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There are arguably great benefits when employees experience a sense of meaning across life domains. The current study examined whether meaningfulness of work and family predicts one’s tendency to manage work/life outcomes. A total of 386 participants reported the sense of meaningfulness they derived from work and family responsibilities. Analyses explored how individuals’ relative ratings of work and family meaningfulness, as well as the similarity of these perceptions with those of their partners, affect work-family conflict, balance, and enrichment. Results showed that meaningfulness of work influences all work-family outcomes while intra-personal congruence in work and home predicts more work enrichment of family and less strain-based work-family conflict. Congruence between partners work meaning further predicted less strain and behavior based work-family conflict and less work-family balance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and future directions offered.

The unitarian understanding of construct validity holds that deliberate response distortion in completing self-report personality tests (i.e., faking) threatens trait-based inferences drawn from test scores. This “faking-is-bad” (FIB) perspective is being challenged by an emerging “faking-is-good” (FIG) position that condones or favors faking and its underlying attributes (e.g., social skill, ATIC) to the degree they contribute to predictor–criterion correlations and are job relevant. Based on the unitarian model of validity and relevant empirical evidence, we argue the FIG perspective is psychometrically flawed and counterproductive to personality-based selection targeting trait-based fit. Carrying forward both positions leads to variously dark futures for self-report personality tests as selection tools. Projections under FIG, we suggest, are particularly serious. FIB offers a more optimistic future but only to the degree faking can be mitigated. Evidence suggesting increasing applicant faking rates and other alarming trends makes the FIB versus FIG debate a timely if not urgent matter.

Drawing on trait interaction theory and personality disorder subtypes, we examined narcissism-by-trait interactions (e.g., narcissism × antisocial tendencies) for predicting leadership performance in four independent archival samples ( Ns = 285, 120, 106, 559). This study extends research on multiplicative effects of normative leader characteristics to consider how narcissism becomes particularly disruptive when combined with other extreme interpersonal tendencies. Moderated multiple regression results show interactions involving selected trait pairs varied across samples. Pooled analyses showed (a) differential generalizability across trait pairings and (b) that lower tiered managerial roles and weaker industrial contexts may release such effects. Inconsistencies suggest the need to consider sample-specific trait demands in future trait interaction research, normal, or maladaptive. All told, findings suggest that subclinical personality interactions might accelerate leader derailment, offer unique insights into leader competence, and extend trait interaction research to aberrant tendencies.

This study was undertaken to identify the role of six facets of trait-emotional intelligence (EI) in men’s aggressive tendencies toward intimate partners (N = 131). Consistent with past research, hierarchical regression showed emotional self-regulation and empathy were negatively and uniquely predictive of four self-reported aggressive tendencies: physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility. Canonical correlations yielded two distinct patterns of relationships between EI and aggressive tendencies. The first canonical correlation supported an overall negative relationship, especially involving dependent variables anger and hostility. A second canonical correlation revealed higher physical and verbal aggression were associated with higher emotional self-recognition, regulation of others’ emotions, nonverbal emotional expression, and lower empathy. Findings support a multidimensional understanding of EI and aggressive tendencies.

Meaningful work has increasingly been identified as a source of personal fulfillment, a protective factor against daily stress and adversity, and a key mediator linking job characteristics to important organizational outcomes. However, to date, positive organizational scholarship has neglected the role of individual differences in understanding how organizational work becomes more fulfilling. More broadly, there is limited consensus with respect to which traits, actions, or job features sustain meaning, and whether specific pathways may account for these associations. To address such limitations, we applied a regularized partial correlation network and directed acyclic graph to estimate the functional relations among multidimensional measures of these phenomena in a national dataset of workers (n = 570). Results highlight numerous situational and personality effects on work meaning and possible causal pathways linking various traits to experienced meaningfulness at work. Cumulatively, our findings suggest that interventions to encourage long-term changes in work meaning (e.g., job redesign, career coaching, job crafting) may require individuals to undergo changes in how their personality is structured (e.g., adjustment to the work environment and integrations with other aspects of the personality system). However, future experimental and longitudinal research is needed to test our propositions.

This study examines the indirect role of psychological safety in shaping the four cognitions of psychological empowerment (i.e., meaning, competence, self-determination, impact) through three social mechanisms: authentic interactions, spiritual development, and perceived organizational voice. Data were collected from 229 congregation members of a nondenominational church. Preliminary analyses reveal psychological safety is: (a) linked to all four empowerment cognitions, (b) associated with the three proximal social mechanisms, and (c) indirectly predicts three of the four empowerment cognitions through heightened level of authentic interactions, spiritual development, and perceived organizational voice. Moreover, extraversion moderated the relationship of psychological safety with authentic interactions which, in turn, strengthened the size of the indirect effect for the meaning subcomponent of empowerment. Overall, this study suggests empowerment research can draw upon the potential, but frequently untapped, benefits of cultivating a secure space to facilitate member motivation through sincerity, personal development, and perceived voice.

Concerns about socially desirable responding on self-report personality tests are heightened in employment settings where motivation to fake is elevated. Building on prior faking models and the classical X = T + e measurement model, we offer a unique performance-based perspective, in which opportunity, ability, and motivation to fake are jointly critical (P = O × A × M). Trait activation theory is used to show how impression management and self-deception can express multiple abilities and traits beyond those targeted and how response biases might be reduced. Three sets of testable hypotheses are offered. That nontargeted traits (e.g., ambition) serving faking might contribute to the prediction of job performance supports the view that faking could benefit selection decisions. Several arguments against this perspective are proposed.