Accessibility navigation


The role of perceived autonomy‐supportive communications for motivating prejudice reduction and avoiding defiant backlash within the police force workplace

Weinstein, N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2200-6617, Legate, N., Graham, L., Zheng, Y., Plater, M., Al-Khouja, M. and Moller, A. C. (2023) The role of perceived autonomy‐supportive communications for motivating prejudice reduction and avoiding defiant backlash within the police force workplace. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 53 (5). pp. 443-454. ISSN 1559-1816

[img]
Preview
Text - Accepted Version
· Please see our End User Agreement before downloading.

355kB

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing.

To link to this item DOI: 10.1111/jasp.12953

Abstract/Summary

Workplace prejudice-reduction efforts tend to be short lived at best, and can even arouse defiance, or a desire to oppose requests or rules, in employees. The motivational approach of self-determination theory (SDT) describes how communicating about prejudice reduction can be scaffolded in ways that inspire genuine motivation and avoid eliciting defensive responses. From an SDT perspective, such autonomy-supportive communications take the perspective of the employee, provide choice about how to best approach attitude change, provide a rationale or compelling reason for the importance of change, offer structure through explaining the consequences of bias, and avoid the use of shame to compel change. In two multi-wave studies with British police officers and staff, we hypothesized that employees would report lower prejudice (operationalized as having less antagonistic attitudes toward police forces investing in diversity) when they perceived forces to communicate about prejudice in autonomy-supportive ways (Studies 1 and 2). We also tested whether this association would be explained by lower defiance when perceiving the force to communicate in autonomy-supportive ways (Study 2). Results supported the main effect of perceived autonomy-supportive communication relating to lower prejudice in multi-wave (Study 1, n = 1226) and longitudinal data (Study 2, n = 232). We consider implications for communicating about prejudice-reduction efforts in the workplace.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology
ID Code:109350
Uncontrolled Keywords:Social Psychology
Publisher:Wiley

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record

Page navigation