Sharing Political and Religious Information on Facebook: Coworker Reactions
Keywords:
Social media, information disclosure, interpersonal trust, liking, helping, job performanceAbstract
This study is the first to examine links between social media activity and workplace relationship outcomes. The study examines employees’ perceptions of coworkers who share political and religious information on Facebook. Authors piloted a measure of political and religious information sharing on Facebook (the PRISM-F). Results indicate that employees who frequently post political information on Facebook are less liked by their coworkers. In turn, this reduced liking relates to being less trusted, receiving less help, and receiving lower job performance ratings from coworkers. Religious information sharing was unrelated to these outcomes. Political and religious belief similarity did not moderate the effects of information sharing. This study offers evidence that although engaging in political discourse on Facebook can be tempting, it is associated with potentially negative workplace consequences. Furthermore, organizations may be well served by developing social media policies that caution employees about the potentially negative effects of sharing political information on Facebook.
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Tsui, A. S., Porter, L. W., & Egan, T. D. (2002). When both similarities and dissimilarities matter: Extending the concept of relational demography. Human Relations, 55, 899-929.
Wayne, S. J., & Ferris, G. R. (1990). Influence tactics, affect, and exchange quality in supervisor-subordinate interactions: A laboratory experiment and field study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 487-499.
Altman, I., & Taylor, D. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston.
Andreassen, C. S., Torsheim, T., & Pallesen, S. (2014). Use of online social network sites for personal purposes at work: Does it impair self-reported performance? Comprehensive Psychology, 3(18), 1-11.
Archer, R. L., Berg, J. H., & Runge, T. E. (1980). Active and passive observers' attraction to a self-disclosing other. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16, 130-145.
Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26.
Barrick, M. R., Parks, L., & Mount, M. K. (2005). Self-monitoring as a moderator of the relationships between personality traits and performance. Personnel Psychology, 58, 745-767.
Bell, B. S., & Kozlowski, S. W. J. (2002). A typology of virtual teams: Implications for effective leadership. Group and Organizational Management, 27(1), 14-49.
Berg, J. H. (1984). Development of friendship between roommates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 346-356.
Berger, C. R., & Calabrese, R. J. (1975). Some explorations in initial interaction and beyond: Toward a developmental theory of interpersonal communication. Human Communication Theory, 1, 99-112.
boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.
Bright, L. F., Kleiser, S. B., & Grau, S. L. (2015). Too much Facebook? An exploratory examination of social media fatigue. Computers in Human Behavior, 44, 148-155.
Collins, N. L., & Miller, L. C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457-475.
Dalto, C. A., Ajzen, I., & Kaplan, K. J. (1979). Self-disclosure and attraction: Effects of intimacy and desirability on beliefs and attitudes. Journal of Research in Personality, 13, 127-138.
Derlega, V. J., Winstead, B., & Greene, K. (2008). Self-disclosure at the beginnings of a close relationship. Handbook of personal relationships. (pp. 409-427). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Frampton, B. D., & Child, J. T. (2013). Friend or not to friend: Coworker Facebook friend requests as an application of communication privacy management theory. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 2257-2264.
Gorman, C. A., & Rentsch, J. R. (2009). Evaluating frame-of-reference rater training effectiveness using performance schema accuracy. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(5), 1336-1344.
Greene, K., Derlega, V. L., & Mathews, A. (2006). Self-disclosure in personal relationships. In A. Vangelisti & D. Perlman (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of personal relationships. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1268-1328.
Hall, J. A., & Pennington, N. (2013). Self-monitoring, honesty, and cue use on Facebook: The relationship with user extraversion and conscientiousness. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 1556-1564.
Harrison, D. A., Price, K. H., Gavin, J. H., & Florey, A. T. (2002). Time, teams, and task performance: Changing effects of surface- and deep-level diversity on group functioning. Academy of Management Journal, 45, 1029-1045.
Hurley, R. F. (2006). The decision to trust. Harvard Business Review, 84, 55-62.
Judge, T. A., & Kammeyer-Mueller, J. D. (2012). Job attitudes. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 341-367.
Linden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., & Stilwell, D. (1993). A longitudinal study on the early development of leader–member exchanges. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 662-674.
McAllister, D. J. (1995). Affect- and cognition-based trust as foundations for interpersonal co-operation in organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 38(1), 24-59.
Pennington, N., Winfrey, K. I., Warner, B. R., & Kearney, M. W. (2015). Liking Obama and Romney (on Facebook): An experimental evaluation of political engagement and efficacy during the 2012 general election. Computers in Human Behavior, 44, 279-283.
Piotrowski, C. (2012). Where is the organizational business research regarding Facebook? Organizational Development Journal, 30(2), 79-84.
Podsakoff, P. M., Ahearne, M., & MacKenzie, S. B. (1997). Organizational citizenship behavior and the quantity and quality of work group performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 262-270.
Preacher, K. J., Rucker, D. D., & Hayes, A. F. (2007). Assessing moderated mediation hypotheses: Theory, methods, and prescriptions. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 42, 185-227.
Riordan, C. M., Schaffer, B. S., & Stewart, M. M. (2005). Relational demography within groups: Through the lens of discrimination. In R. L. Dipboye & A. Colella (Eds.), Discrimination at work (pp. 37-62). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Schmidt, G. B., Lelchook, A. M., & Martin, J. E. (2016). The relationship between social media co-worker connections and work-related attitudes. Computers in Human Behavior, 55, 439-445.
Simon, L. S., Judge, T. A., & Halvorsen-Ganepola, M. D. K. (2010). In good company? A multi-study, multi-level investigation of the effects of coworker relationship on employee well-being. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 534-546.
Smith, W. P., & Kidder, D. L. (2010). You’ve been tagged (then again, maybe not): Employers and Facebook. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 227-238.
Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances, private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring. NYC: Freeman.
Sturmer, S., Snyder, M., Kropp, A., & Siem, B. (2006). Empathy-motivated helping: The moderating role of group membership. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 943-956.
Sutton, A. W., Baldwin, S. P., Wood, L., & Hoffman, B. J. (2013). A meta-analysis of the relationship between liking and performance ratings. Human Performance, 26(5), 409-429.
Tsui, A. S., Egan, T. D., & O’Reilly, C. A. (1992). Being different: Relational demography and organizational attachment. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37, 547-579.
Tsui, A. S., & O’Reilly, C. A. (1989). Beyond simple demographic effects: The importance of relational demography in superior-subordinate dyads. Academy of Management Journal, 32(2), 402-423.
Tsui, A. S., Porter, L. W., & Egan, T. D. (2002). When both similarities and dissimilarities matter: Extending the concept of relational demography. Human Relations, 55, 899-929.
Wayne, S. J., & Ferris, G. R. (1990). Influence tactics, affect, and exchange quality in supervisor-subordinate interactions: A laboratory experiment and field study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 487-499.
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2017-12-19
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