Maintaining High Eudaimonic Wellbeing Despite Ambiguity Intolerance Among Three Employment Status Groups: Examining the Buffering Effects of Positive Psychological Attributes

The unemployed, as well as individuals in self and salaried employment, face several work-related risks and uncertainties which can result in diminished psychological wellbeing especially for individuals with high ambiguity intolerance. However, positive psychology literature suggests that individuals with strong psychological resources can be resilient in difficult circumstances. Using a sample of 922 individuals (including 240 unemployed, 391 salary-employed, and 291 self-employed) from Uganda and Kenya, we investigated the moderating effects of locus of control and psychological capital on the association between ambiguity intolerance and eudaimonic wellbeing, comparing the unemployed with individuals in salaried and self-employment. Our findings indicated that ambiguity intolerance and external locus of control are negatively associated with eudaimonic wellbeing. Conversely, internal locus of control and psychological capital were positively associated with eudaimonic wellbeing. The moderation analysis revealed that whereas an external locus of control boosts the negative effects of ambiguity intolerance on eudaimonic wellbeing, internal locus of control and psychological capital buffer against the negative effects of ambiguity intolerance on eudaimonic wellbeing. Differences between employment status groups and implications are discussed.

Approbation of the Decision Making Tendency Inventory in the Russian Sample

We present the results of approbating the Decision Making Tendency Inventory (Misuraca et al., 2015) in the Russian sample (N=423, Mage= 25,01, SD = 9,63). The development of H. Simon’s satisficing theory in the current studies is considered. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the theoretical three-scale structure of the inventory. We describe the relations between maximizing, minimizing and satisficing scales and personal factors of decision-making, age, and education (its level and difficulty). The study demonstrates that maximizing and satisficing are close tendencies, implemented in case of making important effortful and resource-consuming (e.g., time-consuming) decisions, whereas minimizing is connected to withdrawal from effort and knowledge, avoidant strategies and ambiguity intolerance. The yielded results suggest that satisficing needs to be trained in conditions of high demands for the cognitive sphere such as studying in a higher education institution.

Performance Variability, Ambiguity Intolerance, and Balanced Scorecard-Based Performance Assessments

This study extends prior research on general Balanced Scorecard (BSC) evaluation tendencies (e.g., Lipe and Salterio 2000; Ittner et al. 2003; Banker et al. 2004) by documenting that patterns in BSC evaluations vary with a quality of the evaluator. Specifically, using data from an experimental performance assessment exercise, we find that evaluators' “ambiguity intolerance” (Budner 1962) influences their reaction to variation among performance measures within a BSC category. Further, we find that increased variation within a BSC category causes ambiguity-intolerant evaluators to give lower performance evaluation scores when the BSC category indicates relatively strong performance, but has no significant effect when the BSC category indicates relatively weak performance. These results are consistent with the argument that ambiguity-intolerant individuals are more likely to discount or ignore ambiguous information when the ambiguity relates to positive information. Our findings have significant practical implications regarding the accuracy and consistency of BSC evaluations.