The role of negative affectivity in employee reactions to job characteristics: Bias effect or substantive effect?

The hypothesized role of the personality trait negative affectivity (NA) in employee reactions to jobs has been debated in recent years. Some researchers have argued that this dispositional variable biases self‐reports of job‐related variables, whereas others have argued that its role is substantive in that NA might affect or be affected by job variables. This study tested competing hypotheses concerning relations of two measures of NA with both incumbent and non‐incumbent measures. Results supported the substantive and not the bias hypothesis: NA correlated significantly with non‐incumbent, but not with incumbent, measures of job characteristics.