Responses to Discrimination: Relationships Between Social Support Seeking, Core Self-Evaluations, and Withdrawal Behaviors

Drawing from the theory of conservation of resources (Hobfoll, 1989), we examined relationships between social support seeking as a response to perceived discrimination from supervisors, core self-evaluations, and withdrawal behaviors. We further studied how the relationship between social support seeking and withdrawal behaviors was moderated by core self-evaluations. With two different samples, we found, as expected, that social support seeking in response to discrimination from supervisors is positively related to employee withdrawal behaviors, and core self-evaluations is negatively related to withdrawal behaviors. Across the two samples, we also found evidence that the relationship between social support seeking and withdrawal behaviors was weaker when core self-evaluations were high compared to low. We discuss implications of our results in the context of past research.