Bad, mad, or glad? Exploring the relationship between leaders' appraisals or attributions of their use of abusive supervision and emotional reactions

Abstract A large body of research has documented the ill effects of abusive supervision. However, this begs the question of why these behaviors continue to occur. To address this question, we contend that scholars need to understand how leaders—the perpetrators of these actions—make sense of abusive supervision. Specifically, drawing upon theories of appraisal and attribution, this paper examines leaders' cognitions of who is accountable for incidents of abusive supervision (i.e., the leader or the subordinate) and their future expectations (i.e., are individuals likely to engage in the same behaviors subsequently or are capable of change) and how these appraisals interact to shape emotional reactions. We conducted three complementary studies: a pilot study to identify relevant emotions, an event‐based experience sampling study (Study 1), and a retrospective recall study (Study 2). Accountability appraisals were associated with emotions, such that appraisals that oneself (vs. one's subordinate) was more responsible for the incident were linked to higher levels of guilt and shame. Although growth mindset moderated associations between accountability appraisals and emotions, it did so for different emotions across the two studies (i.e., hostility in Study 1 and shame in Study 2). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.