Episodes of incivility between subordinates and supervisors: examining the role of self-control and time with an interaction-record diary study

Scholars have hypothesized that experiencing incivility not only negatively affects well-being, but may eventrigger further antisocial behavior. Previous research, however, has focused mainly on the relation betweenincivility and well-being. Thus, little is known about the behavioral consequences of incivility. With this inmind, we conducted an interaction-record diary study to examine whether supervisor incivility causes retal-iatory incivility against the supervisor. Using the self-control strength model as a framework, we further ex-amined whether the target’s trait (trait self-control) and state (exhaustion) self-regulatory capacities moderatethis effect. In addition, we examined the role of time by testing the duration of the effect. When we analyzedthe full data set, we found no support for our hypotheses. However, using a subset of the data in which thesubsequent interaction happened on the same day as the prior interaction, our results showed that experienc-ing incivility predicted incivility in the subsequent interaction, but only when the time lag between the twointeractions was short. Furthermore, in line with the assumption that self-regulatory capacities are requiredto restrain a target from retaliatory responses, the effect was stronger when individuals were exhausted. Incontrast to our assumption, trait self-control had no effect on instigated incivility.