By Brook Lu and Ethan Schweissing, Undergraduate Research Assistants

Everyone deals with rejection, from applying to colleges to interviewing for jobs to asking for a raise. Because rejection is a pertinent topic to everyone, Denise Reyes has been motivated to perform further research into rejection and how it motivates us. Denise successfully defended her master’s thesis last week, which also looked at rejection but through the lens of how gender affects the likelihood of asking for and pursuing a promotion. She has recently begun work with Julie Dinh, another member of the CORE team, into how individuals react to professional rejection, that is being rejected in the workplace, and how rejection can create fear or how it can create resilience.

Most all existing research has focused on personal rejection rather than professional rejection, even though a large portion of rejection comes from the workplace, so Denise has been motivated to examine an overlooked area of research. Through her study, she hopes to identify ways that professional rejection can shape us and how our attitude about rejection affect our perception of it. Even though this project is not for a class and is not a thesis, Denise has taken on this large task because it is of particular interest to her and because she hopes it can help people cope with rejection better. Additionally, even if someone is never rejected, they would benefit from knowing more about rejection and how it influences others.

Denise Reyes and Julie Dinh’s paper “Experiencing Rejection in the Workplace: The Theoretical Model of Professional Rejection” proposed a construct of professional rejection (PR) and determine the individual differences of reaction towards professional rejection. In the past, field of social science has been focusing on study of social rejection.The theoretical model of PR includes the context, delivery, and individual differences that influence the relationship between PR and the rejectee’s perception of the rejection. “…we define professional rejection as a refusal of a work-related product, service, or effort, given a subjective value judgment from another person.” (pg.6) The paper also describes factors that may influence the outcomes of rejection, from the context of rejection (eg. Personal investment, support system and other opportunities) to delivery of conditions (eg. Ambiguity of PR and use of feedback) and to the characteristics of rejectee (eg. Personality, attribution, locus of control, goal orientation, identity, gender rejection sensitivity, group-based rejection sensitivity).

For future research exploring factors in individual differences of PR, Denise and Julie gave several implications. First, researchers could study the propositions listed above by narrowing in on specific contexts such as job type, rejectee characteristics and dyadic characteristics. Second, researchers can explore relatively untouched areas such as ambiguity of rejection, individual differences, the role of feedback, group-based rejection sensitivity (eg. Race and gender), dyadic relationships and team level PR.

 

Citation

Reyes, D., & Dinh, J. (n.d.). Experiencing Rejection in the Workplace: The Theoretical Model of Professional Rejection (Rep.).