Psychology Research Digest
Journal of Applied Psychology - Vol 111, Iss 7
The Journal of Applied Psychology will emphasize the publication of original investigations that contribute new knowledge and understanding to fields of applied psychology.
Uncovering a motherhood advantage: How parenthood impacts perceptions of the meaning of work and work outcomes.
Working parents constitute a substantial segment of the workforce. Nevertheless, misconceptions surrounding how parental role impacts working parents, particularly working mothers, have perpetuated stigma and workplace discrimination. To better understand the contributions of parents in professional contexts, we developed the construct of family-centered symbolic meaning of work (FCSMW), which captures individuals’ cognitive orientation to construe work meaning through its symbolic relevance to family. Specifically, it refers to individuals’ perception of their work as a vehicle for expressing their professional ethics and principles to their family and serving as role models. We then draw upon self-construal theory to theorize that, in comparison to nonparents, working parents are more likely to develop higher FCSMW. We further posit that the positive association between parental status and FCSMW is more pronounced for women than for men. Additionally, we argue that FCSMW positively correlates with employees’ display of exemplary behaviors at work, such as increased work effort and organizational citizenship behavior. Finally, we propose that the indirect effects of parental status on work outcomes via FCSMW are stronger for women than men. To assess our proposed model, we first developed and validated a scale for measuring FCSMW. We then tested our hypotheses using three sets of data: two multisource, field samples from China, and one field sample from the United States, all of which supported our hypotheses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Amicable rivalries and hostile rivalries: Divergent profiles of motivation and unethical conduct.
Rivalries motivate competitive performance but can also increase unethical intentions. Although extant theorizing treats this moral-motivational trade-off as inevitable, we show that rivalry’s effect on unethical intentions depends on the tenor of the rivalry. Colder competitive relationships (hostile rivalries) exhibit the competitive profile documented in the literature: stronger motivation and increased unethical intentions. But warmer competitive relationships (amicable rivalries) involve a different competitive profile: stronger motivation without increased unethical intentions. Study 1 supported the assumption that participants could identify both amicable and hostile rivalries in their lives. These different rivalries evoked different judgments of warmth, but they did not differ in relationship duration, importance, or competitive domain. Study 2 demonstrated that amicable and hostile rivalries involve higher motivation compared to nonrival competition, but only hostile rivalries provoked stronger unethical intentions. This divergence can be partly explained by individuals’ relative focus on the outcome of winning versus the process of competing against hostile (relative to amicable) rivals (Studies 2 and 3). Prompting participants to reflect on the value they derive from the process of competing against their hostile rival significantly reduced unethical intentions (Study 3). These findings encourage more nuanced theorizing about rivalry and identify pathways for organizations to leverage the motivational benefits of rivalry without the ethical trade-offs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>What’s your 5 to 9? Antecedents and outcomes of profiles of daily recovery experience trajectories across the evening.
Every day at work employees are faced with resource depleting demands, necessitating recovery after work to avoid health and well-being detriments. Recovery theory and empirical results suggest that the four main recovery experiences that underlie employee recovery—psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control—can occur concurrently. At the same time, each of these recovery experiences are dynamic and change across the evening. However, previous recovery research has not investigated and empirically examined both notions at the same time. Using a combined person-centered, dynamic approach across two experience sampling studies, we examine daily profiles of trajectories of all four recovery experiences across an entire evening after work. We also examine how daily job demands and resources relate to these profiles, and how profile membership relates to next-day work and well-being outcomes. Results revealed three profiles of recovery experience trajectory combinations that were predicted by job demands and resources. Results also revealed that having psychological detachment, relaxation, and control experiences early and often across the evening results in the most optimal daily recovery process for next-day well-being. This work represents an important stride forward as it is the first to examine how the recovery process unfolds, along with providing practical recommendations for how employees should best recover daily. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The referral penalty: Decreased perceptions of merit undermine helping behavior toward referred employees.
Employee referrals are commonly used by organizations due to their numerous benefits. However, it remains unclear how organizational incumbents, who are uninvolved in the hiring process, perceive and react to referral beneficiaries. Although traditional views suggest that the presence of a referral signals merit, incumbents’ perceptions may differ. We theorize that incumbents are more likely to perceive referral beneficiaries as less merited than nonreferred employees due to perceived legitimacy concerns stemming from a simplified view that reliance on network contacts de facto compensates for lower qualifications. Drawing on equity theory, we then theorize that lower merit perceptions lead to less positive and more negative behaviors toward referral beneficiaries as an attempt to restore the equilibrium between beneficiaries’ perceived inputs (e.g., driven by perceived lower merit) and outputs (e.g., being on payroll). Sampling employees from industries in which referrals are normative (Study 1a) and from a cultural context that is positively predisposed toward referrals (Study 1b) confirmed our theorizing. In a subsequent study, aiming to enhance the generalizability of our findings, we found supporting evidence for perceived equity violations, leading incumbents to engage in corrective behaviors toward referral beneficiaries (Study 2). Finally, testing our hypotheses more conservatively, we found that negative attributions toward referral beneficiaries persisted even when the referred employees had demonstrated high performance, thereby underscoring the robustness of our findings (Study 3). This article elucidates important unintended consequences of one of the most widely used recruitment methods—employee referrals—and draws implications for both theory and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Capitalizing on proactive personality over organizational socialization tactics in newcomer learning: A meta-analytic investigation.
The evolving workplace dynamics make it difficult for organizations to meet the customized learning needs of newcomers through standardized socialization programs. Consequently, attention has shifted toward leveraging newcomer proactivity as another pathway for facilitating newcomer learning. However, it remains unclear whether and when newcomer proactive personality can produce desired learning outcomes as organizational socialization tactics. We conducted a meta-analysis encompassing 85 independent samples (N = 24,293) to directly address this issue. Our findings indicate that proactive personality accounts for additional variance in newcomer learning outcomes beyond organizational socialization tactics. Importantly, the relative effectiveness of newcomer proactive personality compared to organizational socialization tactics is less salient among veteran (vs. neophyte) newcomers and in higher (vs. lower) individualistic cultures. Our findings also show that newcomer proactive behaviors serve as the crucial mechanism linking organizational socialization tactics and newcomer proactive personality to individual learning outcomes. Implications for how to facilitate newcomer learning are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Sharing is ethicizing: Examining the impact of sharing observed unethical behavior with family members on ethical voice at work.
“It takes a village” to build an ethical workplace, and employees who witness unethical behavior in the workplace play a crucial role in alerting organizations to wrongdoing and preventing its recurrence. While prior research has primarily focused on personal and intraorganizational factors shaping observer responses to workplace unethical behavior, the potential influence of extraorganizational factors has been largely overlooked. Recognizing that employees often share workplace experiences with close others, such as their family members, we explore how the extent of sharing with family members influences employee responses to observed unethical behavior. Integrating the functional perspective of rumination and social sharing research, we theorize that the extent of sharing with family members increases observer reflective rumination about the unethical behavior and their tendency to engage in ethical voice at work. We found empirical evidence in two critical incident surveys (Studies 1 and 4), an experiment (Study 2), and a cross-lagged panel survey (Study 3). Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Socially rewarded or penalized at work? The mixed reputational implications of disclosing one’s positive nonwork events on social evaluations and workplace gossip.
Existing research implicitly assumes that disclosing one’s positive events—known as capitalization—is socially valuable in the workplace because such events are work-related and therefore relevant to coworkers and organizational goals. Indeed, management research has focused on how disclosers of positive work events and their coworkers feel about themselves. Broadening the focus of workplace capitalization to disclosure of positive nonwork events, which we refer to as nonwork–work interpersonal capitalization, we draw from boundary theory to investigate whether disclosers gain and/or lose social value at work because such capitalization is evaluated against normative expectations around the work–nonwork boundary. Specifically, we theorize that nonwork–work interpersonal capitalization carries mixed reputational implications for disclosers in terms of how they are evaluated by coworkers (i.e., perceived as other-focused and/or distracted from work) and, in turn, how coworkers spread evaluative information of disclosers to others (i.e., in terms of positive and/or negative workplace gossip about disclosers). Moreover, we propose that such reputational implications will be moderated by the discloser’s workplace status. We test our model using a source- and time-separated field study (Study 1) and an experimental causal chain design (Study 2). Both studies showed that disclosers of positive nonwork events are more likely to be perceived as other-focused and thereby become targets of positive gossip. Across both studies, the effect of nonwork–work interpersonal capitalization on being perceived as distracted was stronger for lower status employees, who in turn were more likely to be gossiped about negatively. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>