"When the medium massages perceptions: Personal (vs. public) displays of information reduce crowding perceptions and outsider mistreatment of frontline staff": Correction.

Reports an error in "When the medium massages perceptions: Personal (vs. public) displays of information reduce crowding perceptions and outsider mistreatment of frontline staff" by Jean-Nicolas Reyt, Dorit Efrat-Treister, Daniel Altman, Chen Shapira, Arie Eisenman and Anat Rafaeli (Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 2022[Feb], Vol 27[1], 164-178). In the original article, changes were needed to the labels under the images in the Appendix. Personal media were mistakenly labeled as public and vice versa. The four legends, from left to right, top to bottom, should be "Low crowding, public medium," "Low crowding, personal medium," "High crowding, public medium," and "High crowding, personal medium." The results and conclusions are unchanged. The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2022-30403-003). Crowded waiting areas are volatile environments, where seemingly ordinary people often get frustrated and mistreat frontline staff. Given that crowding is an exogenous factor in many industries (e.g., retail, healthcare), we suggest an intervention that can "massage" outsiders' perceptions of crowding and reduce the mistreatment of frontline staff. We theorize that providing information for outsiders to read while they wait on a personal medium (e.g., a leaflet, a smartphone) reduces their crowding perceptions and mistreatment of frontline staff, compared to providing the same information on a public medium (e.g., poster, wall sign). We report two studies that confirm our theory: A field experiment in Emergency Departments (n = 939) and an online experiment simulating a coffee shop (n = 246). Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

When the medium massages perceptions: Personal (vs. public) displays of information reduce crowding perceptions and outsider mistreatment of frontline staff.

Crowded waiting areas are volatile environments, where seemingly ordinary people often get frustrated and mistreat frontline staff. Given that crowding is an exogenous factor in many industries (e.g., retail, healthcare), we suggest an intervention that can "massage" outsiders' perceptions of crowding and reduce the mistreatment of frontline staff. We theorize that providing information for outsiders to read while they wait on a personal medium (e.g., a leaflet, a smartphone) reduces their crowding perceptions and mistreatment of frontline staff, compared to providing the same information on a public medium (e.g., poster, wall sign). We report two studies that confirm our theory: A field experiment in Emergency Departments (n = 939) and an online experiment simulating a coffee shop (n = 246). Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The influence of culture on care receivers' satisfaction and aggressive tendencies in the emergency department.

INTRODUCTION: Reducing aggressive tendencies among care receivers in the emergency department has great economic and psychological benefits for care receivers, staff, and health care organizations. In a study conducted in a large multicultural hospital emergency department, we examined how cultural factors relating to ethnicity interact to enhance care receivers' satisfaction and reduce their aggressive tendencies. Specifically, we explored how care receivers' cultural affiliation, individual cultural characteristics, and the cultural situational setting interact to increase care receivers' satisfaction and reduce their aggressive tendencies. METHOD: Data were collected using survey responses from 214 care receivers. We use structural equation models and the bootstrap method to analyze the data. RESULTS: Care receivers' openness to diversity (an individual cultural characteristic) was positively related to their satisfaction that was associated with lower aggressive tendencies, only when they were affiliated with a cultural minority group and when the cultural situational setting included language accessibility. CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrate that cultural affiliation, individual cultural characteristics, and cultural situational setting can affect care receivers' satisfaction and aggressive tendencies in a multicultural emergency department context. In particular, high cultural openness of care receivers, and making information accessible in their native language, increased satisfaction and reduced aggressive tendencies among cultural minority care receivers in our study.

The effect of waiting on aggressive tendencies toward emergency department staff: Providing information can help but may also backfire.

INTRODUCTION: Waiting is inevitable for customers of service organizations, yet having to wait can trigger aggression by care receivers toward hospital staff. We explore the effect of waiting times on care receivers' sense of procedural justice and aggressive tendencies, and show the attenuating effects of providing explanatory information. METHODS: Data were collected using survey responses in two studies, both conducted in the waiting area of a large hospital emergency department. Study 1 (n = 328) was a quasi-experiment involving an intervention in which care receivers were provided with information about wait times. Study 1 included three phases: (1) pre-test (week 1, n = 98), in which no information was provided; (2) information condition (weeks 2 & 3, n = 155), in which information was provided through large signs and pamphlets; and (3) post-test (week 4, n = 75), in which no information was provided. Study 2 (n = 99) was conducted a year later and involved the same information provision as the intervention stage of Study 1. RESULTS: The longer the wait duration, the lower care receivers' procedural justice perceptions and the greater their aggressive tendencies. Information provision moderated the association, such that receiving information reduced aggressive tendencies during shorter waits but increased aggressive tendencies during longer waits. We show these effects in two separate data collections, conducted one year apart. CONCLUSION: Competing theories predict that explanatory information should variously reduce and increase aggressive tendencies among people waiting in a queue. Our findings resolve this contradiction by identifying boundaries for the effectiveness of providing information in reducing aggression. We show that providing information is likely to reduce aggression until such point as the wait duration becomes longer than expected based on the information provided.

Correction: How psychology might alleviate violence in queues: Perceived future wait and perceived load moderate violence against service providers.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218184.].

How psychology might alleviate violence in queues: Perceived future wait and perceived load moderate violence against service providers.

INTRODUCTION: Queues are inherent to service encounters, as it is not always possible to provide service to all clients at the exact moment they request service. Queues involve waiting for a service in a specific place that might also be crowded, they obstruct the client's' goal of receiving service, and at times lead clients to mistreat service providers and in extreme cases even attack them violently. We show, in a hospital setting, that perceived predicted future wait and load can buffer the causes of violence towards service staff. METHODS: We combine objective data on crowdedness, reports of violence, and durations of time people waited, with psychological measures of perceived load and perceived future wait, collected from 226 people in the Emergency Department (ED) of a large hospital. Visitors to the ED were recruited as they waited for service. They indicated their perceived load in the ED and their perceived remaining wait for service. This data was then triangulated with objective operational data regarding the actual number of people waiting for service (i.e., crowdedness) and objective data regarding staff calls to security to stop violent accounts. RESULTS: We find that with increased crowdedness, there are more calls to security reporting violence. However, this relationship is moderated by two factors: when people perceive the future wait to be short and when they perceive the load on the system to be high. Moreover, a three-way interaction shows that crowdedness is associated with more incidents of violence, however high perceived load and low perceived future wait are associated with fewer violent incidents. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrates the relationship between crowded queues and violence towards service staff, and suggests two psychological mechanisms for buffering such violence: reducing perceived future wait and elevating perceived load.

Cultural Collectivism and Tightness Moderate Responses to Norm Violators: Effects on Power Perception, Moral Emotions, and Leader Support.

Responses to norm violators are poorly understood. On one hand, norm violators are perceived as powerful, which may help them to get ahead. On the other hand, norm violators evoke moral outrage, which may frustrate their upward social mobility. We addressed this paradox by considering the role of culture. Collectivistic cultures value group harmony and tight cultures value social order. We therefore hypothesized that collectivism and tightness moderate reactions to norm violators. We presented 2,369 participants in 19 countries with a norm violation or a norm adherence scenario. In individualistic cultures, norm violators were considered more powerful than norm abiders and evoked less moral outrage, whereas in collectivistic cultures, norm violators were considered less powerful and evoked more moral outrage. Moreover, respondents in tighter cultures expressed a stronger preference for norm followers as leaders. Cultural values thus influence responses to norm violators, which may have downstream consequences for violators' hierarchical positions.

Others' anger makes people work harder not smarter: the effect of observing anger and sarcasm on creative and analytic thinking.

The authors examine whether and how observing anger influences thinking processes and problem-solving ability. In 3 studies, the authors show that participants who listened to an angry customer were more successful in solving analytic problems, but less successful in solving creative problems compared with participants who listened to an emotionally neutral customer. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors further show that observing anger communicated through sarcasm enhances complex thinking and solving of creative problems. Prevention orientation is argued to be the latent variable that mediated the effect of observing anger on complex thinking. The present findings help reconcile inconsistent findings in previous research, promote theory about the effects of observing anger and sarcasm, and contribute to understanding the effects of anger in the workplace.