Cognitive and Affective Job Insecurity: A Meta-analysis

Abstract

Job insecurity is one of the most common stressors in contemporary working life. Although research indicates that the job insecurity construct has cognitive (i.e., the perceived negative change to one’s job; e.g., losing one’s job or attractive job features) and affective components (i.e., the emotional reactions to the potential change to one’s job; e.g., concern, worry, anxiety, fear), scholars rarely apply this distinction in their conceptualization and theory development. Thus, this meta- analysis aims to: 1) quantitatively examine the outcomes and correlates of job insecurity, 2) explore whether it is empirically meaningful to differentiate cognitive job insecurity and affective job insecurity, and 3) investigate whether affective job insecurity mediates the relationships between cognitive job insecurity and employee outcomes. The meta-analytic results based on 535 independent samples largely provide support for our hypotheses. We found that job insecurity was significantly related to 51 out of 56 outcomes and correlates examined in this study. Although cognitive job insecurity and affective job insecurity were highly correlated (ρ=.65), affective job insecurity had stronger relationships with the majority of outcomes and correlates than cognitive job insecurity. Moreover, in most cases, affective job insecurity mediated the relationships between cognitive job insecurity and its outcomes. Overall, results provide evidence that it is empirically meaningful to treat cognitive job insecurity and affective job insecurity as two separate constructs. Future research may pay more attention to affective job insecurity and explore the mediators and moderators in the cognitive job insecurity – affective job insecurity relationship.