Employees' Reactions Toward COVID-19 Information Exposure: Insights From Terror Management Theory and Generativity Theory

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Shao, Ruodan; He, Long; Chang, Chu-Hsiang; Wang, Mo; Baker, Nathan; Pan, Jingzhou; Jin, Yanghua
• 署名单位: York University - Canada; Michigan State University; State University System of Florida; University of Florida; Tianjin University; Zhejiang Gongshang University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0000983
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 1601-1614
• 关键词: death anxiety; death reflection; GENERATIVITY; Terror Management Theory

摘要

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 (N-1 = 278; N-2 = 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.