Why negative affectivity should not be controlled in job stress research: don't throw out the baby with the bath water

By Paul E. Spector, Dieter Zapf, Peter Y. Chen, Michael Frese. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2000

651 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In 1987 Watson, Pennebaker, and Folger wrote an in uential paper in which they noted the potential importance of negative aectivity (NA) in job stress research, going so far as to suggest the provocative hypothesis that NA biased self-reports of most job stressors (and other measures of work conditions) and job strains. A number of concerned researchers, noting correlations between NA and other variables, have recommended that we statistically control for NA bias in general stress (McCrae, 1990) and job stress (e.g., Brief et al., 1988; Payne, 1988) studies with some form of partialling. While we agree that aective dispositions are important, we disagree that it should become routine to treat them as bias factors to be statistically controlled. Although a number of researchers have noted possible non-bias or substantive roles for NA (e.g., Moyle, 1995; Schaubroeck, Ganster and Fox, 1992; Spector and O'Connell, 1994; Williams, Gavin and Williams, 1996), many researchers have started to routinely control for a NA bias in their studies. However, if indeed NA has a substantive role, one should not partial it as this can lead to removing the eects of the very variables one wishes to study. In this paper we will present arguments that partialling or related statistical techniques merely provide unrealistic hopes and illogical inferences in studying the potential biasing eect. Moreover, we will discuss the role played by NA in the job stress process and demonstrate that it should not just be considered a bias in need of statistical control. Rather NA can play a variety of substantive roles in the job stress process.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3feb8726f9e0155073bf338ab37313075c475173

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In General Health Professions

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Citations in the corpus

Working conditions, well-being, and job-related attitudes among call centre agents (2003, background): “First, these relationships are found even when controlling for NA, thus countering an often-heard criticism (see Spector et al., 2000).”
The Demand-Control Model: Specific Demands, Specific Control, and Well-Defined Groups (2000, background): “However, a recent meta-analysis by Spector, Zapf, Chen, and Frese (2000) has shown that controlling for negative affectivity seems like “throwing out the baby with the bath water” (p. 91).”
Development and validation of an instrument for assessing job demands arising from accelerated change: The intensification of job demands scale (IDS) (2015, methodology): “In addition to framing the questions in this way, we formulated the items in a descriptive rather than in an evaluative manner (see e.g., Spector et al., 2000) and refrained from addressing employees personally in order to avoid questions being mistakenly interpreted as asking for the employee’s…”
A meta-analytic examination of the potential correlates and consequences of workload (2015, result): “This finding is consistent with existing research linking NA to work stressors in general and may be explained by a number of theoretical processes, such as self-selection, stressor-creation and perceptual mechanisms (see Spector et al., 2000).”
Does Psychological Empowerment Mediate the Relationship Between Psychological Climate and Job Satisfaction? (2003, background): “On the other hand, those who take the substantive perspective argue that researchers should not control for the effects of negative affectivity (Spector, Fox, & van Katwyk, 1999; Spector et al., 2000; Spector, Chen, & O’Connell, 2000).”
Emotional dissonance in call centre work (2010, background): “However, there are strong arguments that the correlations usually obtained do not solely reflect a bias but also a substantial role of dispositional variables in the stress process ( Spector et al. , 2000”
How does transformational leadership impact employees’ psychological strain? (2011, background): “Furthermore, it is possible that third variables like negative affectivity influence the participants’ perceptions of their supervisors, commitment, and working conditions (Payne and Fletcher, 1983; Payne et al., 1999; Spector et al., 2000a).”
The limitations of dispositional resistance in relation to organizational change (2013, background): “Discussion The aim of our research was, firstly, to evaluate the extent to which the perceived benefits and extent of change influenced an individual’s commitment to change; and, secondly, to investigate – based on the hyper-sensitivity mechanism (Spector et al., 2000) – the moderating effects of di”
Organizational constraints: a meta-analysis of a major stressor (2016, background): “NA) that might serve as antecedents (Spector et al., 2000), we know of no primary studies that examine other possible antecedents of OC (e.”