Within‐ and between‐person effects of causal attributions on relationship improvement following perceived incivility

Abstract Workplace incivility research has grown considerably over recent decades. However, this stream of research still has not adequately explained targets' attributions for experienced incivility or their potential positive responses to incivility. The present study longitudinally investigates the relationship between attributions for workplace incivility and relationship improvement responses with data from 1871 person‐month observations. In contrast to expectations, we found targets' beliefs that their relationship with the uncivil coworker was the cause of the incivility (i.e., relational locus of causality) were negatively related to relationship improvement behaviours. The results also indicated that this negative relationship was attenuated by belief that the target had control over the cause of incivility (i.e., internal controllability) and task interdependence at the between‐person level, and by belief that the uncivil coworker had control over the cause of incivility (i.e., external controllability) at the within‐person level. Direct effects analysis indicated that internal and external controllability attributions for incivility had significant positive between‐person effects on relationship improvement efforts. Frequency of interaction and task interdependence were both significant positive predictors of relationship improvement efforts at both the between‐ and within‐person levels. Implications for research and future directions are discussed.