Jobs and Happiness
Peter Warr University of Sheffield
Why are some people at work happier or unhappier than
others? Recent decades have seen great progress in
answering that question, but the rate of development seems now
to have slowed. It could be said that most of us have
become rather blinkered within restricted conventional
perspectives.
For example, many investigators have settled for narrow
indicators of job satisfaction, and models of job content have
conventionally excluded important variables. Possible
nonlinear associations between job characteristics and
employee experiences have been largely ignored, as have mental
processes that give rise to differences between people.
As pointed out by poet William Cowper in 1782,
Happiness depends, as Nature
shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose.
Happiness is very significant to us personally, and there
is a strong moral case as well as scientific need for
psychologists to learn more about its operation in
organizations. In practical terms, there is now
considerable evidence that variations in happiness have a
causal impact on a range of day-to-day activities—high or low
job performance, staff turnover, absenteeism, citizenship
behavior, and perhaps creativity. Research has been
excessively based on cross-sectional designs, but findings are
increasingly persuasive; to enhance organizational
effectiveness, it is important to consider the experience of
employees as well as operational and technological
questions.
Among the issues facing us in this field are the
following. The six themes outlined here deserve more
attention from more members of the profession than they have
received to date.
1. Happiness requires multidimensional
study. Rather than envisaging a single
indicator, it is essential to think in terms of multiple
aspects of happiness. A principal axis runs from feeling
bad to feeling good (sometimes assessed in terms of
dissatisfaction or satisfaction), and two others
(distinguished in terms of degree of activation as well as
pleasure) extend from negative feelings of anxiety to
happiness as tranquil contentment and from depression to
happiness as energized pleasure.
Although themselves intercorrelated, these different axes
are differently related to several variables of
interest. For example, high job demands are more closely
associated with unhappiness of the anxious sort than with
depressed unhappiness; people in more senior jobs relative to
junior employees are more happy in terms of less depression
but less happy in terms of raised anxiety; and women tend to
be less happy than men in terms of anxiety and depression but
in many recent studies are on average more happy in their job
satisfaction. Differences in links with behavior are
also expected; for example, activated pleasure may more
strongly predict employee proactivity than do positive
feelings of a low-arousal kind.
It is also essential to look separately at different levels
of scope. “Context-free” happiness has a general
reference, whereas that which is “domain-specific” (e.g., job
satisfaction) covers only domain-related feelings (e.g., in a
job). At a third level, “facet-specific” happiness is
about particular aspects of a domain, such as your pay or your
boss. That much is obvious, but a surprisingly large
number of articles are based on the unstated assumption that
causes and consequences are the same at each level of
scope. They are not.
In examining the notion of happiness, it is sometimes
important to explore aspects quite distinct from those
introduced so far. Some philosophers have emphasized
that happiness can arise from actions that are somehow more
fitting or appropriate than others, whether or not those are
associated with pleasure. This second form of happiness
(let’s call it “self-validation”) invokes reference standards
of some kind, perhaps some realization of personal potential,
rather than merely the satisfaction of desires.
Happiness of that kind has almost never been considered by I-O
psychologists, although it is increasingly addressed by other
branches of the discipline.
2. A broad view of environmental sources is
needed. Job-related accounts have
overwhelmingly focused on elements of demand, control, and
social support, but happiness depends on a much wider range of
environmental features. If you talk to people about
their jobs, it becomes clear that traditional models of job
design leave aside many of their concerns.
Any categorization is in part arbitrary, and we have to
balance conceptual richness against practical
convenience. One useful framework of job environments
contains the following 12 characteristics.
1. Opportunity for personal control, covering
variables conventionally labeled as discretion, decision
latitude, participation, and so on 2. Opportunity for
skill use and acquisition 3. Externally generated
goals, ranging across job demands, underload and overload,
task identity, role conflict, required emotional labor, and
work-home conflict 4. Variety in job content and
location 5. Environmental clarity, which takes in role
clarity, task feedback, and low future
ambiguity 6. Contact with others, in terms of both
quantity (amount of contact) and quality (illustrated
negatively and positively as conflict or social
support) 7. Availability of money 8. Physical
security—this has different forms in different roles; in job
settings, it concerns working conditions, degree of hazard,
and similar themes 9. Valued social position, in terms
of the significance of a task or role 10. Supportive
supervision 11. Career outlook, either as job security or
as opportunity for advancement or for a shift to other
roles 12. Equity, as justice both within one’s organization
and in that organization’s relations with society
A “good” job scores well across those 12 features.
Note that other settings can also be viewed in these terms;
sources of happiness or unhappiness are broadly the same in
any domain. For example, unemployment may be “good” or
“bad” in these respects; and “good” forms of unemployment
might be psychologically better than a “bad” job.
As implied by the several elements introduced throughout
the list, we might be interested in subcategories within each
of the 12 features. To what extent and through what
mechanisms does each one influence happiness or unhappiness of
different kids?
3. Associations with job features can be
nonlinear. There is evidence, and a strong
logical argument, that some of these desirable job features
become undesirable at high levels. That inverted-U
pattern is most noticeable in respect of environmental demands
(3 above), which are troublesome at both very low and very
high levels. In general, some leveling off is expected;
happiness does not continue to increase at the same rate with
more and more of a job feature.
One possibility is to view the impact of job features on
happiness as analogous to the effect of vitamins on physical
condition. Vitamins are important for health up to but
not beyond a certain level. A deficiency of vitamins
gives rise to physiological impairment, but after a moderate
level of intake there is no benefit from additional
quantities, and some of them instead cause harm. That
may also be the case for environmental features and their
impact on happiness.
Stabilization of impact after moderate quantities has
frequently been examined in respect of income; a standard
increment in income has a smaller benefit to happiness in its
higher range. Within a broad “vitamin” analogy, we might
expect slightly different nonlinear patterns for different
aspects of happiness identified within the first theme
above. Possibilities of this kind deserve more
consideration than they have received.
4. A person’s own judgments are
crucial. Another issue arises from the fact
that researchers have so far paid most attention to happiness
sources in the environment, preferring not to study
between-person variation. This focus on the environment
is helpful, in that by addressing aspects of job content or
organizational practice we might improve employees’
experiences by changing their work settings. However,
person-centered approaches are also essential; happiness
derives strongly from individuals themselves.
Relevant mental processes can be explored in terms of the
judgments made when appraising a situation. The
framework below brings together 10 themes that have been
examined primarily in nonorganizational research.
J1. Comparisons with other
people: “How does my situation compare with
that of another individual or of the average
person?” It is regularly found that “downward”
social comparisons (judgments made relative to people who are
worse-off in the relevant respect) enhance a person’s own
happiness; job holders presumably illustrate that general
pattern.
J2. Comparisons with
other situations can be of two kinds:
J2A. Expected
situations: “How does my situation compare with
the situation I expected?” Nonemployment studies
have confirmed that positive or negative events that are
unexpected have a greater impact on happiness or unhappiness
than those that were expected; employees are likely to be
similarly affected.
J2B. Counterfactual situations: “How might
the situation have developed in other ways?” As
with J1 (social comparisons), downward and upward
comparisons with other possible events have corresponding
effects on a person’s happiness.
J3. Comparisons with other times may
be retrospective or prospective:
J3A. Previous trend: “Up to now, has the
situation deteriorated, improved, or remained
unchanged?” For example, progress towards a goal
is pleasing, but movement away (or even remaining static)
can be unpleasant.
J3B. Likely future trend: “From now on, is
the situation likely to deteriorate, improve, or stay the
same?” This kind of judgment is influential through,
for instance, perceptions of the probability of success or
of the possibility of improvement.
J4. Assessments of personal salience
are of widespread importance in happiness or
unhappiness. They extend across three levels:
J4A. Rated importance of role membership:
“Do I want to be in this role?” This kind of
appraisal (for example, in terms of “employment commitment”)
has been shown in separate lines of research to bear upon
unemployed people’s unhappiness, the happiness of nonworking
women, and that of employed individuals in general.
J4B. Rated importance of a role
characteristic: “Do I value this
feature?” Evidence in several different areas has
indicated that happiness is more strongly correlated with a
particular environmental feature if that feature is viewed
as more personally significant.
Differences in J4B judgments are also important in
comparisons between groups or between individuals with
different dispositional characteristics. For example,
a substantial difference in the average salience of a job
feature between men and women or between high and low
scorers on Extraversion is likely to be accompanied by a
between-group difference in the association between that
feature and happiness.
J4C. Rated attractiveness of core tasks in the
role: “Do I like the things I have to
do?” This kind of judgment is almost completely
ignored in the job design literature, although it is central
to vocational counseling and everyday life. Over and
above specific environmental features illustrated within the
second theme, people differ in their liked and disliked task
activities, with major implications for their happiness in
particular settings.
J5. Assessments of situation-related
self-efficacy: “Was/is my performance
effective in this situation?” Happiness experiences
can depend on judging that one has or has not coped well in
the situation and that one is or is not likely to be effective
in the future.
J6. Assessment of novelty or
familiarity: “Is the situation unusual or
is it routine?” Affective responses to a novel
situation tend to be greater than when that situation is
familiar. People adapt to continuing inputs from the
environment, negative as well as positive, such that
environmental influences can be short-lived or become less
strong over time. These processes have only rarely been
studied in organizations.
The general point here is that judgments of this kind need
to be explored in I-O research. Relevant information can
easily be obtained from employees when investigating job
characteristics. The influence of those characteristics
(apart from at extreme levels) is strongly dependent on how
they are interpreted in the terms suggested above.
5. People have their own baseline of
happiness. It has long been established that
people are consistent in their behaviors and mental processes
across time and settings. Traditional investigations
have concentrated on personality traits, cognitive ability,
and similar attributes, but it is also clear that stable
differences are present in respect of happiness or
unhappiness. Furthermore, those baselines may be largely
inherited, and people might return to their own baseline soon
after environmental disruption (negative or positive) to their
happiness.
Such within-person stability is of course troublesome if we
wish to modify happiness by altering aspects of the
environment. Will changes in, say, job content make any
lasting difference to people’s happiness? Or what about
self-help exercises to enhance one’s own happiness? Can
they have an extended impact, or will people soon return to
baseline? Questions of that kind clearly deserve the
attention of industrial-organizational psychologists.
We also need better understanding of differences linked to
demographic or cultural characteristics. For example,
women in much recent research tend to report greater overall
job satisfaction than do men, despite the fact that they have
on average lower pay and other benefits. Older employees
also report more job satisfaction than younger ones, and
temporary workers are not as unhappy as some have
expected. In respect of cultural patterns, differences
between Euro-American and east-Asian conceptions of happiness
have recently emerged in nonemployment research; are
those important in jobs?
6. Unhappiness is essential to
happiness. Much thinking by psychologists
derives from the assumption that happiness is always to be
desired and unhappiness is to be avoided. Removal of
unhappiness thus becomes the goal of what is widely seen as a
caring profession. Yet in many settings people can only
experience happiness in relation to its converse; one is
dependent on the other.
Working towards personal goals can require substantial
effort and prevent a person from enjoying other
activities. Negative episodes in many personal projects
involve failure, boredom, discouragement, or pain. Of
course, patterns of each state’s relative intensity and
relative extensiveness are important here, but most people
have to struggle through difficult work activities of some
kind to meet their needs and to sustain happiness. This
has two major implications for I-O psychologists.
First, we need to obtain a much better understanding of the
sources and nature of ambivalence. Employees can be both
happy and unhappy, perhaps at different times and in different
ways, and to understand experiences at work we must learn more
about multifaceted processes. What forms of ambivalence
occur in work settings, how do they arise, and how are they
handled? What are the causal relationships between a
person’s happiness and his or her unhappiness?
Second, it is unrealistic to divorce experiences of
happiness from task-oriented activities in a role.
Psychologists have almost always examined (for instance) job
satisfaction separately from job performance, but each of
those can derive from a compromise with the other. We
regulate our engagement in effortful job activities in part by
responding to feelings and expected feelings. Working
less hard in a difficult job can thus sometimes reduce
unhappiness, and a commitment to good performance can in some
cases lead onto negative feelings. We need to learn more
about this effort–affect trade-off, its causes, and its
consequences. Rather than restricting attention to
either happiness or performance, the two should be studied
simultaneously.
Not Quite an Overview. A brief
summary does not seem possible at this point. Much
excellent research has been published in the area, and this
has been reviewed within a framework of the kind outlined here
in Work, Happiness, and Unhappiness by Peter Warr
(Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, February 2007). As usual,
“more research is needed”, but please move beyond the
conventional questions. |