Job satisfaction is assessed using questionnaires that examine overall satisfaction or satisfaction with specific job facets. It is influenced by both environmental factors like job characteristics and personal factors like personality and culture. High job satisfaction is associated with higher performance and lower turnover while low satisfaction can negatively impact health. Organizational commitment, the attachment to an organization, also correlates with satisfaction and influences outcomes like turnover. Emotions at work, such as positive moods, can increase satisfaction but emotional labor can lead to exhaustion.

1. Business Psychology
Job Attitude and Emotion
Syed Md. Sajjad Kabir
Lecturer, Dept. of Psychology, CU
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 1

2. Nature of Job Satisfaction
 An attitudinal variable that reflects how people feel
about their jobs overall and about different aspects of
them.
 Two approaches to the study of job satisfaction:
a. Global approach treats job satisfaction as a single
overall feeling toward the job.
b. Facet approach lists different aspects of a job, the job
facets, and assesses satisfaction with each of them.
Facets include pay, benefits, supervision, co-workers,
the nature of the work, job conditions, etc.
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 2

3. Nature of Job Satisfaction
Four important cultural values in the workplace:
 1. Individualism/Collectivism: whether the focus is on
the interests and needs of the individual (individualism)
or of other people (collectivism).
 2. Masculinity: organizations focus on achievement and
job performance as opposed to the health and well being
of the employees.
 3. Power Distance: the tolerance that people have for
power and status differences among levels of an
organization.
 4. Uncertainty avoidance: the level of comfort in
uncertain situations. SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 3

4. Assessment of Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is assessed by asking people how they feel about their
jobs, usually in questionnaires.
Job Descriptive Index
 Assesses five facets: work, pay, promotion opportunities, supervision,
and co-workers.
 Has 72 items divided into 5 subscales.
 Each item is an adjective or short phrase that describes the job; it is
responded to with a “Yes”, “No”, or “uncertain”.
Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire
 It is available in two forms, a 100-item long form and a 20-item short
form.
 The short form is used to assess either global satisfaction or intrinsic
and extrinsic satisfaction.
 Facets can be grouped into-
(a) intrinsic satisfaction- the nature of job tasks themselves and how
people feel about the work they do, and
(b) extrinsic satisfaction- other aspects of the work.
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 4

5. Assessment of Job Satisfaction
Job in General Scale
 The Job in General Scale (JIG) is patterned on the
JDI, but measures global job satisfaction.
 Format of the JIG is similar to the JDI, but contains 18
items about jobs in general.
 The scale has good reliability and correlates with other
scales.
Is global satisfaction the sum of facets?
 There is disagreement about whether global job
satisfaction is the sum of facets.
 Facet scores do correlate with overall satisfaction
scores.
 An approximation of global satisfaction.
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 5

6. Antecedents of Job Satisfaction
What makes people like or dislike their jobs?
Environmental Antecedents
 Features of the job environment may cause job satisfaction--features of the job, its
tasks, or the organization.
Job Characteristics
 a. Skill variety: the number of different skills necessary to do a job.
 b. Task identity: whether an employee does an entire job or a piece of a job.
 c. Task significance: the impact a job has on other people.
 d. Autonomy: the degree of freedom employees have to do their jobs as they see fit.
 e. Job feedback: the extent to which it’s obvious to employees when they’re doing
their jobs correctly.
 Pay has been shown to relate more to pay satisfaction than to global work
satisfaction.
 Justice - both procedural (fairness of the process) and distributive (fairness of the
outcome) justice have been linked to global and facet satisfaction.
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 6

7. Personal Antecedents
1. Personality
i. Negative affectivity (NA), or the tendency for an individual to
experience negative emotions across a variety of situations.
ii. Locus of control is the extent to which people believe they are in
control of reinforcements in life.
a. Internals believe they control them.
b. Externals believe that fate, luck, or others control reinforcements.
2. Gender differences: Men and women show few differences in
global job satisfaction.
3. Age differences: Older workers to be more satisfied with their
jobs than younger workers.
4. Cultural and ethnic differences. Workplaces are becoming more
diverse now, and some organizations have locations in several
countries.
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 7

8. Person-Job Fit
Job satisfaction will occur when there is a good match
between the person and the job.
1. A moderator variable affects the relation between two
other variables. In this case, a job variable might be
related to satisfaction for one level of a person variable,
but not for another.
2 Growth need strength (GNS) is a person’s desire for
the satisfaction of higher-order needs like autonomy or
achievement.
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 8

9. Potential Effects of Job Satisfaction
 Job performance: Global job satisfaction is related to
job performance.
 Turnover: Dissatisfied employees are more likely to
quit.
 Absence: Correlations between absence and job
satisfaction tend to be small.
 Health and well-being: Dissatisfied employees report
more physical symptoms and more negative emotions
it work.
 Life satisfaction: How satisfied a person is with his or
her life. Correlates with job satisfaction.SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 9

10. Organizational Commitment
 Organizational commitment is the attachment of the individual to the
organization. Two conceptions:
1. Mowday et al. (1979) suggests three components:
 a. Acceptance of the organization’s goals.
 b. Willingness to work hard for the organization.
 c. Desire to stay with the organization.
2. Meyer et al. (1993) suggests three types of commitment:
 a. Affective: when the employee wants to remain with the organization
because of emotional attachment.
 b. Continuance: when a person remains with the organization because he
or she needs benefits or salary, or can’t get another job.
 c. Normative: when a person thinks s/he owes it to the organization to stay
or that it’s the right thing to do. Arises from a sense of obligation or
personal values. SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 10

11. Organizational Commitment
 Assessment of organizational commitment
 Measured with self-report scales.
Organizational commitment and other variables
 1. Turnover. Low commitment overall and on each of the three types
predicts leaving the job.
 2. Job satisfaction. Organizational commitment is strongly
correlated with global job satisfaction.
 3. It also correlates with other variables in a pattern similar to job
satisfactions: age, job scope, role ambiguity, role conflict, absence,
and turnover.
4. Performance -- The exception is job performance, which has only a
small correlation with commitment. Note that continuance
commitment correlates negatively with job performance whereas
affective and normative commitments are associated with better job
performance.
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 11

12. Emotions at Work
Emotion states – immediate experience of emotion in response to a situation.
Mood- longer term general level of positive versus negative emotional state.
 a. Positive moods are associated with positive outcomes (e.g., greater
creativity, higher job satisfaction, better performance)
 b. Negative moods are associated with negative outcomes (e.g., low job
satisfaction, higher absence and turnover)
1. Emotional labor has both positive and negative effects on employees.
 a. Acting happy at work can lead to increased job satisfaction (positive).
 b. Emotional labor can lead to feelings of emotional exhaustion and physical
health symptoms (negative).
2. Three elements determine whether effects on employees will be positive or
negative:
 a. reactions will be positive if the person actually experiences the emotion
being displayed
 b. having control over the situation tends to reduce negative effects.
 c. effects tend to be positive if there are rewards for the results of emotional
labor.
SMS Kabir,
smskabir@psy.jnu.ac.bd;
smskabir218@gmail.com 12