To be or not to be political? Racialized cognitive scripts and political motivation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9889304 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Madeleine Wyatt (0000-0001-6853-4656, King's College London, corresponding author), Elena Doldor (0000-0002-3547-3129, Queen Mary University of London), Fatima Tresh (Cranfield University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 76 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 1017-1049 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Relations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-7267 • E-ISSN: 1741-282X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00187267221083660 |
| OpenAlex | W4213297539 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 52 |
How do employees become politically motivated? In this study, we examine how ethnic minority employees interpret political experiences at work and form motivations to act politically (or not) by uncovering attribution-based political scripts. We propose that cognitive scripts entail learning about the political landscape at work and motivational pathways (personal responses to the political landscape). Adopting a mixed methods approach, we interviewed 40 ethnic minority employees and extracted 810 spontaneous causal attributions about beneficial or detrimental career-related political experiences. Using latent class analysis, we identified how combinations of these attributions formed six political scripts. The content of these scripts revealed that most political experiences motivated participants to opt out of the political arena, unless political activity was legitimized or enabled by senior gatekeepers. Our findings advance scholarship on political cognition, political will, and racialized politics at work by highlighting how the wider organizational political environment shapes employees’ political motivation. We also demonstrate how politics can be perceived as racialized and offer practical suggestions for ways organizations can make workplace politics more racially inclusive
Attribution · Cognition · Political communication · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Scholarship · Sociology · Voting · Voting behavior · Gender Diversity and Inequality · Law · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
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Playing the political game at work
Evidence for a self‐serving bias in the attribution of causality 1
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Subtle Yet Significant
Reflections on the labyrinth
Why work it when you can dodge it? Identity responses to ethnic stigma among professionals
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Psychological status of the script concept
When people ask "why" questions, and the heuristics of attributional search
Social stigma
The critical incident technique
A Theory of Racialized Organizations
The Politics of Meaning
Script Formulations
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |