When Speaking Up Leads to Shutting Up: The Effects of Workplace Victim Signaling Perceptions on Psychological Safety and Unethical Behavior

Abstract: Over the last decade, organizations have increasingly encouraged employees to speak up about experiences of harm, mistreatment, or disadvantage at work, and many employees have done so. Drawing on uncertainty management theory and psychological reactance theory, we propose that employee perceptions of workplace victim signaling (WVS) — defined as an employee’s subjective appraisal of the frequency with which other employees at work publicly communicate their disadvantages, suffering, oppression, or personal limitations — can undermine the perceiver’s feelings of psychological safety. We advance the novel prediction that reduced feelings of psychological safety may motivate compensatory unethical behavior as a way of responding to threats to one’s behavioral autonomy. In two pre-registered laboratory experiments and a time-lagged field survey, we demonstrate that perceptions of WVS reliably reduce psychological safety, which in turn predicts increased unethical behavior. This relationship is particularly pronounced among members of historically advantaged racial groups (Whites versus non-Whites), though we find no significant differences across gender groups (men versus women). Supplemental analyses reveal that self-censorship is a mediating mechanism that explains the relationship between reduced psychological safety and increased unethical conduct. Our findings identify a previously undocumented paradox: organizational practices presumably intended to create psychologically safe environments by encouraging people to communicate that they have been harmed can be perceived by other employees as undermining their sense of psychological safety. We discuss implications for theory and practice regarding psychological safety, workplace ethics, and organizational inclusion efforts.

Keywords: Workplace Victim Signaling (WVS) Perceptions, Psychological Safety, Unethical Behavior, Social Group Membership (Race, Gender), Self-Censorship