Rude Awakening: An Examination of the Incivility-Sleep Relationship via Affect

Despite the prevalence of incivility at work and the essential nature of sleep, study of this relationship is comparatively sparse in the organizational sciences literature. Further, although impaired sleep could logically impact how one interprets subsequent interpersonal interactions at work, the dominant approach is to study sleep as an outcome of perceived incivility. Therefore, we drew upon affective events theory, the affect-as-information hypothesis, and sleep physiology to argue that state affect, both positive and negative, can explain the relationship between perceived incivility and sleep quality in either direction. The hypotheses were tested using a between-subjects design with one-month time lags and employees recruited from Prolific (Study 1) and a within-subjects design with daily assessments and employees recruited from Mturk (Study2). Across both studies, the findings indicated consistent direct effects, wherein perceived incivility was related to poorer affect (i.e., higher NA, lower PA), while sleep quality was related to improved affect (i.e., lower NA, higher PA). Regarding indirect effects, PA mediated the incivility→sleep relationship in Study 1, whereas NA mediated the incivility→sleep relationship in Study 2. We expand upon the implications of these findings and directions for future research.