• 2021
• Article

The many benefits of finding meaning in work suggest the importance of identifying activities that increase job meaningfulness. The current paper identifies one such activity: engaging in rituals with workgroups. Five studies (N = 1,099) provide evidence that performing group rituals can enhance the meaningfulness of work, and that in turn this meaning can enhance organizational citizenship behaviors (to the benefit of those groups). We first define group rituals both conceptually and empirically, identifying three types of features associated with group rituals—physical actions, psychological import, and communality—and differentiating group rituals from the related concept of group norms (Pilot Studies A and B). We then examine—correlationally in a survey of employed individuals (Study 1a) and experimentally in a study that manipulates the presence or absence of the three types of ritualistic features (Study 1b)—whether performing an activity at work with ritualistic physical, psychological, and communal features (versus an activity with none or just one of these features) is associated with more meaningful work experiences. We test whether this enhanced meaning predicts the extent to which individuals are willing to engage in behaviors enacted on behalf of that group, even without the promise of reward, using organizational citizenship behaviors in Studies 1a–1b and performance on a brainstorming task in Study 2. Taken together, these studies offer a framework for understanding group ritual and offer novel insight into the downstream consequences of employing group rituals in organizational contexts.

• 2021
• Article

Most working adults report spending very little time with friends and family. The current research explores the aspects of work that encourage employees to spend less time with personal ties. We show that incentive systems play a critical role in shaping how people allocate their time to different relationship partners. Across three experiments, one survey, and one large-scale archival data set (N = 77,302), exposure to performance incentives encouraged employees to spend more time with their work colleagues, even when it prevented them from spending time with their friends and family. This is because performance incentives led employees to perceive their work relationships as more instrumental. These findings suggest that incentive systems shape employees’ perceptions of and their interactions with critical relationship partners.

• 2021
• Article

Individuals belong to multiple groups across various domains of life, which in aggregate constitute a portfolio of potentially distinct levels of experienced status. We propose a two-factor model for assessing the effects of an individual’s status portfolio, based on status average (mean status level across groups) and status variance (degree to which status varies across those groups). Five studies using samples in general-life and work-specific contexts reveal the importance of both status average and status variance, the latter of which has been largely unexplored by status researchers to date. Individuals experiencing higher status variance show greater perspective taking, which in turn increases interpersonal helping. However, higher status variance also increases anxiety, decreasing intrapersonal well-being. Our results provide evidence of the additional explanatory power of accounting for status variance alongside status average, and highlight the importance of considering individuals’ aggregate experience of status across the multiple groups to which they belong.