Alicia A. Grandey’s research while affiliated with William Penn University and other places

Showing pride at work clearly communicates personal success (i.e., high competence) and boosts status; yet some evidence suggests it can also signal self‐focus and insensitivity to others (i.e., low warmth). Prior scholars have proposed gender differences explain mixed findings, but with limited support. We propose that the benefit‐cost tradeoff depends on the displayer's gender in conjunction with the social context of the display. We test the contextualized dual‐signaling model of employee pride displays, uniquely assessing how the signaler's gender and receiver's social motives (between‐person comparisons) change first‐impressions of competence and warmth after one or repeated exposures (i.e., within‐person comparisons). Study 1 was a 2 (signaler gender) by 2 (signal context) design obtaining judgments before and after seeing a dynamic pride display. Pride displays increased competence similarly across employee gender, but women saw significantly greater costs to warmth when displays were public (i.e., coworkers present), a violation of gender norms. In Study 2, we replicate this finding regardless of whether coworkers were collaborators or competitors (between‐person), and found repeated displays increase the warmth cost for women and the competence gains for men. In Study 3, we compare the costs for women of confirming gender norms for warmth (i.e., happiness display) or violating gender norms for warmth but conforming to leader norms for competence (i.e., pride display). Results suggest “happy” women are preferred as leaders over “proud” women despite higher competence. We clarify mixed findings and confirm the need for contextualized theory to understand gender differences in pride displays and career trajectories.

Can algorithms that predict customer movie and shopping preferences also predict which employees are likely to leave and where they are likely to go, thus helping to retain talent? This study applies a type of machine learning (ML) technique, collaborative filtering (CF) recommender system algorithms, to investigate the comparison between satisfaction with the current job and potential satisfaction with job alternatives, which is inherent in theorizing about individual turnover decisions. The comparison of those anticipated ratings along with employee's current job satisfaction creates two operationalizations: the quantity of more desirable job alternatives and the quality (or extent of desirability) of job alternatives. To test the effectiveness of this novel approach, we applied recommender system algorithms to a longitudinal archival dataset of employees and had three main findings. First, the recommender system algorithms efficiently predicted job satisfaction based on just two sources of information (i.e., work history and job satisfaction in previous jobs), providing construct validity evidence for recommender systems. Second, both the quantity and the quality of more desirable job alternatives compared to the current job positively correlated with employees’ future turnover behavior. Finally, our CF recommender system algorithms predicted where employees moved to, and even more effectively if constraining the alternative jobs to the same occupation. We conclude with implications how recommender system algorithms can help scholars effectively test theoretical ideas and practitioners predict and reduce turnover.

In 2019, we put out the call for submissions to a special issue of Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) on preventing interpersonal stressors. At that time, we could not imagine that in 2020, a global pandemic (coronavirus disease [COVID-19]) would suddenly shut down our workplaces and result in a loss of face-toface interpersonal interactions. We extended deadlines for this special issue, given that lockdowns resulted in a loss of workplace social interactions. As we start to return to the office, our interactions with people are both the benefit (for support and connection) and bane (for mistreatment and abuse) of our work lives (Bolino & Grant, 2016; Grandey & Diamond, 2010; McCord et al., 2018). In fact, interpersonal stressors are more problematic for health than almost any other form of stress (Almeida, 2005) and may be instigated during work interactions with supervisors, coworkers, and customers (Grandey et al., 2007). Both high-intensity (i.e., aggression) and lowintensity (i.e., incivility) stressors distract employees from tasks and evoke negative affect, contributing to employee withdrawal and counterproductive behavior (Bowling&Beehr, 2006; Hershcovis&Barling, 2010; Porath&Erez, 2007; Yang et al., 2014). We know thatworkplace conditions (i.e., contact with the public, high workload, injustice) and employee characteristics (i.e., negative affectivity) are associated with experiencing interpersonal mistreatment (Hershcovis et al., 2007; LeBlanc & Kelloway, 2002; Li et al., 2019), which results in retaliating toward others (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Foulk et al., 2016)

In North America and Western Europe, women now compose almost half the workforce but still face disparities in pay and promotions. We suggest that women’s natural experiences of the three Ms (i.e., menstruation, maternity, and menopause) are taboo topics in ways that may constrain women’s careers. We propose that the three Ms are particularly incongruent with expectations at intersecting career stages (i.e., a job market newcomer having menstrual discomfort, an early career professional breastfeeding, a company leader getting hot flashes), with implications for work outcomes. In this review, we tackle the taboo of the three Ms by reviewing the evidence for how menstruation, maternity, and menopause are each linked to (1) hormonal and physiological changes, (2) societal beliefs and stereotypes, and (3) work affect, cognition, and behavior. We conclude by proposing novel implications for incorporating the three Ms into existing theoretical frameworks (i.e., work-nonwork spillover; stigma and disclosure; occupational health) and presenting new research questions and practices for understanding and addressing the ways that women’s health intersects with career trajectories.

Pride is often felt in the work context, but should it be shown to others? Pride displays communicate one's own success and status, but can show a lack of interpersonal sensitivity. This double-edged nature of pride is not fully understood in organizational contexts; we do not know under what conditions pride displays are beneficial, or detrimental, to career advancement, team dynamics, and leader influence. In this article we integrate signaling theory with sensory habituation and sensitization concepts to develop a new contextualized model of pride at work. Specifically, we propose that pride displays are signals for two primary social judgments that have important implications for organizations: competence and warmth. We make the case that, while pride display under conditions of information asymmetry (lack of information about the sender) signals competence, repeated displays hasten habituation to that signal and instead foster sensitization to a (low) interpersonal warmth signal. Furthermore, additional characteristics of the sender, receiver and audience determine the signaling of these two social judgments from pride. This model advances theory by contextualizing the social function of pride, and suggests new research directions for emotion regulation, impression management, and the rise and fall in social hierarchies, with implications for newcomers, teamwork, and leadership in today's workplace.

Finding a new job requires individuals to be unruffled and focused despite obstacles, self-control dilemmas between avoiding short-term costs and achieving long-term gains. We propose that distinguishing two types of obstacles helps to understand when job search goal are more likely to be maintained. We propose that emotional obstacles are internal states that redirect energy away from the goal, whereas attentional obstacles are external events and tasks that distract focus from the goal, and emotional skills and situational norms, respectively, determine if the job seeker can resolve the self-control dilemma and overcome these obstacles. An initial study supported the differentiation of emotional (i.e., frustration, fatigue) and attentional (i.e., schoolwork, social events) obstacles among student job seekers, and in another sample of graduating job seekers these two obstacles differentially affected their job search intensity over two weeks. Specifically, emotional obstacles either reduced or increased the hours spent on the job search depending on whether job seekers could effectively regulate their emotions. Attentional obstacles either increased or reduced subsequent hours spent on the job search, depending on awareness of peers’ job seeking activities. We build on these findings to make suggestions for future job search motivation research and training interventions.

“Service with a smile” improves performance ratings, but it is unclear whether that smile must always be authentic. We propose that reactions to a service employee’s display authenticity may depend on the customer’s race, due to a history of differential service experiences. Further, we propose that these experiences inform customers’ expectations, such that White customers are more likely than Black customers to expect friendly “service with a smile.” To test this conjecture, we first confirm that Blacks have lower service performance expectations than Whites due to a history of mistreatment in a service context. In two experimental studies and a field study, we then show that authenticity is a stronger predictor of performance-based evaluations (i.e., exceeded expectations) for White customers than for Black customers. Our findings underscore the impact of the racially biased treatment that Black customers have come to expect and the challenge of pleasing a diverse customer base.

Emotional labor has been an area of burgeoning research interest in occupational health psychology in recent years. Emotional labor was conceptualized in the early 1980s by sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1983) as occupational requirements that alienate workers from their emotions. Almost 2 decades later, a model was published in Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (JOHP) that viewed emotional labor through a psychological lens, as emotion regulation strategies that differentially relate to performance and wellbeing. For this anniversary issue of JOHP, we review the emotional labor as emotion regulation model, its contributions, limitations, and the state of the evidence for its propositions. At the heart of our article, we present a revised model of emotional labor as emotion regulation, that incorporates recent findings and represents a multilevel and dynamic nature of emotional labor as emotion regulation.