Taking a heavier toll? Racial differences in the effects of workplace mistreatment on depression.

Previous studies have found that workplace mistreatment positively relates to depression, a critical mental health disorder. However, it is unknown whether mistreatment affects all individuals' depressive symptoms equally. Drawing from the hopelessness theory of depression and the stigma literature, we suggest that Blacks suffer from greater depression than Whites when they experience similar levels of workplace mistreatment because Blacks, as members of a racial minority group, are more likely to attribute workplace mistreatment to their race. This, in turn, causes them to make a pessimistic attribution (i.e., attributions that are internal, stable, and global) about themselves that, ultimately, leads to depression. We tested these predictions across two studies. In Study 1, we used a multiyear time-lagged design and multiple indicators of depression (i.e., self-reported clinical depression scale, device-traced sleep quantity, and self-reported sleep quality) and found that the positive relationship between workplace mistreatment and depression was stronger for Blacks than Whites, and that these patterns were consistent across the various indicators (although only results with the clinical depression scale and sleep quantity were statistically significant). In Study 2, we found that the influence of workplace mistreatment on depression is partly due to racial differences in how workplace mistreatment is attributed. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and directions for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Social support at work carries weight: Relations between social support, employees' diurnal cortisol patterns, and body mass index.

Despite the preponderance of evidence documenting the benefits of workplace social support for employees, the link between social support and employees' physiological functioning and physical health outcomes has received relatively less research attention. In particular, diurnal cortisol patterns and body mass index (BMI) are key indicators of physiological functioning and physical health, respectively, that can be used to illuminate how social support influences employee health. However, existing applied psychology research has yet to examine the dynamic nature of diurnal cortisol secretion and its long-term effect on BMI change. Further, research linking social support and cortisol has produced conflicting findings. To address these critical gaps, we draw from Heaphy and Dutton's (2008) theory of positive social interactions at work and the allostatic load model (Sterling & Eyer, 1988) to link supervisor and coworker support at work to employees' diurnal cortisol pattern and change in BMI. We tested our hypotheses using growth modeling on a sample of Japanese employees with multi-wave data spanning across 6 years. We found support for our hypotheses regarding supervisor support but not coworker support, as cortisol exhibited a diurnal pattern, and higher levels of supervisor support were associated with more pronounced, healthier diurnal cortisol patterns, with a steeper decline from morning to evening, which were further associated with smaller BMI increases 4 years later. Overall, our findings suggest social support at work, especially supervisor support, can have far-reaching effects on employees' physical health. The implications of these findings for applied psychology research and practice are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The "Goldilocks Zone": (Too) many confidence intervals in tests of mediation just exclude zero.

Questionable research practices (QRPs) can occur whenever one result is favored over another, and tests of mediation are no exception. Given mediation's ubiquity and importance to both theory and practice, QRPs in tests of mediation pose a serious threat to the advancement of psychology. We investigate this issue through the introduction of a straightforward means of detecting the presence and magnitude of QRPs in tests of mediation and validate this methodology with a series of sensitivity tests and simulations. We then apply this method to 2,569 tests of mediation published in five leading psychology journals in 2018 and 2019. We find that despite most hypothesized tests of mediation being likely underpowered, most (76%) were nevertheless supported. Furthermore, confidence intervals (CIs) that just barely exclude zero are 3.6 to 4.4 times as prevalent as those CIs that just barely include zero. We also find a number of study- and test-level factors, such as whether the test of mediation was hypothesized, explain both whether the CI excluded zero (odds ratio [OR] = 17.87, p < .001) as well as the CI's proximity to zero (b = .27, p < .001). In addition, other factors, most notably sample size, do predict the CI's proximity to zero (γ = .00, p < .001), but surprisingly do not predict the CI's exclusion of zero (OR = .99, p = .803). We conclude with actionable QRP curtailment strategies so that both, academics and practitioners, can have greater and well-founded confidence in tests of mediation in psychological research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A meta-analytic test of multiplicative and additive models of job demands, resources, and stress.

Multiplicative and additive theoretical models have been proposed to explain how job demands and job resources (e.g., job control, social support) relate to strain. However, there has been mixed support for the multiplicative model, and there are questions about the generalizability of both models to strains varying in severity and type, and to different types of demands. Thus, we conducted a meta-analysis of regression coefficients testing the multiplicative and additive models from 77 unique samples and over 141,505 participants, using raw data or correlation matrices supplied by study authors. Overall, we found weak support for the multiplicative model and some support for the additive model. We found that job demands and job control/social support were all weakly to moderately related to employee strain. However, neither the job demands-control nor job demands-social support interactions were meaningfully related to strain in almost all cases. The components of the additive model were more strongly related to primary and tertiary strain indicators than secondary indicators and were more strongly related to psychological strain than to physical or behavioral strain. Both the additive and multiplicative models were more strongly related to strain when demands are conceptualized as hindrances rather than challenges. Meta-analyses of the simple slopes showed that job control and social support generally buffered the effects of job demands on strain, but the effects were weak and not significantly different across different levels of control and support. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as future research directions, are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

This job is (literally) killing me: A moderated-mediated model linking work characteristics to mortality.

Research in applied psychology has found that job demands affect employee health outcomes. However, less is known about the mechanisms linking job demands to more distal health outcomes, such as death, and how other job characteristics (i.e., job control) and individual differences (i.e., cognitive ability) might buffer these relationships. Accordingly, we drew from theories from the work stress and medical literatures to argue that job control and cognitive ability moderate the positive relationship between job demands and the probability of mortality, via the mediating effects of poor physical (i.e., allostatic load) and mental health (i.e., depression) indicators. We tested our hypotheses using a 20-year time-lagged design in a sample of 3,148 individuals with mental health data (and a subsample of 754 with physical health data) from the Midlife in the United States Survey. We found that job control and cognitive ability buffered the positive relationship between job demands and poor mental health. Unexpectedly, we found that job control, but not cognitive ability, moderated the relationship between job demands and physical health, such that job demands were related to better physical health under conditions of high control, and unrelated to physical health under conditions of low control. In turn, physical and mental health mediated the moderated (by job control and cognitive ability) job demands-mortality relationship. Our findings suggest that job demands relate to death differentially via physical and mental health, and that these relationships are bounded in unique ways by job control and cognitive ability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Meta-analytic five-factor model personality intercorrelations: Eeny, meeny, miney, moe, how, which, why, and where to go.

Meta-analysis is frequently combined with multiple regression or path analysis to examine how the Big Five/Five-Factor Model (FFM) personality traits relate to work outcomes. A common approach in such studies is to construct a synthetic correlation matrix by combining new meta-analyses of FFM-criterion correlations with previously published meta-analytic FFM intercorrelations. Many meta-analytic FFM intercorrelation matrices exist in the literature, with 3 matrices being frequently used in industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology and related fields (i.e., Mount, Barrick, Scullen, & Rounds, 2005; Ones, 1993; van der Linden, te Nijenhuis, & Bakker, 2010). However, it is unknown how the choice of FFM matrix influences study conclusions, why we observe such differences in the matrices, and which matrix researchers and practitioners should use for their specific studies. We conducted 3 studies to answer these questions. In Study 1, we demonstrate that researchers' choice of FFM matrix can substantively alter conclusions from meta-analytic regressions or path analyses. In Study 2, we present a new meta-analysis of FFM intercorrelations using measures explicitly constructed around the FFM and based on employee samples. In Study 3, we systematically explore the sources of differences in FFM intercorrelations using second-order meta-analyses of 44 meta-analytic FFM matrices. We find that personality rating source (self vs. other) and inventory-specific substantive and methodological features are the primary moderators of meta-analytic FFM intercorrelations. Based on the findings from these studies, we provide a framework to guide future researchers in choosing a meta-analytic FFM matrix that is most appropriate for their specific studies, research questions, and contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The importance of being humble: A meta-analysis and incremental validity analysis of the relationship between honesty-humility and job performance.

The HEXACO model presents a conceptualization of personality that includes the trait honesty-humility (H-H) in addition to 5 other personality traits (i.e., agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotionality, extraversion, openness) that closely approximate the ubiquitous five-factor model (FFM) of personality. A substantial literature has accumulated supporting the structure of the HEXACO model and the construct validity of the H-H trait in particular. A newer development is the appearance of H-H in the applied psychology literature. This begs the question of whether H-H exhibits significant criterion-related validity with respect to job performance and whether H-H accounts for incremental validity over other established individual differences predictors of job performance. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to conduct a meta-analysis of the relationship between H-H and 3 major dimensions of job performance (counterproductive work behavior [CWB], organizational citizenship behavior [OCB], and task performance) and compare the incremental validity of H-H with other established individual differences predictors (general mental ability, the FFM, and integrity tests). Our results indicate that H-H correlates -.44 with CWB, .13 with OCB, and .15 with task performance (each correlation corrected for unreliability in both the independent and dependent variables). Further, H-H demonstrated incremental validity over the other individual differences predictors in the case of CWB but not OCB and task performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A meta-analysis of the relationship between general mental ability and nontask performance.

Although one of the most well-established research findings in industrial-organizational psychology is that general mental ability (GMA) is a strong and generalizable predictor of job performance, this meta-analytically derived conclusion is based largely on measures of task or overall performance. The primary purpose of this study is to address a void in the research literature by conducting a meta-analysis to determine the direction and magnitude of the correlation of GMA with 2 dimensions of nontask performance: counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). Overall, the results show that the true-score correlation between GMA and CWB is essentially 0 (-.02, k = 35), although rating source of CWB moderates this relationship. The true-score correlation between GMA and OCB is positive but modest in magnitude (.23, k = 43). The 2nd purpose of this study is to conduct meta-analytic relative weight analyses to determine the relative importance of GMA and the five-factor model (FFM) of personality traits in predicting nontask and task performance criteria. Results indicate that, collectively, the FFM traits are substantially more important for CWB than GMA, that the FFM traits are roughly equal in importance to GMA for OCB, and that GMA is substantially more important for task and overall job performance than the FFM traits. Implications of these findings for the development of optimal selection systems and the development of comprehensive theories of job performance are discussed along with study limitation and future research directions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Can we get some cooperation around here? The mediating role of group norms on the relationship between team personality and individual helping behaviors.

Drawing on the group-norms theory of organizational citizenship behaviors and person-environment fit theory, we introduce and test a multilevel model of the effects of additive and dispersion composition models of team members' personality characteristics on group norms and individual helping behaviors. Our model was tested using regression and random coefficients modeling on 102 research and development teams. Results indicated that high mean levels of extraversion are positively related to individual helping behaviors through the mediating effect of cooperative group norms. Further, low variance on agreeableness (supplementary fit) and high variance on extraversion (complementary fit) promote the enactment of individual helping behaviors, but only the effects of extraversion were mediated by cooperative group norms. Implications of these findings for theories of helping behaviors in teams are discussed.