The canary in the coal mine: Robert Giacalone

by Valerie Figueroa

Anger is a fleeting emotion that is all too familiar, whether it is in response to getting cut off in traffic during rush hour or being unable to secure those Taylor Swift floor tickets.

In the workplace, however, anger has generally been viewed as a liability that can affect morale and productivity. New research from Dr. Robert “Bob” Giacalone, professor and Fields Chair in Ethics and Corporate Responsibility in the Department of Management at Texas State University’s McCoy College, suggests it's much more complex, especially in the case of moral outrage — the anger employees feel in response to unethical behavior — which can serve as both a warning signal and a paradoxical source of employees’ well-being.

Giacalone and his co-authors sought to understand moral outrage and its impacts on employees in their latest study, "Rage Against the Dying of the Light: Employees' Moral Outrage, Anger Expression, and Generalized Well-Being," published earlier this year in the Journal of Business Ethics.

In the study, they examined moral outrage as a characteristic trait, an intrinsic attribute that leads to a more passionate response to immoral behavior. The findings suggest that moral outrage is a nuanced expression of anger that impacts well-being, but also strengthens life satisfaction and leads to healthier behaviors.

"There's a stream of research that we've been doing since 2010 that shows that unethical behavior impacts all kinds of personal well-being," Giacalone said. "Personal well-being could be things like psychological well-being and physical well-being. These are outcomes that could include sleep problems, anxiety, cardiovascular problems, even suicide. What the research shows over time is that if you witness unethical behavior, you get sick. If you're victimized by it, you get sick. If you engage in it, you get sick. And there's even some data that shows that for any of these people, the witness, the perpetrator, the victim, even their family members get sick."

The study diverges from previous research, which primarily employs a state-based approach, focusing on moral outrage in response to specific incidents, such as consumer boycotts or corruption scandals. Giacalone and his co-authors instead examined whether moral outrage functions as an ethics dispositional or personality trait — an important distinction, he said.

"What we wanted to do was test whether this trait existed," he said. "Could we predict well-being impact based on whether or not we tested this as a trait? This had never been done before. No one thought about moral outrage as a trait."

The findings challenge previous understandings of moral outrage while enhancing the literature on the topic. While employees with higher levels of moral outrage reported more stress, physical illness, and negative emotional well-being, they were also more health conscious, engaged in more exercise, had healthier diets, and a greater sense of life satisfaction.

"We found a relationship between moral outrage and a positive outlook on life and increased health consciousness," Giacalone said. "People who become morally outraged take care of themselves more health-wise, which you wouldn't expect. They have a more positive outlook on life, and they tend to be more satisfied with their lives."

Why? Giacalone said he believes it lies in moral self-worth.

"Moral outrage experienced by the person makes them feel that they can witness [this behavior] and feel better about themselves," he said. “I see this and I react to it. I'm angry. I do something about it, which means I'm a good person, right?”

Giacalone said corporations and organizations can't ignore the implications of this phenomenon. They must recognize moral outrage as an indicator of unethical behavior within the organization that could cause harm to both employees and the company as a whole.

"The most important thing to do is to recognize that the moral outrage is not an attack on the organization," Giacalone said. "It's not an attack on the managers. It's not an attack on anything but the immoral behavior."

Giacalone continued: “Moral outrage is effectively the canary in the coal mine. It tells us we have a problem. And a good manager will look at that and do something about it.”

Moral outrage comes with a cost. Employees may get physically and emotionally ill, which could lead to increased absenteeism, cause morale issues, and can lead to the stigmatization of ethical employees.

“A morally outraged person is going to respond quickly to unethical activity, and do so decisively and strongly,” Giacalone said. "And that may be seen by managers as, ‘Oh, wow, we have an out-of-control person.' No, you don't. You have a person who cares."

The paradox of moral outrage is that it can harm and protect. It can lead to employees getting sick while also affirming their sense of self-worth. It can also disrupt organizations while potentially saving them from future ethical and reputational crises.

From Giacalone's perspective, organizational managers should not suppress moral outrage but use it to build ethical environments where moral concerns are addressed early and used to implement change.

"The morally outraged employee is a godsend," he said.

Giacalone is currently working on the next phase of this research, which investigates employees' coping strategies when faced with moral dilemmas in the workplace. By studying moral outrage as a dispositional trait and how individuals respond to different unethical scenarios, he hopes to help managers develop programs that enable employees to mitigate the negative effects of moral outrage while enhancing the positive impact of the phenomenon on their well-being.

Giacalone said he's also working on a project about the stigmatization of goodness.

"A lot of times, moral employees are vilified," he shared. "They're ostracized because people are afraid of them. Why were they afraid of them? Well, they're afraid for a lot of reasons, but organizations fear most that the ethical employee is going to try to do the right thing, which might cost the company money." ✯