Afraid Does Not Mean Silent: the Role of Emotions in Reporting Discrimination

Abstract: Observers of workplace discrimination choose between staying silent or speaking up. One response employees use is whistleblowing, either internally to higher-ups within the organization or externally to outside entities. Anger and fear play crucial roles in shaping observers’ responses. Prior research demonstrates that anger predicts voice, whereas fear promotes silence. Incorporating a functional perspective of emotions, we argue that fear does not uniformly inhibit voice but redirects it through safer channels. In discriminatory contexts, fear might motivate external whistleblowing as a protective form of action. Across two survey studies (n=980), we find that anger mediates internal voice after observing discrimination, reflecting its approach-oriented nature. Contrastingly, fear does not mediate internal voice but does mediate not only silence but also external whistleblowing. By demonstrating how the consequences of fear depend on the voice channel, we challenge the idea that fear primarily produces silence, with implications for future theory and practice.

Keywords: Whistleblowing, Emotional States, Discrimination, Experiment