended to hinder their target. When social undermining is seen in the work environment the behavior is used to hinder the co-worker's ability to establish and maintain a positive interpersonal relationship, success and a good reputation. Examples of how an employee can use social undermining in the work environment are behaviors that are used to delay the work of co-workers, to make them look bad or slow them down, competing with co-workers to gain status and recognition and giving co-workers incorrect or even misleading information about a particular job.
Definition According to Duffy, Ganster, and Pagon, 2002, the definition of social undermining in a workplace is, behavior intended to hinder over time and not allowing a person to establish or maintain positive interpersonal relationships.
In the workplace Social undermining has been very effective in the workplace. Various aspects of social undermining have affected the workplace and specific races. In workplaces, social undermining has connection with social interaction. Research has shown if a person has a supportive environment in their work setting, they are more likely to have a more satisfied life. Research has shown that social undermining exists in a separate and distinct continuum when looking at positive workplace behavior (e.g. social support).
Social undermining can arise through interactions with co-workers and supervisors; these interactions have an effect on the workers that are being undermined and can affect their work performance. Vinokur found that those who alleged to have social undermining in the workplace reported to have poorer mental health and experienced less well-being. The study shows that undermining has a significant role in worker-supervisor and co-worker relationship and that it leads to various different outcomes such as feelings of irritability, anxiety, depersonalization, and depression. It shows that social undermining affects a person's work ethics and well-being.
Various different empirical studies have found that undermining has three specific factors that develop counterfactual thoughts. For example: "what would my life be like if I were not the target of undermining?" These studies' findings indicate that "this rift plays a role in determining the magnitude of the employee's reaction to the event by making the deprived state more salient".Folger, R., & Cropanzano, R. (1998). Organizational justice and human resource management. London: Sage.Folger, R., & Cropanzano, R. (2001). Fairness theory: justice as accountability. In J. Greenberg & R. Copanzano (Eds.), Advances in organizational justice (pp. 1–55). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Folger, R., & Kass, E. (2000). Social comparison and fairness: a counterfactual simulations perspective. In J. Suls & L. Wheeler (Eds.), Handbook of social comparison: Theory and research (pp. 423–433). New York: Kluwer Academic.
Behaviors of social undermining can affect a person and their perceptions. The study conducted by Gant et al. addressed African American workers' perceptions of co-workers and supervisors. The research by Duffy, Gangster, Shaw, Johnson, and Pagon addressed the fairness theory introduced by Folger and Cropanzano 1998. The fairness theory suggests that when individuals face negative situations (such as being undermined by coworkers or supervision) they make cognitive comparisons known as counterfactual thoughts; i.e., they compare what actually happened to what might have been.Kasimatis, M., & Wells, G. (1995). Individual differences in counter-factual thinking. In N. Roese & J. Olson (Eds.), What might have been: The social psychology of counterfactual thinking (pp. 81–102). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum The results show that social undermining is closely related to attitudes and behavior regarding one person being or feeling "singled out".
Abusive supervision
Abusive supervision can arise in different areas such as in the household, at school, and at a workplace. "Abusive supervision has been investigated as an antecedent to negative subordinate workplace outcome" ;Hoobler, J. M., Tepper, B. J., & Duffy, M. K. (2000). Moderating effects of coworkers' organizational citizenship behavior on relationships between abusive supervision and subordinates' attitudes and psychological distress. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Management Association, Orlando, FL. "Workplace violence has combination of situational and personal factors" (e.g., Barling, 1996). The study that was conducted looked at the link between abusive supervision and different workplace events. Social undermining can arise from abusive supervision, such as when a supervisor uses negative actions and it leads to "flow downhill"; a supervisor is perceived as abusive.
Research has shown that "abusive supervision is a subjective assessment made by subordinates regarding their supervisors" behavior towards them over a period of time. For example, abusive supervision includes a "boss demeaning, belittling, or invading privacy of the subordinate.
Hostile attribution bias is an extra punitive mentality where individuals tend to project blame on others. Researchers wanted to see how hostile attribution bias can moderate the relationship between perceptions of psychological contract violation and subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision. Undermining does arise with abusive supervision, which affects families and aggression; they believe that there is a stronger positive relationship between experiences of psychological contract violation and subordinates' reports of abuse. It suggests that when someone has a negative work environment, it will affect their emotional training ground where this would result in negative home encounters. The findings from this study show that abused subordinates' family members reported a higher incidence of undermining in their home. When this occurs, complications arise at both home and work. Workplace abuse may be spawning negative interpersonal relations in the home, which may contribution to a downward spiral of relationships in both spheres.
When a subordinate is being abused, it can lead to negative affect towards their family where the subordinate starts undermining their family members. The undermining can arise from displaced aggression which is "redirection of a [person's] harm doing behavior from a primary to a secondary target" (Tedeschi & Norman, 1985, p. 30). Family undermining arises from a negative work environment: when someone above you puts you down, one starts to think that one should be put down by one's family members.
Bottom-line mentality Bottom line is defined as profits or losses of a business. Greenbaum and colleagues found that some employees tend to focus on a bottom-line outcome, which may be related to their tendency to engage in social undermining behavior. Employees with a bottom line mentality (BLM) tend to focus on only the bottom line, and to neglect other outcomes of their actions, including interpersonal consequences. Research has found that a bottom-line mentality can cause a problem, especially if the employer uses BLM as an objective for them to strive for. If someone is hurt by their actions it is not a priority for those with a BLM.
Employees that have a BLM may learn these actions from their supervisors. BLMs can cause rivalries within the organization since the employee may feel as if the organization should have a winner or loser when it comes to completing work. Employees with this approach think of their work as a game where the winner takes all instead of working with other employees to make sure everyone is contributing to the work that needs to be completed. The competitiveness that is created between the coworkers is to attain bottom-line outcomes. When the employees are trying to attain bottom-line outcomes with this winner-take-all mentality, they begin to want their co-workers to fail, as that consequently means to the undermining employee that they must be succeeding. The supervisor's BLM causes employee social undermining. This happens because the employees may role-model after the adopted supervisor's BLM. Employee personality also plays a role in the relationship between BLM and undermining. Employees that have confidence in their work ability rely on their work ethic while employees who are low in confidence are more likely to engage in social undermining behavior to make themselves look better when it comes to the bottom line of success.
Individual differences
Research suggests that whether or not someone engages in social support or social undermining depends upon their own goals. Those with compassionate goals are more likely to be supportive of others, while those who have more selfish motives believe that people should take care of themselves. When people have goals to preserve their own self-image this can undermine their compassionate goals and make them less supportive.
Health Research has shown that social undermining can have an effect on a person's health. It has been shown that social undermining can cause depressive symptoms. Depending on the relationship between a patient and their loved one, the loved one can support or undermine the patient and can even do both within the same interaction, which can increase the depressive symptoms. Creating more social support can improve treatment outcomes of a patient depending on the type of stress level the person is enduring.
Research by Joseph et al. found that when participants are exposed to high levels of social undermining and even high levels of social support it can improve the participants course of antidepressive treatment. High levels of social support and social undermining could reduce and also cause remission of the participant's depressive symptoms. The study found that African American participants who had low levels of social undermining were able to fare better than the Caucasians participants in reducing their symptoms. When both groups of participants were given high levels of social undermining the African American participants had fewer achievements in symptom reduction, while the Caucasians participants had the reverse effect of symptom reduction.