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Scholars have clearly demonstrated that abusive supervision can precipitate a variety of destructive reactions from employees. Employees, however, do not universally reciprocate mistreatment with their own destructive behaviour and yet our current understanding of how victims of abusive supervision might choose to react less destructively, or potentially constructively, is still limited. Further, we lack a sufficient understanding of the psychological mechanisms that help explain why employees may react less destructively to abusive supervision. Drawing from appraisal theories of emotions, this research investigates whether the emotion of shame helps to explain why employees might engage in exemplification as a relatively constructive coping strategy in response to abusive supervision. An experimental (Study 1) and a field study (Study 2) found that shame mediated the effect of abusive supervision on employee …