Help Or Avoid? The Influence Mechanism Of Dirty Work Perception On Observer Behavioral Response

Dirty work refers to work that employees are assigned to do that is physically repugnant and degrading,or that runs counter to our more heroic notions of morality.Such as housekeeping,nursing,cleaning,funeral,and many other traditionally involves the "dirty work" as the enterprise organization and job frequently appear in today’s society,the workers in the labor market occupies a larger proportion,the professional group in promoting social and economic development plays an indispensable role,harmony and stability.However,theoretical research on unclean work in Chinese context is seriously lagging behind.Therefore,exploring the role and intervention mechanism of individual unclean work can make up for the deficiency of localized theoretical and practical research.From the perspective of dirty workers,most previous studies have explored the impact of workers’ perception of dirty work and what management strategies they adopt to effectively deal with occupational stigma.However,due to the socially constructed nature of dirty work,observers tend to perceive the degree of dirty work.Although observer attitudes are important for the interpersonal interactions of dirty workers,few empirical studies have considered observer responses to perceived work dirtiness.In the traditional research on dirty work,most studies have concluded that observers often distanced themselves from and reacted negatively to dirty worker,both psychologically and behaviourally,in order to avoid dirtiness.However,given the socially functional nature of dirty work,which is integral to the functioning of society,perceptions of dirty work by observers lead to admiration from third parties,who in turn exhibit more helpful behaviors toward the dirty workers.On the contrary,because of the dirtiness nature of the work,the observer’s perception of the dirty work will cause a third party to feel disgust and distinguish themselves from the dirty worker,through interpersonal avoidance behavior.In addition,observer’s perspect-taking ability moderated the relationship between observer’s perception of work dirtiness and admiration and disgust.In this study,a field study and a situational experimental study were conducted to test the hypothesis of the theoretical model.The field study of 535 employees found that :(1)observers’ perception of job dirtiness affected their admiration and disgust;(2)Admiration and disgust mediated the relationship between perceived job dirtiness and helping behavior and interpersonal avoidance behavior,respectively;(3)Perspecttaking ability moderated the relationship between perceived job dirtiness and admiration and disgust,respectively.Furthermore,(4)Perspective-taking ability moderated the mediating effect of admiration on perceived job dirtiness--helping behavior and disgust on perceived job dirtiness--interpersonal avoidance behavior,respectively.The moderating effect of observer’s perspect-taking ability was validated again by a situational experiment on 129 students.Finally,the theoretical significance,practical implications,research limitations and future research directions are discussed...