The Interactive Role of Status and Status Striving for High-

We draw from AET to suggest that an individual’s perceived status and status striving will interactively associate with his or her high-arousal negative affective

Status

Enhancement behavior

Status striving

High-arousal negative affect

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experiences.¹ Although AET emphasizes the role of discrete affective events as proximal causes of emotions, it also acknowledges the relevance of environmental features in this regard, arguing that characteristics of the work context may shape an employee’s affective experiences “by making certain events…more or less likely” (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996:

12). Elfenbein (2007) has noted, accordingly, that any aspect of the work environment that is personally salient for an individual may represent a relevant emotional stimulus.

Moreover, AET holds that dispositional factors (i.e., individual differences) may critically shape the affective consequences of specific work environment features and their associated events (Wegge, van Dick, Fisher, West, & Dawson, 2006; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996).

What is perceived as highly salient by one person may appear largely irrelevant for another individual and, thus, similar work environment features and events may cause distinct affective reactions across different persons.

More specifically, AET builds on theories of cognitive appraisal (Frijda, 1993;

Lazarus, 1991) to explicate the origins of an individual’s affective experiences at work (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Appraisal theorists have argued that affective reactions to a specific situation depend on two key factors (Lazarus, 1991; Smith & Lazarus, 1993). First, for any affective response to ensue, individuals need to appraise the situation as relevant for themselves (Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer, & Frijda, 2013). And second, for any situation appraised as relevant, the resulting affective response (e.g., positive vs. negative) hinges on the extent to which the situation promotes or hinders one’s goal attainment (Ellsworth &

Scherer, 2003). Building on these insights, AET suggests that individual differences in desires, needs, and personality traits may decisively influence whether an individual appraises a specific work situation (and the associated events) as self-relevant and, thus, such

1 Although we believe high-arousal negative affect is particularly important in the present conceptual framework, we also explored the potential roles of arousal negative affect as well as high-arousal and low-arousal positive affect. These results are summarized in the Supplementary Analyses section.

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characteristics may determine both the type and the strength of the resulting affective reactions (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996; Weiss & Kurek, 2003). We argue, therefore, that an individual’s perceived status (as a type of work environment feature with potential affective consequences; Kemper, 1991) and status striving (as a type of dispositional trait related to the self-relevance of status considerations; Barrick et al., 2002) should interactively associate with his or her experiences of high-arousal negative affect.

To the extent an individual appraises status situations as self-relevant, in particular, we suggest that the affective stimuli and events resulting from perceptions of being in a low-status position have the potential to evoke intense negative emotionality. After all, lower status may entail a number of personal disadvantages, including diminished social esteem, disrespectful treatment from others, and inferior access to organizational and group resources (Anderson et al., 2015; Spataro et al., 2014). In many cases, a perceived lack of status is likely, therefore, to trigger adverse events and experiences that severely hinder an individual’s goal attainment and threaten his or her well-being. Based on these important consequences, it seems plausible to assume that being in low-status position may evoke pronounced high-arousal negative feelings.

Importantly, however, it is unlikely that all individuals will appraise status situations as equally relevant for themselves. As noted before, individuals differ in the salience they attach to issues of power, status, and social standing, and the respective motivational orientations can shape individuals’ reactions (Neel et al., 2016). Specifically, the degree to which an individual is concerned about status issues (as reflected in his or her status striving;

Barrick et al., 2002) may substantially alter the individual’s responses toward situations of lower vs. higher status (Blader & Chen, 2011, 2012). Consistent with AET’s notion of a moderating role of individual dispositions (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), we therefore

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propose that status striving will critically influence the extent to which an individual’s perceptions of relatively low status trigger high-arousal negative affective reactions.

People with higher (rather than lower) status striving attach greater personal value to their placement within social hierarchies (Flynn, Reagans, Amanatullah, & Ames, 2006).

Such individuals urgently desire social esteem, influence, and respect, and both the advantages associated with higher status and the disadvantages associated with lower status should be particularly salient for them (Mehta, Jones, & Josephs, 2008; Newman, Sellers, &

Josephs, 2005). Hence, individuals with higher status striving should be more emotionally reactive toward their perceived status and the associated affective events. When they find themselves in a lower-ranking status position, these individuals may experience an acute sense of threat to their ego and self-worth, whereas higher-status situations may affirm their motivational goals (Barrick, Mount, & Li, 2013; Griskevicius et al., 2009). As such, situations of inferior status may trigger more pronounced high-arousal negative feelings among these individuals, as compared with higher status situations (Josephs, Sellers, Newman, & Mehta, 2006). We therefore anticipate a negative relationship between status perceptions and experiences of high-arousal negative affect for individuals with relatively high status striving.

With lower status striving, by contrast, individuals exhibit lower concern for their status position and its (dis)advantages, such that status considerations should have less relevance for personal goal achievement (Barrick et al., 2002). Consequently, in line with AET, people with lower status striving should be less emotionally reactive toward their perceived status and the associated workplace events, experiencing similar emotionality in both lower-status and higher-status situations. These individuals may feel relatively comfortable even in lower-status positions, in particular, and they may not perceive limited status as a relevant threat to their self-worth (Barrick et al., 2013; Josephs et al., 2006).

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Hence, a lack of status is less likely to trigger pronounced high-arousal negative affect among individuals with lower rather than higher status striving. Consistent with this notion, scholars have argued that lower-status individuals tend to show strong negative emotional reactions primarily when they view themselves as deserving of a better status position (Kemper, 2006; Leary et al., 2014). Building on this backdrop, we expect that individuals’

high-arousal negative affective experiences will not differ markedly across lower vs. higher status situations among individuals with relatively low status striving. Taken together, we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 1: Perceived status and status striving are interactively related with an individual’s high-arousal negative affect, such that the negative relationship between perceived status and high-arousal negative affect is more pronounced among individuals with higher rather than lower status striving.