Kevin Tran

Selective workplace incivility, which is conceptualized as low-intensity counterproductive work behaviors expressed toward a specific demographic group (e.g., women or African Americans), often leads to various negative outcomes among the targeted employees including reduced job satisfaction and turnover. To address this issue, the present study built upon previous research on Intergroup Contact Theory and applied it to workplace settings. The original theory suggests that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can effectively improve relations amongst majority and minority ethnic groups, following research showed that this theory also applies to nonethnic interaction such as those between genders. Therefore, the study examined how Intergroup Contact Theory affects selective workplace incivility behaviors toward the opposite gender. We hypothesized that employees with both higher contact quantity and quality with the opposite gender will express less workplace incivility behaviors toward them. We sampled 200 participants through Amazon Mechanical Turk and used an adapted version of the original intergroup contact scale to measure contact quality and quantity with the opposite gender. The analysis found a moderately positive correlation between contact quantity and quality. However, multiple regression analysis showed that after controlling for age and gender, both contact quantity and quality showed minimal association with workplace incivility behaviors. The results suggest that successful intergroup contact does not necessarily translate to less workplace incivility behaviors toward the opposite gender. Future research should explore the potential moderators for the relationship such as organizational climate and leadership.