Voicing One’s Ideas: Intragroup Respect as an Antecedent of Assertive Behavior

In this research, we tested equality-based respect from ingroup members as a social antecedent of positive assertiveness (i.e., voicing one’s opinions) and group performance. A pretest with employees at the workplace supported that the variables of interest were indeed correlated. The main experimental study then confirmed that participants who had received high as compared with low intragroup respect displayed more assertive behavior and yielded higher group performance in dyadic intragroup discussions. In contrast, high intergroup respect (i.e., from outgroup members) lowered assertiveness and performance levels in intergroup interactions relative to low respect. We discuss implications for social interactions and discourses.