Safety Stressors and Construction Workers' Safety Performance: The Mediating Role of Ego Depletion and Self-Efficacy

As an important influencing factor of construction workers' safety performance, safety stressor has received increasing attention. However, no consensus has been reached on the relationship between different types of safety stressors and the subdimensions of safety performance, and the mechanism by which safety stressors influence safety performance remains unclear. This study proposed a multiple mediation model with ego depletion and self-efficacy as mediators between safety stressors and workers' safety performance. Data were collected from 335 construction workers in China. Results demonstrated that: (1) the three types of safety stressors (i.e., safety role ambiguity, safety role conflict, and interpersonal safety conflict) all had negative effects on workers' safety performance (i.e., safety compliance and safety participation); (2) self-efficacy mediated all the relationships between the three safety stressors and safety performance; (3) ego depletion only mediated part of the relationships between the three safety stressors and safety performance; and (4) only part of the multiple-step mediating effects through ego depletion and self-efficacy were supported. This study made contributions by shedding light on the mechanism by which safety stressors influence workers' safety performance and providing more empirical evidence for the relationship between various safety stressors and the subdimensions of safety performance. Additionally, targeted strategies for improving workers' safety performance were proposed according to the findings.

Effects of Self-Control on Subjective Well-Being: Examining the Moderating Role of Trait and State Motivation

It is well documented that self-control has a positive effect on individuals’ subjective well-being. However, little research has focused on the moderators underlying this relationship. The present research used two studies to examine the moderating role of both trait and state motivation on the relationship between self-control and subjective well-being using psychometric and experimental models, respectively. In Study 1, we explored whether trait motivation (including promotion vs. prevention motivation) moderated the relationship between trait self-control and subjective well-being using a psychometric model. In Study 2, we examined the moderating effects of both trait and state motivation on the effect of state self-control (measured via ego depletion) on subjective well-being using an experimental model. Our results indicated that self-control had a positive effect on subjective well-being, with this relationship being primarily moderated by prevention motivation. When state and trait prevention motivations were congruent, self-control had the most obvious impact on subjective well-being. This study suggests that current understandings around the association between self-control and happiness is limited, implying that motivation should be the focus of future research.

Platform riders' occupational stigma consciousness and workplace deviant behavior: the mediating role of self-depletion

PurposeThe study aims to analyze how occupational stigma consciousness affects workplace deviant behavior.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a time-lagged research design. Data from 354 riders working on the platform were gathered, and multiple regression and bootstrapping were used to test the hypotheses.FindingsBased on the ego depletion theory and resource perspective, the study explores the relationship between the occupational stigma consciousness and workplace deviant behavior of platform riders in China. Occupational stigma consciousness promotes workplace deviant behavior; self-depletion mediates the positive relationship between occupational stigma consciousness and workplace deviant behavior and workplace mindfulness exerts a negative moderating effect on the relationship between occupational stigma consciousness and self-depletion.Originality/valueThe study provides a resource perspective to understand how occupational stigma consciousness is related to workplace deviant behavior and how workplace mindfulness alleviates resource depletion caused by occupational stigma consciousness. The research results provide practical information for managers to reduce deviant behavior, which helps to promote riders' performance on the platform.

EGO DEPLETION AND ACADEMIC DISHONESTY IN STUDENTS COLLEGE DURING PANDEMI COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is still being felt until September 2021 in several countries around the world. We examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially on unethical behavior during online learning—other phenomena such as ego depletion trigger academic dishonesty behavior that occurs. A total of 92 students participated in this research. The measurement tool uses the ego depletion scale and the academic dishonesty scale. The results show that ego depletion is a significant predictor of academic dishonesty. The contribution of ego depletion to academic dishonesty is 16.3%. Ego fatigue makes students choose an easier academic path, which they feel has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. So that the behavior of academic dishonesty increases. The implications and research suggestions are discussed in detail.

Have You Heard That—“GOSSIP”? Gossip Spreads Rapidly and Influences Broadly

This study examines the impact of negative workplace gossip (NWG) on employee political acts (PA) and the role of ego depletion (ED) as a mediator. We also examined the indirect impact of NWG on PA through ED controlled by emotional intelligence (EI). A three-wave time-lagged study (paper-pencil based) was performed with 277 employees from various private organisations in Islamabad, Pakistan. The current data were gathered in three phases to reduce common method bias. Study results indicate that NWG positively affects employees’ PA. The authors also found ED as a potential mediator in the association between NWG and PA. In addition, the results also indicate the indirect effect of NWG on targets’ PA via ED is reduced by targets’ EI, with the result that this connection is weak when targets’ EI is high. Because this research is limited to a single region of Pakistan, particularly Islamabad, its findings cannot be comprehensive. Future studies should use a larger sample size to accomplish the same study. Future studies may include more organisations (that is, Public) to conduct a comparative analysis of the public and private sectors. This article, based on the affective events theory (AET), argues that EI should be utilised to mitigate the effects of NWG. Along with our significant and relevant theoretical contributions, we provide novel insights into the body of knowledge on how managers may prevent or minimise such PA. The current study results support all direct and indirect hypothesised connections, with important implications for theory and practice. A review of the existing literature indicates that EI may be associated with a reduction in employees’ ED; however, EI has not been used as a moderator in mitigating the influence of NWG, ED, and PA in the past.

The sequence of manipulation matters: Abstract thinking offsets ego-depletion when induced before, but not after a depleting task

Based on theoretical and empirical studies dealing with the facilitation and inhibiting effects of different psychic distances (low vs. high construal-level), we tested if the exhibition of self-control under a high construal-level is a more efficient and less resource exhausting mode, compared to the exhibition of self-control under a low construal level. Prior studies already showed that the execution of self-control results in a lower construal-level and a high construal-level has facilitating effects on self-control. We expand upon these studies by: 1. operationalizing the whole process of ego-depletion through two sequential self-control tasks, 2. combining one ego-depletion and one construal-level manipulation in a 2 by 2 design and 3. varying the sequence of manipulations. In Experiment 1, we examined how the manipulation of the participants before and after being depleted, affects the self-control performance in a final task. In Experiment 2, we re-tested the offset of ego-depletion on another self-control measurement, with the condition of a high construal-level manipulated first. In Experiment 1 the ego-depletion effect remained existent when the construal-level was manipulated after the execution of self-control in a stroop test, but it was offset, when the construal-level was manipulated before the stoop test. Drawing on measurements of the perceived available self-control resources in Experiment 2, we were able to rule out an alternative approach, explaining similar results by an attentional shift towards reduced resources under low construal-level.

Do exhausted primary school students cheat more? A randomized field experiment

Motivated by the two-decade-long scientific debate over the existence of the ego-depletion effect, our paper contributes to exploring the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory. Specifically, in a randomized experiment, we depleted students’ self-control with a cognitively demanding task that required students’ effort. We measured the effect of depleted self-control on a subsequent task that required self-control to not engage in fraudulent cheating behavior—measured with an incentivized dice-roll task—and tested ego-depletion in a large-scale preregistered field experiment that was similar to real-life situations. We hypothesized that treated students would cheat more. The data confirms the hypothesis and provides causal evidence of the ego-depletion effect. Our results provide new insights into the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory, contribute methodological information for future research, and offer practical guidance for educational policy.