Exploring the pandemic's potential effects on workers' collectivist values, prosocial behaviors, and attitudes toward mistreatment

The global COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we live and work in the short-term, but history suggests that the crisis may also exert deeper, longer-lasting effects. With the aim of providing preliminary insight into this possibility, we theoretically construct and empirically test hypotheses for how exposure to COVID-19 stimuli (e.g., reading or watching media coverage, observing relief efforts) relates to the deep-seated values that guide workers' attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, we build from prior work to posit that exposure to COVID-19 stimuli is positively associated with workers' self-transcendent prosocial values, which motivate prosocial behaviors directed toward society as a whole (i.e., charitable donations) and coworkers (i.e., helping). Extend the extant literature, we further argue that exposure to COVID-19 stimuli will be positively associated with conservation values emphasizing self-restraint, submission, protection of order, and harmony in relations, which in turn influences workers' willingness to tolerate mistreatment by authorities (i.e., abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, exploitation). Evidence from 2,929 full-time Chinese employees tracked for nearly 2 months and a diverse sample of 310 workers in the United States generally support our arguments, but also provide insight into potential cultural nuances.