| Abstrakt: |
Racial microaggressions --interactions that send denigrating messages to individuals because of their (racial) group membership -- are unfortunately common in the workplace, harming the target's work satisfaction, psychological safety, self-esteem, and health. Microaggression research has focused on effects to the direct target, but related literature on workplace incivility suggests that racial microaggressions harm not only the targeted individual, but witnesses as well. Integrating the literatures on microaggressions and incivility, we show that witnessing uncivil racial microaggressions (i.e., racial incivility) is a common workplace experience, with disproportionate harmful effects on witnesses' willingness to voice. First, in two qualitative pilot studies (N=402), we collect worker's narrative experiences of witnessed racial incivility. We develop these narratives into experimental paradigms for a large, preregistered experiment (N=4,449) with a racially stratified sample of White, Asian, Latine, and Black Americans. We find that Anti-Asian racial incivility reduces psychological safety and perceived impact among witnesses, chilling willingness to voice even among witnesses who are not from the targeted group (i.e. non-Asians). Racial incivility was most detrimental to willingness to voice among racial minoritized participants, and those who identify more strongly with the targeted group, even individuals who are not themselves members. For leaders hoping to harness the innovative potential of diverse groups, this underscores the importance of fostering a racially inclusive group climate -- one that does not tolerate racial microaggressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
