Feeling certain about who one is and their place in the world is fundamental to human psychological functioning; however, significant life transitions, such as retirement, may prompt uncertainty about the self. This study introduces the concept of retirement self-uncertainty, or individual perceptions that the self-concept in retirement is unknown. We propose and test a moderated mediation model of retirement self-uncertainty in which it acts as a psychological mechanism linking individuals’ experiences of pre- and post-retirement resource challenges to retirement adjustment. Using a time-lagged study of retired adults living in the United States (N = 352), we find that the involuntariness of the retirement decision and financial hardship during retirement were positively associated with retirement self-uncertainty; subjective health status during retirement was negatively associated with retirement self-uncertainty. Calling orientation, or perceptions that pre-retirement work held significant meaning and purpose, strengthened the positive relationship between financial hardship and retirement self-uncertainty, but did not moderate relationships between involuntary retirement and subjective health with retirement self-uncertainty. Finally, retirement self-uncertainty was negatively associated with retirement satisfaction and psychological well-being. Our study calls attention to the resource-based factors that may prompt individuals to experience self-uncertainty in retirement, thus posing challenges to their adjustment.

Research suggests that physically attractive employees receive myriad workplace and career advantages compared to less attractive employees. Despite calls for more attention to the role of organizational context in understanding this phenomenon, a theoretically grounded conceptualization of an employer's value for physically attractive employees and a method of measuring this aspect of the work environment is currently absent from the literature. In this study, we introduce the construct lookism climate, which reflects perceptions that a given work environment implicitly or explicitly values employee physical attractiveness. We develop and validate a measure of lookism climate using eight samples comprising 1,857 full-time employed adults in the United States and South Korea. We establish the psychometric properties and nomological network of the Lookism Climate Scale (LCS), including its factor structure, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity, and measurement equivalence. We provide evidence that the LCS can be used as an assessment of an individual's perceptions of workplace climate as well as employees’ shared conceptualization of climate. We also offer narrative examples of employee experiences with lookism climate. The introduction of the construct lookism climate and the LCS provides a pathway for future researchers to develop a deeper understanding of how organizational context contributes to the “beauty premium” in the workplace.

Abstract Authenticity has been positioned as an important process in organizational life and may be of critical importance during times of uncertainty in individuals’ careers, but our understanding of its role in how people manage uncertainty during career transitions is limited. In this chapter, the authors examine connections between authenticity and the uncertainty involved in career transitions into, within, and out of organizations. The authors uncover themes in this emerging literature about the uncertainty likely to arise in each type of transition and offer recommendations for future research that expands upon and adds to existing knowledge of how both experienced and perceived authenticity influence and are influenced by these pivotal changes over individuals’ careers. Throughout the analysis in this chapter, the authors directly acknowledge the importance of both the self and the social context of career transitions as they unfold.

Curiosity is a topic of great interest for both scholars and practitioners. It has been associated with numerous positive outcomes in the workplace including job performance (Reio & Callahan, 2004), organizational commitment (Mussel & Spengler, 2015), proactive behaviors (Wang & Li, 2015), and work engagement (Kashdan et al., 2020). However, there remain key unanswered questions about the effects of curiosity in the workplace. The four papers in this symposium each address an important unanswered question about the effects of curiosity in the workplace, providing both scholars and practitioners will a more comprehensive understanding of how curiosity can be used to help individuals and organizations attain their goals. These papers examine both the positive and negative aspects of curiosity in the workplace and explore how the curiosity of one individual can affect those around them. A Curious Case of Curiosity: An Integrative Review of Recent and Seemingly Contradictory Findings Presenter: Bowen Ruan; Tippie College of Business, U. of Iowa Presenter: Christopher Hsee; U. Of Chicago Curious at the Top: How the Drive to Explore Shapes Top Executives’ Leadership and Careers Presenter: Karyn Dossinger; Loyola U. Chicago Presenter: Spencer Harrison; INSEAD Curiosity Led the Cat: The Impact of Leader Curiosity and Gender on Team Performance Presenter: Jonathan Evans; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Jerel Slaughter; U. of Arizona Presenter: Stephanie Jingxian Yu; - The role of showcasing curiosity in information-gathering Presenter: Bushra Sarah Guenoun; Harvard Business School Presenter: Francesca Gino; Harvard U. Presenter: Spencer Harrison; INSEAD

The Empowering Leadership Project was developed by the authors to improve management students’ practice and understanding of empowering leadership, an emerging theory for leadership in the team context that includes Power Sharing, Motivation Support, and Development Support. In the project, student teams select a short leadership challenge, developed from the authors’ consulting work with mid-level team leaders, that exemplifies one of the key aspects of empowering leadership. The teams conduct research on the leadership challenge, analyze research, and prepare proposed solutions and implementation plans to solve the leadership challenge. Instructions for the Empowering Leadership Project are provided as well as students’ reactions to the project.

This research investigates whether and when a job applicant's unemployment status (i.e., employed, short-term unemployed, or long-term unemployed) affects the probability of receiving an interview request by examining interview request rates in the presence of versus absence of unemployment status antidiscrimination legislation. In response to 3,335 fictitious resumes sent to 1,237 online job postings in Los Angeles and New York City, we received an overall interview request rate of 10.37. Long-term unemployed applicants were less likely to receive an interview request than short-term unemployed applicants in Los Angeles but not in New York City, which has unemployment status antidiscrimination legislation. These findings are supplemented with self-report survey data about perceptions of the unemployed from 200 hiring personnel in New York City and Los Angeles. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed for the unemployment, job search, and selection literatures.

While social science has substantially documented the individual experience of unemployment, less is known about the role of contextual variables. One contextual factor that is important for unemployed job seekers is the unemployment insurance (UI) that they receive. This study examines the relationships between job seeker perceptions of UI generosity and mental health during unemployment, reemployment speed, and reemployment quality. Drawing upon psychological construal theory, we conceptualize UI generosity as creating psychological distance from the reemployment goal, generating consequences for the job search, mental health, and reemployment. We tested our hypotheses with a four-wave survey design of job seekers looking for work in 3 different countries (United States, Germany, and the Netherlands). Perceived UI generosity was associated with slower reemployment speed, via reduced time pressure, job search priority, and job search metacognition. Perceived UI generosity was related to higher mental health, via reduced time pressure and financial strain. Finally, perceived UI generosity was related to increased reemployment quality, both directly as well as indirectly through lower time pressure and financial strain, and subsequent higher mental health. Our findings provide previously unavailable empirical insight into the mechanisms explaining the positive and negative outcomes of UI generosity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The present research examines the causal relationship between specific curiosity and creativity. To explicate this relationship, we introduce the concept of idea linking, a cognitive process that entails using aspects of early ideas as input for subsequent ideas in a sequential manner, such that one idea is a stepping stone to the next. Study 1 demonstrated the causal effect of specific curiosity on creativity. Study 2, a field study of artisans selling handmade goods online, found that experiencing specific curiosity predicts greater next-day creativity. Study 3 demonstrated idea linking as a mechanism for the effect of specific curiosity on creativity. Study 4 further established the impact of idea linking on creativity, finding that it boosted creativity beyond the well-established intervention of brainstorming. We discuss specific curiosity as a state that fuels creativity through idea linking and idea linking as a novel technique for creative idea generation.

The positive relationship between physical attractiveness and earnings is well-established, but explanations for why this effect exists are still in a nascent state. By integrating status characteristics theory with sponsored-mobility perspectives on career success, we propose that attractive individuals receive more organizational sponsorship in the form of higher career exposure and visibility and higher access to organizational resources, mediating the relationship between physical attractiveness and salary. We followed 203 full-time employed recent university graduates over a period of two years and find that more attractive individuals, in comparison to less attractive individuals, receive higher career exposure and visibility from the start of their careers. The relationship between physical attractiveness and salary is mediated by this career exposure and visibility; access to organizational resources was not supported as a mediator. Our study advances theory by introducing organizational sponsorship as a novel mechanism involved in explaining the "beauty premium".

The positive relationship between physical attractiveness and earnings is is well-established, but explanations for why this effect exists are still in a nascent state. By integrating status characteristics theory with upward-mobility perspectives on career success, we propose two mediating processes (i.e., career exposure and visibility and access to organizational resources) as mechanisms involved in the relationship between physical attractiveness and higher salaries. We followed 132 full-time employed recent university graduates over a period of two years. Results indicate that more attractive individuals (in comparison to less attractive individuals) receive higher career exposure and visibility from the start of their careers and that the relationship between physical attractiveness and salary is mediated by this exposure and visibility. Our study advances theory by elucidating a social-contextual mechanism (i.e., career exposure and visibility) involved in achieving the “beauty premium”.

We propose and test a multilevel model that positions trait curiosity as a key individual difference during the revision and evaluation stages of the creative process. Using a sample of T-shirt designers, their creative drafts, and the questions and comments that feedback seekers and providers posted to an online workshop, we find curiosity acts as a bridge connecting creative workers with their feedback providers in novel ways. We advance pliable guidance as a theoretical umbrella to describe how feedback seekers and providers in creative work find a balance between the direction that makes feedback informative and the freedom to explore that infuses new ideas in their work. Our findings show that more curious individuals seek feedback by asking more open questions, which allows them to obtain more feedback. We also find that ambivalent feedback is more likely to lead to feedback acceptance and design revision. Finally, our results suggest that curiosity is an important moderator of how creative workers respond to ambivalent feedback. Our research highlights the pivotal role curiosity plays in drawing individuals into a collaborative process when developing their creative ideas, one that is guided and inspired by the social environment.

While scholars have suggested that curiosity plays an important role in creativity, the present research is, to our knowledge, the first empirical examination of the relationship between these two fundamental aspects of human nature. In an experiment and a field study of online artisans, we provide evidence that experiencing curiosity leads individuals to exhibit greater creativity. We then return to the experimental setting in a third study to examine the cognitive mechanism of idea cycling, which entails considering ideational cues during idea development. We provide evidence that idea cycling mediates the effect of curiosity on creativity and argue that deeper idea cycling involves generating a richer foundation for idea development. We close by discussing theoretical and practical implications as well as avenues for future research on the association between curiosity and creativity.

Evidence suggests that creative works requires committing a significant amount of time to revising - acquiring information about early versions of an idea (e.g., a prototype, draft, or working model) that directs subsequent reworking of the idea with the intention of enhancing its overall novelty and usefulness. To date, the role of revising has largely been ignored in the creativity literature creating a significant opportunity for developing new theory that might guide creative workers and their managers to better understand the revising process. In this paper, we develop a multi-level model that focuses on an individual trait (Level 2, between persons) that might enhance revising – curiosity – and the feedback that creative workers receive (Level 1, within persons) that can guide their revision efforts. Our results suggest a mediated model where curious individuals spend more time revising drafts and produce more creative products (Level 2) and that ambivalent, tentative, and inclusive feedback is most likely to lead to revisions (Level 1).

Many organizations are increasingly called upon to innovate in order to succeed in a highly competitive, global business environment. As a result, identifying individual-level predictors of innovative workplace behaviors continue to be of interest to the field. One potential individual-level construct, curiosity, has not yet been considered in the innovation literature but may be an important predictor of these types of organizational behaviors. This paper presents a theoretical model that illustrates how, through the mechanisms of information-seeking and experimentation, epistemic and perceptual curiosity influence innovative workplace behaviors. Individual and organizational-level moderators are also considered.