How Job Insecurity Affects Political Attitudes: Identity Threat Plays a Role

Eva Selenko,Hans De Witte

doi:10.1111/apps.12275

Eva Selenko, Hans De Witte

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12275

Copy DOI

Abstract

This study tests the assumption that job insecurity threatens people’s work‐related identities and thereby affects their political attitudes. Work‐related identity threat in times of job insecurity is proposed to happen in two ways: people will fear to lose an important part of their identity (their identity as employed people), and they can also be afraid to gain a negative identity (their feared future self of becoming unemployed). Both identity threats are proposed to lead to more antiegalitarian attitudes and more political leaning to the right. A four‐wave study among 969 employed British employees delivers support for some of the assumptions. In line with the expectations, results of time‐stable structural equation modeling show that job insecurity indeed threatens the identity as an employed person, which leads to an increase in antiegalitarian attitudes over time. Different than expected, identity threat in the form of a heightened identification with the unemployed was not found. Also, people who identified more as unemployed people actually reported fewer antiegalitarian attitudes and shifted their political standing more to the left.

Highlights

Job insecurity is regarded as a root cause of a great number of negative individual and organizational outcomes, such as low well-being (e.g., De Witte, Pienaar, & De Cuyper, 2016), reduced job performance or high turnover intention
We found that men (B = −0.42, SEB = 0.16, p = .010) and more job insecure people at Time 1 (T1) (B = 24, SEB = 0.08, p = .002; χ2 (17) = 47.01, p < .001) were more likely to participate at Time 2
Identification with unemployed people was related to less antiegalitarianism and a political self-identification more to the left

Summary

Introduction

Job insecurity has effects for individuals and organizations, but it is assumed to have political consequences. While job insecurity research is steadily growing, work psychologists rarely seem to be concerned with those wider, potential political consequences of job insecurity. This is short-sighted, as work forms an important part of people’s life, and job insecurity already has shown to impact on people’s wider private context, outside work (e.g., marital quality, Mauno & Kinnunen, 1999; children’s work beliefs, Barling, Dupre & Hepburn, 1998). We provide a theoretical model backed up by empirical evidence that suggests how job insecurity and individual political positions can be linked

Methods

Results

Conclusion