The dark side of perspective-taking: Intensifying negative meta-stereotypes among frontline employees exposed to customer mistreatment

Abstract

Perspective-taking, or adopting the customer's point of view, is an effective intervention for helping frontline employees manage customer mistreatment. However, by drawing on fluency misattribution theory and social identity threat theory, this study reveals the dark side of perspective-taking. Results from five experiments involving 878 frontline employees show that incautiously adopting customers' perspectives to understand customer mistreatment intensifies employees' negative meta-stereotypes about how customers think of them, but only among those frequently exposed to such mistreatment. This effect is driven by these employees' bias attribution, whereby they tend to attribute customer mistreatment to customer bias against them. Furthermore, these effects are mitigated when frontline employees are encouraged to make non-bias attribution or when perspective-taking interventions are framed positively. Overall, this work reveals why the dark side of perspective-taking is likely to appear in hospitality and tourism and suggests how organizations can tackle it.