Backfire Effects of Performance Quantification on Stress and Disidentification: the Role of Metadehumanization in Organizations, Sport, and Social Networks

Quantification, that is, the shaping of human environments in numerical terms, is so widespread in contemporary societies that it has contaminated almost all spheres of human life. We explore the links between performance quantification and individuals' feelings of being treated in a dehumanized way, that is, metadehumanization. We present an integrative research that assessed the relationships between performance quantification, metadehumanization, and on two of metadehumanization's consequences, that is, stress and disidentification, in three contexts, that is, organizations, sport, and social networks. In addition, we test the moderating roles of two individual variables, that is, competitiveness and tender-mindedness, in this model. In three samples (Ns = 204, 300, 297, for Samples A, B, and C, respectively), we show a mediation effect of metadehumanization on the links between performance quantification and stress and disidentification that holds despite of contextual variations. Unexpectedly, our two moderated mediation hypotheses did not hold or showed inconsistent effects across samples.