A Prototype Analysis of Lay Conceptions of Workplace Criers

Crying is an intense emotional expression that can shape important workplace outcomes such as coworker relationships and performance evaluations. However, research on perceptions of employees who cry at work has focused on a limited set of features (e.g., competence), resulting in other potentially relevant ones (e.g., being sensitive) being understudied. Existing literature also suggests that some features may be attributed to criers more quickly than others, although this has not been directly examined. To address these gaps, we conducted three studies with full-time employees to investigate whether perceptions of workplace criers are prototypically organized with a broad range of features that vary in representativeness. In Study 1 (n = 163), participants listed their perceptions of workplace criers, generating 51 overarching features that varied in frequency of mention. These features included commonly studied traits (e.g., competence, warmth) and less studied ones (e.g., being stressed). In Study 2 (n = 97), a separate sample rated how strongly the features from Study 1 represented workplace criers. Results unravelled clear differences in prototypicality: features such as “Stressed” and “Sensitive” were rated as highly representative, while others such as “Incompetent” and “Unmotivated” were less representative. Prototypicality ratings were also positively associated with the feature frequencies obtained in Study 1. Lastly, participants in Study 3 (n = 162) completed a reaction time task and were faster to confirm central features and reject peripheral ones. Together, these findings demonstrate that perceptions of workplace criers are extensive and prototypically structured, offering insights into how crying shapes interpersonal perceptions at work.