Self-Inconsistency or Self-Expansion From Wearing Multiple Hats? The Daily Effects of Enacting Multiple Professional Identities on Work Meaningfulness

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sessions, Hudson; Pychlau, Sophie
• 署名单位: Southern Methodist University; Iowa State University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0001176
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 897-920
• 关键词: multiple jobholding; work meaningfulness; self-consistency theory; self-expansion theory

摘要

People increasingly support themselves through multiple jobholding-concurrently performing more than one job-and spend time enacting their professional identities each day. In accordance with self-consistency theory, scholars have emphasized that having to act out more than one professional identity promotes a fragmented sense of self for multiple jobholders, which impedes the meaningfulness of their work. However, we assert that this prevailing view about self-inconsistency is incomplete and problematic because it overlooks consideration for how enacting multiple professional identities may be a self-expanding and stimulating experience that satisfies basic needs for growth and exploration. By jointly applying self-expansion theory and self-consistency theory to the day-to-day experience of wearing multiple hats, we unpack how and why enacting multiple professional identities has countervailing implications for work meaningfulness through its effects on stimulation and self-alienation. We also consider the moderating role of identity contrast on these pathways to meaningfulness. We investigate our assertions in a series of preregistered studies-a comprehensive test of our model in a 15-day experience sampling study (Study 1) as well as constructive replications of each stage of our model (Study 2). Overall, we offer novel insights about the day-to-day tension between stimulation and self-alienation for people who act out multiple professional identities and the impact on the meaningfulness of their work.