Self-inconsistency or self-expansion from wearing multiple hats? The daily effects of enacting multiple professional identities on work meaningfulness.

People increasingly support themselves through multiple jobholding-concurrently performing more than one job-and spend time enacting their professional identities each day. In accordance with self-consistency theory, scholars have emphasized that having to act out more than one professional identity promotes a fragmented sense of self for multiple jobholders, which impedes the meaningfulness of their work. However, we assert that this prevailing view about self-inconsistency is incomplete and problematic because it overlooks consideration for how enacting multiple professional identities may be a self-expanding and stimulating experience that satisfies basic needs for growth and exploration. By jointly applying self-expansion theory and self-consistency theory to the day-to-day experience of wearing multiple hats, we unpack how and why enacting multiple professional identities has countervailing implications for work meaningfulness through its effects on stimulation and self-alienation. We also consider the moderating role of identity contrast on these pathways to meaningfulness. We investigate our assertions in a series of preregistered studies-a comprehensive test of our model in a 15-day experience sampling study (Study 1) as well as constructive replications of each stage of our model (Study 2). Overall, we offer novel insights about the day-to-day tension between stimulation and self-alienation for people who act out multiple professional identities and the impact on the meaningfulness of their work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

From free pastures to penned in: The within-person effects of psychological reactance on side-hustlers' hostility and initiative in full-time work.

Multiple jobholding is increasingly common, particularly among full-time employees who have adopted side-hustles-income-generating work from the gig economy that is performed alongside full-time work. A distinguishing feature of side-hustles is substantial autonomy in the work's timing, location, and method. This autonomy has typically been portrayed as beneficial. We shift this consensus by developing a within-person model that suggests elevated side-hustle autonomy-relative to what is typical for that person-sets the employee on a course to feel "boxed in" by their full-time job. Drawing on psychological reactance theory, we argue that elevated autonomy in a side-hustle sensitizes employees to threats that restrict their control. As these employees shift to full-time work, we theorize that this sensitivity is associated with feelings of hostility that contribute to counterproductive behavior. We also propose, however, that side-hustle autonomy has benefits for full-time work-motivating employees to reassert control through increased initiative, thereby enhancing task performance. We explore the countervailing relationships between side-hustle autonomy and full-time work outcomes with a daily experience sampling study (ESM) of 101 full-time employees with side-hustles and their coworkers (Study 1) and a weekly ESM study of 100 full-time employees with side-hustles (Study 2). Taken together, we build and test theory about how employees' side-hustle autonomy exhibits within-person relationships that are a "mixed-bag" for their full-time work behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).