Seth Kaplan

George Mason University | GMU · Department of Psychology

Job boredom is one of the most common negative affective states experienced in the workplace, yet also among the least well-understood. One stream of research suggests that employees frequently react to job boredom by engaging in counterproductive work behaviors (CWB). However, recent studies show the converse—that engaging in CWB relates to job bo...

Clinicians and patients seeking electronic health applications face challenges in selecting effective solutions due to a high market failure rate. Conversational agent applications (“chatbots”) show promise in increasing healthcare user engagement by creating bonds between the applications and users. It is unclear if chatbots improve patient adhere...

Job boredom is one of the most common negative affective states experienced in the workplace, yet also among the least well-understood. One stream of research suggests that employees frequently react to job boredom by engaging in counterproductive work behaviors (CWB). However, recent studies show the converse—that engaging in CWB relates to job bo...

Despite conclusive evidence about the positive impact of working relative to unemployment for psychological well-being, there remains much uncertainty about why working relates to improved well-being. Two theoretical perspectives that have often been contrasted in examinations of this question are the latent deprivation model and the agency restric...

Organizational researchers are now making widespread use of ecological momentary assessments but have not yet taken the logical next step to ecological momentary interventions, also called Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs). JITAIs have the potential to test within-person causal theories and maximize practical benefits to participants thr...

Prior research suggests that telework often is associated with higher job performance. However, this research primarily has treated days teleworking as interchangeable with one another. Given the recent surge in telework, it is important to ask how much performance varies among days spent working at home and what psychological and contextual factor...

Despite the prevalence of boredom in the workplace, boredom remains one of the least understood emotions in the workplace. Using a daily diary study of 114 workers across 10 workdays (1,052 observations), we examined the daily impact of boredom on job burnout and turnover intentions, and potential coping responses to boredom—psychological detachmen...

The extent to which momentary affect is related to task performance has largely been investigated as a matter of valence and intensity, but findings have largely been mixed. Here, we suggest that the affect-performance relationship may be further understood by differentiating one’s affective state as a state of core affect or as a psychologically c...

Much of the thought content and mind-wandering literature examines self-reported thought content's relationship with performance criteria in limited ways. Furthermore, retrospective reports about thought content may be influenced by the quality of one's performance. We explored these method issues in a cross-sectional study of individuals competing...

Natural language processing (NLP) techniques are becoming increasingly popular in industrial and organizational psychology. One promising area for NLP-based applications is scale development; yet, while many possibilities exist, so far these applications have been restricted-mainly focusing on automated item generation. The current research expands...

Unlabelled: The nature of gig work and its growth have important implications for organizational justice theory. Aspects of gig work, including the transactional compensation arrangement, strict algorithmic rating system, and power asymmetry between drivers and customers, have implications for understanding how dimensions of distributive, informat...

This research has two primary aims. First, this study provides researchers with shortened measures of several state personality facets for use in organizational investigations. Also, it evaluates the performance of three techniques suggested by the literature to shorten measures. With respect to the first aim, research shows value in examining per...

Research on the honeymoon‐hangover effect suggests that newcomers experience an initial upward increase in job attitudes and motivation upon beginning a new job, followed by a subsequent decline. However, little empirical work has been done to investigate how newcomers feel during this period of adjustment. Despite its relevance, the affective fore...

Research documents that forecasts about the emotional consequences of decisions are prone to error. However, there is relatively little known about affective forecasts regarding engaging in activities (versus about the consequences of decisions or outcomes). Here, we examined affective forecasting in the context of a trail race, hypothesizing that...

Background: Simulation-based training (SBT) is often evaluated based on the transfer of specific knowledge and skills. In contrast, the degree to which reflective practice is inculcated by SBT is rarely considered. Because reflection is a pillar of adult learning theories, we sought to examine the degree to which participation in SBT was associate...

ECMO is a team sport and requires a sophisticated understanding of team science to optimize outcomes. This chapter provides an overview of the latest understanding of advances in team science and concepts applicable to ECMO teams. Concepts such as coordination and sensemaking will be reviewed. There will also be a review of newer techniques to impr...

Various motivational theories emphasize that desired emotional outcomes guide behavioral choices. Although motivational theory and research has emphasized that behavior is affected by desired emotional outcomes, little research has focused on the impact of anticipated feelings about engaging in behavior. The current research seeks to partly fill th...

Background Team familiarity has been shown to be important for operative efficiency and number of complications, but it is unclear for which types of operations and for which team members familiarity matters the most. The objective of this study is to further our understanding of familiarity in the OR by quantifying the relative importance of famil...

Conclusions regarding the relative importance of different independent variables in a statistical model have meaningful implications for theory and practice. However, methods for determining relative importance have yet to extend beyond statistical models with a single dependent variable and a limited set of multivariate models. To accommodate mult...

This study examines the impact, relative importance, and unique predictive validity of changes in a host of job features and other relevant factors on job satisfaction over a 35-year period using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth cohort (12,686 respondents). The design of our analysis eliminated of the impact of established b...

Supplementary appendices that discuss psychometric results as well as multiple imputation methods

Background: The continued need for improved teamwork in all areas of health care is widely recognized. The present article reports on the application of a hackathon to the teamwork problems specifically associated with ad hoc team formation in rapid response teams. Purposes: Hackathons-problem-solving events pioneered in computer science-are on...

A measure of informal, non-task-related workplace social interactions that captures both the frequency of interactions and the positive affect that can accompany such interactions was developed and validated. In two samples of employees (N = 188 and N = 315, respectively), the factor structure, reliability, and incremental predictive validity of th...

Although we spend much of our waking hours working, the emotional experience of work, versus non-work, remains unclear. While the large literature on work stress suggests that work generally is aversive, some seminal theory and findings portray working as salubrious and perhaps as an escape from home life. Here, we examine the subjective experience...

References for the meta-analysis database. (DOCX)

Details on all primary studies included in the meta-analysis. (XLSX)

In the current paper, we studied downtime at work. Downtime represents a unique aspect of work time, as employees have low workload and more discretion about their activities but are still paid to be at work. Despite its prevalence and potentially significant implications for productivity and well‐being, the experience of downtime has not been a fo...

Purpose We developed and tested an integrative model centering on the significance of trust as a basis for managers’ decisions about allowing versus prohibiting their employees to telework. We examined the importance of trust in relation to several other factors managers may consider in making telework decisions including coordination and communica...

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to test a 1-hour peer suicide gatekeeper training for students from the broad college community in the context of an open pilot trial. Method: Two-hundred and thirty-one college students were recruited university-wide, Mage = 20.7, 65.4% female, and completed a peer suicide prevention gatekeeping t...

This symposium covers recent empirical and theoretical work on discrete emotions in the workplace, with a focus on their social antecedents and interpersonal ramifications. We showcase five papers that illustrate how emotions (a) are influenced by various forces in one's social environment (e.g., peers, organizational practices, culture) and (b) pr...

This study investigates observer accuracy for the Dark Triad (DT) traits – narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism – based on Facebook profiles. In a round-robin design, 145 individuals in 34 groups provided DT self-ratings and rated their group members on these traits based on Facebook profiles. Social Relations Model analyses revealed signi...

Existing research on positive emotions in organizations focuses on generalized positive affective states, yet theory and preliminary empirical findings suggest that workplace affective experiences are much more nuanced. We test the idea that discrete positive emotions relate to different work-related attitudes and behaviors among 200 supervisor–sub...

Background Optimising team performance is critical in paediatric trauma resuscitation. Previous studies in aviation and surgery link performance to behaviours in the prearrival period. Objective To determine if patterns of human behaviour in the prearrival period of a simulated trauma resuscitation is predictive of resuscitation performance. Desi...

The use of moving images to generate data for behavioral analysis has long been a methodology available to organizational researchers. In this article, we draw from previous research in team dynamics to describe and discuss various methodological approaches to using video recorded behavior as a source of quantitative data. More specifically, we ide...

Owing to the importance of employee psychological well-being for a variety of work- and non-work-related outcomes, practitioners and scholars have begun to broaden the scope of workplace well-being interventions by incorporating principles from positive psychology. Among such positive interventions, gratitude exercises have arguably emerged as the...

Researchers are frequently concerned that people respond to questions on sensitive topics (e.g., those involving money, criminal activity, sexual behavior) in a way that makes them look more socially desirable than they are. For decades, the technique known as “policy capturing” (or “judgment analysis”) has been recommended as a solution to sociall...

Previous research asserts that teams working in routine situations pass through performance episodes characterized by action and transition phases, while other evidence suggests that certain team behaviors significantly influence team effectiveness during nonroutine situations. We integrate these two areas of research—one focusing on the temporal n...

Much of our knowledge of team information processing has been influenced by the hidden-profile paradigm. In this review, we employ the input–mediator–outcome (IMO) team effectiveness framework to organize a systematic and comprehensive review of the knowledge accumulated in this area during the last three decades. The use of the IMO framework highl...

To determine the accuracy of paper cardiopulmonary resuscitation records. Case series. Twenty-six-bed video-monitored pediatric cardiac ICU. All patients who had a resuscitation event with available video and electronically stored vital sign and waveform data from May 2012 to February 2013. None. There were 41 cardiopulmonary resuscitation events d...

It is time to rethink and reframe crisis management. The literature in this crucial domain of organizational research and practice is missing the mark. Whereas much of the research is focused on the large-scale crises that blindside companies, the reality in today’s business environment is quite different. True, some organizations experience large-...

Errors are a recurring fact of organizational life and can potentially yield either adverse or positive consequences. Organizational researchers and practitioners alike have become increasingly interested in understanding the causes of errors and the coping strategies that foster organizational success. Although we have learned much about errors in...

This study investigated employees’ views about how their supervisors would rate their job performance (i.e., employees’ metaperceptions). Two hundred forty employees from a high-tech firm provided self- and metaperception job performance ratings, and their supervisors also provided ratings of the employees’ performance. The study produced several n...

Teleworking has become increasingly popular in organizations around the world. Despite this trend towards working outside of the traditional office setting, research has not yet examined how people feel (i.e., their affective experiences) on days when working at home versus in the office. Using a sample of 102 employees from a large US government a...

Overwhelming evidence demonstrates the benefits of positive affect for various life and work outcomes. However, the relevant organizational research almost exclusively has focused on general positive affect, thereby implying that all positive affect has consistent and equal relationships with other work variables. The purposes of this theoretical p...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine telework using a within-person research methodology and to broaden the typical outcomes investigated in regards to telework. Design/Methodology/Approach Data were obtained from a large U.S. government organization from both supervisors and non-supervisors. Surveys were completed on five consecutive w...

This study examined the degree to which employees had accurate perceptions of how their supervisors would rate them on job performance (i.e., employees’ meta-accuracy). Employees and their supervisors from 140 dyads were asked to complete measures assessing the supervisor’s assessment of the employee’s job performance, from each of their perspectiv...

Introduction: Trauma resuscitation teams are responsible for diagnosing and treating all life threatening injuries as quickly as possible. This time-sensitive resuscitation is a complex, highly unpredictable event that requires the formation of an ad hoc multi-disciplinary team that must accomplish numerous and interrelated tasks. Other domains als...

Despite the now sizable body of research documenting the importance of emotions and emotion regulation in the workplace, there is relatively little research investigating methods for improving emotional well-being in organizations. Moreover, well-being interventions that have been historically predominant in psychology are deficient in a variety of...

Despite an abundance of organizational research on how contextual and individual difference factors impact well-being, little research has examined whether individuals themselves can take an active role in enhancing their own well-being. The current study assessed the effectiveness of two simple, self-guided workplace interventions ("gratitude" and...

We evaluated the effectiveness of a web-based version of the Life-Steps intervention combined with modules for stress reduction and mood management, designed to improve medication adherence among HIV infected individuals. 168 HIV+ adults were randomized into either the Life-Steps program or a waitlist control condition. All participants completed a...

Organizational efforts to improve team effectiveness in crisis situations primarily have focused on team training initiatives and, to a lesser degree, on staffing teams with respect to members' ability, experience, and functional backgrounds. Largely neglected in these efforts is the emotional component of crises and, correspondingly, the notion of...

Purpose Theoretical and empirical evidence from basic psychological research suggests that much of affective processing occurs outside of conscious awareness and that this unconscious processing can have profound impacts on attitudes and behaviors. However, research in the management domain examining unconscious affective processing is almost compl...

Work is an emotional experience. Employees experience fear over losing their jobs, anger over being treated unfairly, and anxiety about impending deadlines. However, they also derive warmth and gratitude when interacting with coworkers, pride from working for a virtuous organization, and a sense of personal growth from job accomplishments. Mixed in...

The actions of organizational leaders are important determinants of the emergence, management, and consequences of employee emotional experience. However, the nature and dimensionality of leader emotion management and the behaviors that constitute such management are largely unknown. The authors present a comprehensive, theoretically-derived model...

Researchers investigate relationships between well-being variables and the antecedents to well-being by examining statistical results from survey data. A common measurement approach in survey designs is to include measures of more specific aspects (i.e., facets) and more global assessments of well-being in the same survey. Research shows, however,...

Job attitudes and subjective well-being (SWB) have important relationships with one another. Moreover, job attitudes and, to an extent, SWB are related to chronological age. Owing to a ‘‘graying’’ workforce in industrialized countries, uncovering how age influences job attitudes is increasingly important. The present work explores the effects of co...

This article describes a classroom activity to demonstrate (dis)agreement in personality judgments, using an exercise derived from Watson's research on the accuracy of rating strangers' personalities. On the first day of class, undergraduate students in psychology courses rated their own personality and the personality of a classmate, using items f...

In contrast to traditional conceptualizations of organizational justice as representing isolated judgments stemming from a “cold” rational calculus, justice judgments are instead part of a “hot” and affectively laden appraisal process, emerging over time through the interplay of work and nonwork experiences as well as through emotions and moods. Th...

Social relationships and related networks among public health leaders at the local level are critical to the leaders' success as top executives of local health departments. Cultivating these relationships is particularly important during the early stages of the new Local Health Officials' (LHOs) tenure. The Survive and Thrive program was developed...

This research expands the job performance domain by introducing organizational threat recognition as a meaningful criterion construct. Threat recognition is conceptualized as consisting of two separate aspects of behaviour—detecting and expressing workplace or organizational threats. To assess these dimensions, we developed two, six-item measures a...

This study examined the degree to which blue- versus white-collar workers differentially conceptualize various job facets, namely the work itself, co-workers, supervisors, and pay. To examine these potential differences, we conducted a series of analyses on job satisfaction ratings from two samples of university workers. Consistent with the study h...

There is a need for programs tailored to train the approximately 300 new local health officials (LHOs) who emerge each year with the knowledge and skills needed to build, maintain, and enhance public health capacity and infrastructure. The Survive and Thrive program incorporates a curriculum that is designed to address the challenges faced by a new...

The Survive and Thrive program was designed in response to a need for action-oriented programs that are tailored to train new Local Health Officials in developing and applying effective strategies and solutions to various local-level challenges. More specifically, the Survive and Thrive program was developed to increase the competence and skills of...

Organizations increasingly rely on teams to respond to crises. While research on team effectiveness during nonroutine events is growing, naturalistic studies examining team behaviors during crises are relatively scarce. Furthermore, the relevant literature offers competing theoretical rationales concerning effective team response to crises. In this...

This article introduces the role of financial considerations into work-family research by considering the costs and benefits of employed mothers' child care satisfaction. Data from 2 samples offer empirical support for the addition of a fourth factor to a current measure of child care satisfaction so that the measure reflects mothers' satisfaction...

Individuals typically rely on their default self-perceptions to infer others' views of them (i. e., metaperceptions). however, under asymmetric outcome-dependency, the desire for greater accuracy should preclude a strict reliance on trait self-perceptions, instead fostering a more bottom-up metaperceptive processing strategy. Thirty-eight participa...

This study investigated whether the relationships between positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) and job satisfaction (JS) differ as a function of the satisfaction measure being primarily affective or cognitive in nature. Subject matter experts classified JS measures as being primarily affective or cognitive. A series of meta-analyses involving bet...

Although interest regarding the role of dispositional affect in job behaviors has surged in recent years, the true magnitude of affectivity's influence remains unknown. To address this issue, the authors conducted a qualitative and quantitative review of the relationships between positive and negative affectivity (PA and NA, respectively) and vario...

Intuition, along with empirical research, suggests that the generation of creative ideas benefits from divergent thinking among team members. However, the generation of creative ideas represents only one stage of the innovative process; teams also must implement ideas. In this chapter, we propose that effective idea implementation may depend on the...

Recent research indicates that approximately one third of Local Health Officials (LHO) have been employed in their position at Local Health Departments (LHD) two years or less. In addition, the "aging" of the public health workforce over the next several years will evidence unprecedented openings in public health leadership positions. These finding...

In this chapter, we theorize that metaperceptions (beliefs about how one is viewed by others) derived from social identity categories will influence intrapersonal processing and resultant member interaction patterns in diverse work groups. In turn, such patterns of interactions will affect the quality of emergent states within diverse groups, ultim...

This article demonstrates assumptions of invariance that researchers often implicitly make when analyzing multilevel data. The first set of assumptions is measurement-based and corresponds to the fact that researchers often conduct single-level exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and reliability analyses, with multilevel data. The second...