Whose side are you on? Exploring the role of perspective taking on third-party’s reactions to workplace deviance

We introduce perspective taking as an antecedent of third-party reactions to different forms of workplace deviance. Varying the perspective taken by third-parties (perpetrator; other’s perspective) and the type of workplace deviance (moderate organizational deviance; severe interpersonal deviance), we show that third-parties who take the perpetrator’s perspective perceive the incident as less of a moral violation, make less internal, and more external attributions for the perpetrator’s behavior, which in turn reduces endorsement of punishment. Findings were consistent across the four studies and not affected by the target (organization or individual) or the severity of the deviance. The mediation analysis was supported by the instrumental variable method (Studies 1 and 2) and the concurrent double randomization design (Studies 3a and 3b).