Looking back and falling further behind: The moderating role of rumination on the relationship between organizational politics and employee attitudes, well-being, and performance

•Prior politics perceptions research has failed to investigate cognitive processes associated with self-serving behavior.•We introduce and examine the moderating role of trait rumination on politics perceptions–work outcome relationships.•Across independent studies, rumination predicted negative outcomes when coupled with heightened politics perceptions.•For low ruminations, politics perceptions had minimal effects on these outcomes.•Nonlinear politics and rumination effects were confirmed questioning the assumed linearity of organizational phenomenon. The current study tested the theoretically relevant, yet previously unexamined, role of rumination on the relationship between politics perceptions and a variety of threat responses. Drawing from Response Styles Theory, it was argued that rumination amplifies the effects of politics by enhancing the influence of negative information on cognition, interfering with problem-solving, and undermining sources of social support. The work stress literature, along with extant politics research, served to identify four variables – job satisfaction, tension, depressed work mood, and employee effort/performance – that served as study outcomes. Across three unique samples, hypothesized relationships were strongly supported, indicating that politics perceptions negatively affected work outcomes of high ruminators, but demonstrate little influence on those who engage in less rumination. Moreover, the nonlinear influences of the focal constructs were considered and the results confirmed atypical relational forms. Contributions, implications for theory and practice, strengths and limitations, and future research directions are described.