Basic psychological needs have been demonstrated to be key drivers of employee work functioning. Studies investigating employees’ basic psychological need states in the workplace have focused on either the influence of contextual factors or the influence of employee crafting, yet there has not been any empirical investigation testing both types of factors simultaneously. Thus, the present study has compared the longitudinal associations from managerial need support and employee work-related need crafting to the satisfaction and frustration of employees’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We hypothesized that both managerial need support and employee work-related need crafting would be distinctly associated with improvements in employee need satisfaction and frustration. We tested three longitudinal models (one per need), with a timeframe of three measurements across four months. Longitudinal results showed that only managerial need support had a positive association with autonomy satisfaction and a negative association with autonomy frustration, alongside with only employee competence crafting having a positive association with competence satisfaction, and both managerial need support and employee relatedness crafting having positive associations with relatedness satisfaction and negative associations with relatedness frustration. These findings highlight the distinct relations, and the complementarity, between contextual and individual factors in supporting employee basic psychological needs.
Previous research showed that emotions associated with certainty appraisals increase the tendency to use intuition and biasing cues, whereas uncertainty-associated emotions lead to deliberative processing in reasoning and decision-making tasks (e.g., Bagneux et al., 2012, 2013; Tiedens Linton, 2001). In the present study, we aimed to test the modulatory effects of emotional (un)certainty on a different cognitive domain, i.e., rule-based vs. similarity-based categorization processes. For this purpose, we conducted two experiments using the categorization task introduced by Brooks and colleagues (Allen Brooks, 1991; Regehr Brooks, 1993). Specifically, participants were given a perfectly predictive classification rule and asked to categorize the stimuli according to that rule by receiving feedback. After the training phase, they performed the test phase. The emotional state was manipulated by using short film clips, either before the test phase [Experiment 1: disgust (certainty) vs. fear (uncertainty)] or before each test trial [Experiment 2: disgust or happiness (certainty) vs. fear/anxiety (uncertainty)]. We hypothesized that, compared to certainty-associated emotions, uncertainty-associated emotions would reduce exemplar effects and increase reliance on rule-based categorization. The results supported our predictions in comparisons involving disgust versus fear and fear/anxiety. Although the categorization patterns in the happiness condition were consistent with our predictions, the difference between the happiness and fear/anxiety conditions did not reach statistical significance in the second experiment. Findings are discussed in relation to the role of (un)certainty appraisals and attentional activity in modulating categorization processes, as well as in light of different theoretical approaches to emotion.
Pursuing more than one long-term identity goal places considerable demands on individuals. Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) often balance between two identity goals: being feminine and professional. Striving to achieve these two goals can lead to certain affective consequences, especially when they are not met. We investigated whether failure in one goal might possibly be compensated for by reporting success in pursuing the other goal. In Study 1 (N = 220), we found that having to report failures in both feminine and STEM identity goals led to more self-blaming (guilt and regret) and less self-affirming (pride and satisfaction) emotions as compared to having to report failure in only one or none of the two identity goals (i.e., success had to be reported instead). In Study 2 (N = 234), we observed that women who had to report failures and felt incomplete as feminine women or STEM professionals experienced less self-blaming when given the opportunity to compensate by describing their success and achievements than those who did not have such an opportunity. Moreover, women with the possibility to compensate and to experience completeness reported more self-affirming emotions than at the baseline measurement. In conclusion, we explicitly discuss the nature of compensatory effects concerning affective outcomes when pursuing identity goals.
Negative emotion is known to influence memory accuracy, but the role of body posture in shaping memory distortions under negative affect remains less understood. The present study investigated observation-based false memory using a face-to-face observation–inflation paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants adopted either a forward-leaning or reclining posture while maintaining a sad facial expression immediately before and during the observation phase. Observation increased the likelihood of misattributing observed actions to the self, but this effect was weaker in the forward-leaning than in the reclining condition, a pattern consistent with a motivational interpretation of the posture manipulation. Experiment 2 further examined the role of sensorimotor experience using imitation-based sensorimotor training. Participants who received imitation-based sensorimotor training showed a stronger observation–inflation effect than those in the control group. This pattern is consistent with a contribution of motor simulation or related sensorimotor processes to observation-based false memory, although spontaneous motor simulation was not directly measured. Together, these findings suggest that body posture and sensorimotor experience are associated with variation in observation-based false memory.
