Date of Award

12-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Committee Member

Dr. Robert R. Sinclair, Committee Chair

Committee Member

Dr. Mary Anne Taylor

Committee Member

Dr. Patrick J. Rosopa

Abstract

Economic stress and financial strain have been shown to have a negative impact on both physical and mental well-being thus making it an important area to continue to perform research on to fully understand how stress impacts individuals (Leana, Mittal & Stiehl, 2012; Sinclair & Cheung, 2016). The proposed study looked to advance research on economic stress by understanding the mediated and moderated mechanisms that impact the relationship between economic stress and job satisfaction. By using a subjective measure of economic stress, perceived income adequacy, as opposed to an objective measure of economic stress such as income, individual differences were able to used as moderators to understand how both materialism and equity sensitivity affect the stress appraisal. This study hypothesized first, that individuals with more economic stress will have lower job satisfaction levels. To understand the mechanisms behind this relationship two individual differences, materialism and equity sensitivity were used as proposed moderators. It it hypothesized that more materialistic individuals will have a stronger negative relationship between economic stress and job satisfaction. It is also hypothesized that individuals who prefer to have more rewards than effort that they contribute will have a stronger negative relationship between economic stress and job satisfaction. This study found that financial strain mediated the relationship between current, near future and distant future perceived income adequacy and job satisfaction. However, support was not found that materialism and equity sensitivity moderated the hypothesized relationships.

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