Employees' reactions toward COVID-19 information exposure: Insights from terror management theory and generativity theory.
J Appl Psychol
; 106(11): 1601-1614, 2021 Nov.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1556089
ABSTRACT
As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has imposed significant risks to our health and affected our social and economic order, information on COVID-19 becomes readily accessible via various mass media and social media. In the current research, we aim to understand the impacts of employees' exposure to COVID-19 information on their workplace behaviors. Integrating Terror Management Theory (TMT; Becker, 1973; Greenberg et al., 1986) with Generativity Theory (Erikson, 1963, 1982), we proposed and investigated two psychological mechanisms (i.e., death anxiety and generativity-based death reflection) that account for the effects of employees' COVID-19 information exposure on their work withdrawal and helping behaviors toward coworkers. We also examined organizational actions [internal and external corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities] that served as a context for employees to make sense of their COVID-19 information exposure. We conducted two studies with samples of full-time employees (N1 = 278; N2 = 382) to test our predictions. Results in both studies showed that employees' exposure to COVID-19 information was positively related to their death anxiety and generativity-based death reflection, which in turn predicted their work withdrawal and helping behaviors, respectively. Further, employees' perceived internal CSR of their organization mitigated the positive association between COVID-19 information exposure and their death anxiety, weakening the positive indirect effect of COVID-19 information exposure on their work withdrawal. Our study offers new insights to the understanding of work and employment in the COVID-19 pandemic and sheds light on how individuals' death-related experiences shape work-related behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pandemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
J Appl Psychol
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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