FROM ORGANIZATIONAL WELFARE TO BUSINESS SUCCESS: HIGHER PERFORMANCE IN HEALTHY ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

EDITED BY: Gabriele Giorgi, Mindy Shoss and Annamaria Di Fabio PUBLISHED IN: Frontiers in Psychology

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ISSN 1664-8714 ISBN 978-2-88945-315-3 DOI 10.3389/978-2-88945-315-3

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## **FROM ORGANIZATIONAL WELFARE TO BUSINESS SUCCESS: HIGHER PERFORMANCE IN HEALTHY ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS**

Topic Editors:

**Gabriele Giorgi,** European University of Rome, Italy **Mindy Shoss,** University of Central Florida, United States **Annamaria Di Fabio,** University of Florence, Italy

Business doesn't exist without workers' health & workers' health is business Image by European University of Rome, Rome, Italy

Cover image: Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com

This e-book provides insight into the link between employee health and productivity/performance, with a focus on how individuals, groups, or organizations can intervene in this relationship to improve both well-being and performance-related outcomes. Given the continuous changes that organizations and employees face, such as the aging workforce and continued economic turbulence, it is not surprising that studies are increasingly finding that employee health is related to job conditions. The papers in this e-book emphasize that organizations make a critical difference when it comes to employees' health and well-being. In turn, healthy employees help their organizations to flourish. Such findings are in line with the recent emphasis by both the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations (UN) on the importance of work for individual well-being and the importance of individual well-being for productive and sustainable economic growth (see e.g., ILO, 1985; World Health Organisation, 2007; UN, 2015).

Overall, the papers report findings from a cumulative sample of nearly 19,000 workers and perspectives from 68 authors. They suggest that performance cannot be successfully achieved at the cost of health and well-being, and provide various perspectives and tools to guide future research and practice.

**Citation:** Giorgi, G., Shoss, M., Di Fabio, A., eds. (2017). From Organizational Welfare to Business Success: Higher Performance in Healthy Organizational Environments. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi: 10.3389/978-2-88945-315-3

# Table of Contents

#### **1. Introduction**

*06 Editorial: From Organizational Welfare to Business Success: Higher Performance in Healthy Organizational Environments*

Gabriele Giorgi, Mindy Shoss and Annamaria Di Fabio

### **2. Causes & Consequences of Stressors at Work**

Gabriele Giorgi, Francesco Montani, Javier Fiz-Perez, Giulio Arcangeli and Nicola Mucci

Andromachi Spanouli and Joeri Hofmans

### **3. Strategies to Improve Health and Well-Being**

*71 Engaging in Rather than Disengaging from Stress: Effective Coping and Perceived Control*

Maria T. M. Dijkstra and Astrid C. Homan

*103 A Longitudinal Study of the Predictors of Perceived Procedural Justice in Australian University Staff*

Silvia Pignata, Anthony H. Winefield, Chris Provis and Carolyn M. Boyd

*117 Perceived Organizational Support for Enhancing Welfare at Work: A Regression Tree Model*

Gabriele Giorgi, David Dubin and Javier Fiz Perez

### **4. Tools to Monitor and Improve Health and Well-Being**

*167 Rocking at 81 and Rolling at 34: ROC Cut-Off Scores for the Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised in Serbia*

Ivana B. Petrovic' , Milica Vukelic' and Svetlana Cˇizmic'

Monica Pedrazza, Sabrina Berlanda, Elena Trifiletti and Franco Bressan

*224 Promoting Safety through Well-Being: An Experience in Healthcare* Andreina Bruno and Fabrizio Bracco

# Editorial: From Organizational Welfare to Business Success: Higher Performance in Healthy Organizational Environments

Gabriele Giorgi 1 \*, Mindy Shoss 2 and Annamaria Di Fabio3

*1 Department of Human Science, Psychology Section, European University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 2 Department of Psychology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA, 3 Department of Education and Psychology, Psychology Section, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy*

Keywords: organizational psychology, performance, healthy organization, business, work-related stress, occupational health

#### Edited by:

*Richard Eleftherios Boyatzis, Case Western Reserve University, USA*

#### Reviewed by:

*Richard Eleftherios Boyatzis, Case Western Reserve University, USA Joann Farrell Quinn, University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, USA Craig Seal, California State University, San Bernardino, USA Anita Howard, Case Western Reserve University, USA*

> \*Correspondence: *Gabriele Giorgi<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

*This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology*

Received: *14 February 2017* Accepted: *21 April 2017* Published: *23 May 2017*

#### Citation:

*Giorgi G, Shoss M and Di Fabio A (2017) Editorial: From Organizational Welfare to Business Success: Higher Performance in Healthy Organizational Environments. Front. Psychol. 8:720. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00720* **Editorial on the Research Topic**

**From Organizational Welfare to Business Success: Higher Performance in Healthy Organizational Environments**

### INTRODUCTION

This special issue provides insight into the link between employee health and productivity/performance, with a focus on how individuals, groups, or organizations can intervene in this relationship to improve both well-being and performance-related outcomes. Given the continuous changes that organizations and employees face, such as the aging workforce and continued economic turbulence, it is not surprising that studies are increasingly finding that employee health is related to job conditions. The papers in this special issue emphasize that organizations make a critical difference when it comes to employees' health and well-being. In turn, healthy employees help their organizations to flourish. Such findings are in line with the recent emphasis by both the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations (UN) on the importance of work for individual well-being and the importance of individual well-being for productive and sustainable economic growth (see e.g., ILO, 1985; World Health Organisation, 2007; UN, 2015).

The 21 papers accepted in this special issue are predominately empirical contributions, from authors from different disciplinary sectors (Organizational Psychology, Management, Occupational Medicine, and Engineering) and several different regions (Southern-Europe, Northern-Europe, Eastern-Europe, United States, and Australia). As a result, they offer diverse perspectives on the issue of employee health and performance, and help to promote an international and interdisciplinary approach to research that will enable the progress of science in the businesshealth field.

Taken together, all of the papers in this special issue emphasize three important points. First, issues of employee health and well-being are especially pressing in light of increasing turbulence and instability in business and in the global economy. Second, employee health and well-being are crucial for organizational success. Poor working conditions and environments (including relational environments) ultimately harm performance. In contrast, organizations that foster healthy environments promote both employee and organizational success. Third, efforts to address employee health must be multi-pronged and involve individual, unit, and organizational strategies.

### OVERVIEW OF ARTICLES IN THIS RESEARCH TOPIC

The 21 papers published in the special issue addressed these issues in a variety of ways.

Two studies examined the impact of personality on well-being, yielding insights into which workers are most susceptible to poor well-being at work. First, the article by Ceschi et al. was conducted in a sample of 208 private service sector Italian employees. Their findings underscored the importance of personality traits in the relationship between health impairment process and the emergence of counterproductive work behavior. Interestingly, honesty-humility seemed to have negative consequences for workers' burnout. In the second article, Di Fabio and Kenny adopted a primary prevention perspective in their examination of emotional intelligence and well-being among Italian high school students. They found that trait emotional intelligence impacts well-being even when controlling for personality and fluid intelligence, and their paper offers insights for developing future workers.

Four articles examined causes and consequences of stressors at work. First, Giorgi et al. presented a new theoretical and empirical model investigating multiple fears in workplace among 265 Italian expatriate workers. Using a structural equation model design, this innovative model explored the relationships of different fears, fear of expatriation, fear of the economic crisis, and dangerous working conditions into an composite framework. Second, in a large study of Italian workers, Di Marco et al. found that perceptions of a discriminatory work environment threaten employee health, and that these effects are partially mediated by job satisfaction. They suggest practical implications for organizations. Third, Mucci et al. examined the impact of anxiety and work-related stress on hypertension among students training to be healthcare professionals. They found evidence linking psychological stressors to students' blood pressure and cardiovascular health. These findings demonstrate that even among a group of relatively young individuals, work-related stressors are related to cardiovascular health. Fourth, Spanouli and Hofmans pointed out that employees might increasingly feel obligated to perform citizenship behaviors at work. Using an experience sampling design, they asked employees to report on their elicited and discretionary organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior twice a day for 10 days. Their results suggest that these strategies are likely to backfire as individuals appear to use counterproductive work behavior to compensate for elicited organizational citizenship behavior. Each of these studies suggests areas to intervene to reduce or eliminate threats to health and well-being at work.

Relatedly, the majority of studies featured in this special issue explored individual, unit, and/or organizational strategies to improve health and well-being. The article by Dijkstra and Homan, conducted in a heterogeneous sample of 543 Dutch employees, found that engaged coping strategies such as active confronting and reassuring thoughts were associated with more sense of control and therefore to psychological well-being. This publication suggests that the importance of the concept of coping is nowadays still fundamental. Leon-Perez et al. took a multilevel approach to understanding how intragroup conflict, at the unit level, and psychological capital, at the individual level, impacts employees' burnout and quality of service. In a sample of employees working in a vehicle safety and emissions inspection company in Spain, they found that individual psychological capital impacted both burnout and quality of service. At the unit level, they found that intragroup conflict also predicted burnout, and that units' conflict management climate can buffer the harmful impact of conflict on quality of service. Di Fabio et al. argued that relational incivility is crucial for positive outcomes when organizations undergo change. Their study, conducted with a sample of 261 Italian workers, found that relational civility positively related not only to well-being outcomes, but also to acceptance of change.

The article by Pignata et al. using the Job Demands-Resources theoretical model of stress investigated the antecedents of perceived procedural justice in a two-wave longitudinal sample of 945 employees from 13 Australian universities. The article findings stimulate the development of more fair and transparent processes in the academic setting in order to increase justice perceptions. Relatedly, the article by Giorgi et al. determined the advantage of using recursive partitioning in the prediction of perceived organizational support in a sample of more than 6,000 Italian bankers. A regression tree model was estimated utilizing the tree function party package in R. The emerged results seem strategic both for research and practice. The article by Guglielmi et al. proposes an interesting model of engagement among older workers. They surveyed older workers in Northern Italy and found evidence of a gain cycle wherein job satisfaction increases work engagement, which in turn impacts subsequent job satisfaction. Job demands and age play a role in the strength of this gain cycle.

The article by Page and Nilsson used an innovative approach to improve employees' well-being and organizational behavior. Active commuting using electrically assisted bikes (e-bikes) resulted in more productive and healthy organizational behavior outcomes compared with passive commuters. Pignata et al. shed light on the important issue of awareness of organizational stress interventions. In a two-wave longitudinal study of employees from 13 Australian universities, they find that awareness of stress interventions plays an important role in impacting satisfaction, trust, and for non-academic employees, commitment, and justice perceptions. These results varied depending on organizational tenure, suggesting that organizations might need to promote interventions differently depending on tenure. Finally, Cortini et al. examine the relationship between learning climate and job performance. In a sample of health professionals gathered from a public hospital in Italy, they found evidence that a learning climate promotes job performance by virtue of impacting psychological strain.

Additionally, many of the articles in the special issue offer tools for employees and organizations to monitor and improve health and well-being. First, the article by Petrovic et al. ´ examined the cut off scores of the most scientifically recognized instrument of workplace bullying measurement: the Negative Acts Questionnaire Revised (NAQ-R). In the cultural and economic context of Serbia, this article is an important reference for researchers and practitioners who wish to use this questionnaire. Second, Di Fabio et al. evaluated the psychometric properties of a new multi-dimensional scale for entrepreneurship, leadership, and professionalism. Entrepreneurship, leadership, and professionalism are increasingly important in today's ever-changing and uncertain business environment. This tool is likely to aid both research and practice. The third tool is addressed in the article by Di Fabio. In particular, this article examined the psychometric properties of the Positive Relational Management Scale (PRMS). This scale demonstrated good psychometric properties, and can serve as another useful tool for assessing and promoting positive experiences at work. Third, Loera et al. offer evidence for the validity and measurement invariance of the User-Initiated Support Scale, which assesses social support from users (e.g., students, patients). This tool assesses a crucial, yet often ignored, source of social support at work. Fourth, Pedrazza et al. reported on the development of a scale to assess physician's dissatisfaction and work-related stress. They explore various dimensions of stressful experiences among physicians and highlight role uncertainty and loss of social esteem as particularly stressful factors. Finally, in a two-year action research project taking place in the operating rooms of six hospitals in Northern Italy, Bruno and Bracco developed an innovative methodology for noticing and monitoring critical threats to safety and well-being. This tool serves as an excellent

#### REFERENCES

resource for monitoring and addressing safety and well-being at work in a proactive, team-oriented manner.

### CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the papers in this special issue report findings from a cumulative sample of nearly 19,000 workers and perspectives from 68 authors. They suggest that performance cannot be successfully achieved at the cost of health and well-being, and provide various perspectives and tools to guide future research and practice.

We conclude with a motto of the Business@health laboratory of the European University of Rome (www.uerbusinesshealth. com) "**Business doesn't exist without workers' health & workers' health is business."** We hope that this special issue will inspire researchers and practitioners to expand their horizons to integrate occupational health and safety protection as part of activities designed to promote well-being, performance, and productivity (e.g., Danna and Griffin, 1999; Lerner et al., 2013; Di Fabio and Kenny, 2016).

### AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

All authors listed, have made substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2017 Giorgi, Shoss and Di Fabio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

# Grit or Honesty-Humility? New Insights into the Moderating Role of Personality between the Health Impairment Process and Counterproductive Work Behavior

Andrea Ceschi1 \*, Riccardo Sartori1 , Stephan Dickert2 and Arianna Costantini1

1 Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy, 2 School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

It is acknowledged that chronic job demands may be depleting workers' stamina resulting in burnout conditions and ultimately causing further health problems. This relation, known as health impairment process, has recently been considered as a possible explanation for the emergence of counterproductive work behavior (CWB). The present work aims to examine the role of two personality traits (i.e., Grit and Honesty-Humility) in this process. The results, based on a sample of 208 private service sector employees, confirm the presence of a fully mediated process and show how Honesty-Humility positively moderates the relationship between job demands and exhaustion, whereas Grit has a negative effect on the relation between exhaustion and CWB. Implications for assessment procedure and hiring decisions are discussed.

Keywords: health impairment process, job demands, exhaustion, counterproductive work behavior, honestyhumility, grit

### INTRODUCTION

In line with the burnout literature, it is widely assumed that burnout leads to health problems, such as psychosomatic illness, cardiovascular and coronary heart diseases (Ahola et al., 2005; Ahola and Hakanen, 2007; Toppinen-Tanner et al., 2009). Therefore, burnout plays a prominent role in explaining the relationship between rising job demands and an increase in such health problems. In fact, in the last 20 years organizational research has provided evidence of the link between job demands, burnout and health indicators (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Geurts and Sonnentag, 2006; Piko, 2006; Little et al., 2007; Umehara et al., 2007; Dollard and Bakker, 2010; Idris et al., 2012; Schaufeli and Taris, 2014).

This two-stage process is known as "health impairment" or "energetic process," and it is embedded in the Job Demands Resources (JD-R) model (Demerouti et al., 2001) and empirically supported (Bakker et al., 2004, 2010; Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Xanthopoulou et al., 2007; Hakanen et al., 2008; Demerouti and Bakker, 2011; Schaufeli and Taris, 2014). Considering research in support of this model, it is likely that the health impairment reflects a more universal process at work, of which the health issue is just one symptom (Balducci et al., 2011). In order to show work-related implications, literature usually provides studies where the health impairment process is associated with outcomes such as organizational well-being or job performance (Bakker et al., 2004, 2008; Idris et al., 2012). The nature of this relationship

#### Edited by:

Annamaria Di Fabio, University of Florence, Italy

#### Reviewed by:

M. Teresa Anguera, University of Barcelona, Spain Peter McIlveen, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

> \*Correspondence: Andrea Ceschi<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 13 July 2016 Accepted: 01 November 2016 Published: 01 December 2016

#### Citation:

Ceschi A, Sartori R, Dickert S and Costantini A (2016) Grit or Honesty-Humility? New Insights into the Moderating Role of Personality between the Health Impairment Process and Counterproductive Work Behavior. Front. Psychol. 7:1799. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01799

depends both on the types of job demands as well as on the outcomes considered in the study, resulting in a partial or full mediation through burnout. While job demands are usually negatively related to health through a full and negative mediation with burnout, they are positively and directly associated with task performance. For example, Bakker et al. (2004) found that inrole performance was mostly predicted by job demands through workers' exhaustion (a component of burnout), while in another study cynicism (another burnout component) predicted teams' sales performance (Bakker et al., 2008). Based on evidence from research, it is reasonable to assume the presence of two relationships, namely a first path from job demands to burnout (or its components), and a second path from burnout to the outcome considered (e.g., performance, absenteeism, etc.). Finally, we can consider the presence of a third path, when the relation is partially mediated, usually when the outcomes studied are different than health problems (**Figure 1**).

Considering these types of outcomes, the health impairment process has been examined regarding the effect on performance but rarely used to predict behavioral constructs correlated with burnout. In one notable example, in the JD-R framework, job demands predicted burnout and consequently absence duration (Bakker et al., 2003). More recently, some attempts have been made to study the relationships between job demands and organizational behavior in the health impairment process (Schaufeli et al., 2009; Balducci et al., 2011; Nahrgang et al., 2011). Balducci et al. (2011)studied the emergence of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) as a behavioral stress reaction. Workload, role conflict, and interpersonal demands were related to some CWBs via negative affectivity (i.e., anger, pessimism). Finally, a recent study of Smoktunowicz et al. (2015) has confirmed the presence of job burnout as a mediator of the job demands–CWB relationship. The theoretical framework of their study was based on the Demand Control model (DCM; Karasek, 1998). They found that a high level of job demands was indirectly associated with higher CWB frequency, with an increase in job burnout (primarily exhaustion) operating as a mediator.

Counterproductive work behavior can also be predicted by emotional labor (i.e., emotional demands by which workers manage their feelings toward organizational aims; Bechtoldt et al., 2007). This relationship does not include burnout as a mediator so it is not technically definable as a health impairment process, but it reveals the important role of emotional demands in predicting CWB. Moreover, the relationship between emotional labor/acting deep and CWB is moderated by self-control, such that people with high self-control can perform better by effectively dealing with emotional stressors. This highlights the relevance of considering individual dispositions (e.g., selfcontrol) and personality traits in understanding the antecedence of organizational behavior and CWB.

With the exception of the recent study of Smoktunowicz et al. (2015), literature lacks clear research on the moderating impact of individual differences in the two-stage health impairment process and CWB. The current research aims to fill this gap by developing a model that considers the mediated relationship of such a classic process as the health impairment, and having CWB as the final outcome (Path a: job demands → exhaustion; Path b: exhaustion → CWB; and eventually Path c: job demands → CWB). Moreover, this contribution aims at exploring the moderating role performed by two promising personality traits: Honesty-Humility and Grit. Both such traits are relatively new in the organizational domain in comparison with the other wellknown big five traits (Sartori et al., 2015, 2016; Ceschi et al., 2016), and have been developed based on different personality theories (Ashton and Lee, 2005; Duckworth et al., 2007). They represent two distinct personality traits which do not overlap, but they may have a different (and explicative) role in moderating the relation between the health impairment process and CWB. Whereas Honesty-Humility, which represents the tendency to be faithful/loyal, has already been shown to negatively moderate

the relation between the stressors and CWB (Ashton et al., 2000; Zettler and Hilbig, 2010; Wiltshire et al., 2014; Chirumbolo, 2015), Grit, which predicts success by promoting self-control and goal-persisting at work (Duckworth and Gross, 2014), has rarely been studied in relation to counterproductive behaviors (Littman-Ovadia and Lavy, 2016).

In the next sections, we will first explore CWB as a possible outcome of the health impairment process. Secondly, we will introduce Honesty-Humility and Grit in their relation to the energetic process.

### Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB): Classical Antecedents and Moderators

Being counterproductive at work involves behavior that is deliberate and opposite to the established interests of the organization (Gruys and Sackett, 2003). It has been described as a range of behaviors that transgress the main organizational norms, to weaken the wellbeing of the organization and threaten the co-workers and customers (Penney and Spector, 2005). Counterproductive behaviors are invasive and destructive phenomena that impair performance and proficiency in the workplace (Spector and Fox, 2005). They have been operationalized in a variety of ways. The most salient form of CWB is physical violence, but it may also take the form of much less stunning behaviors such as gossip, subtle and passive actions, failure to fulfill tasks or pass on information, poor attendance, or intentionally sloppy work (Hershcovis et al., 2007).

The occurrence of CWB has been explained by the stressoremotion model, in which these behaviors are considered as an emotional reaction to frustration at work, due to a number of environmental stressors that hamper work efficiency (Spector and Fox, 2005). These stressors can be job demands such as interpersonal conflict, workload, emotional labor, role conflict and role ambiguity (Barling et al., 2009). Indeed, if CWB is an outcome of the health impairment process (Balducci et al., 2011), and if the role of such job demands in determining the process is clear, the stressor-emotion model implicitly hides how emotional exhaustion (as a manifestation of frustration) is correlated with CWB. Although the relationship between emotional exhaustion and CWB has been examined less frequently than the relation between job stressors and CWB, there is evidence to sustain such a link. In fact, emotionally exhausted individuals enlist more deviant behavior to relieve antagonistic emotions or for some subservient aim (Banks et al., 2012). Also, emotional exhaustion predicts which employees may be more engaged in CWBs (Krischer et al., 2010; Banks et al., 2012) and self-control seems to buffer this relation (Bolton et al., 2012).

The relation exhaustion → CWB certainly presents some personal factors as reliable moderators, such as self-control (Marcus and Schuler, 2004), but also several personality traits such as narcissism (Penney and Spector, 2002), anger trait or some of the big five traits (Douglas and Martinko, 2001; Marcus et al., 2007; Grijalva and Newman, 2015). For example, agreeableness and conscientiousness are related to interpersonally directed CWBs, and organizationally directed CWBs, respectively. Similarly, extraversion predicted theft at work, whereas openness to experience predicted work deviance.

Aside from the big five model, other moderator traits may better interact with the presented relations. These traits can be found in the new definitions of personality that are consistent with modern theories of development, practices that are informed by high-quality research, and constructs associated with significant challenges (Clement and Bollinger, 2016).

### The Explicative Power of Honesty-Humility in Predicting Unethical Behavior and Workplace Deviance

Considerable research has been conducted within a personality framework alternative to the well-known Big Five. A different personality structure, named the HEXACO model, includes six dimensions instead of five (Ashton et al., 2007). The most salient property of the HEXACO model is the inclusion of the Honesty-Humility dimension. Honesty-Humility measures the disposition to not take advantage of other individuals, even when there is no risk of unfavorable repercussion for such exploitation (Ashton and Lee, 2008). People low in Honesty-Humility are portrayed as egoistic, lying, haughty, fraudulent, unethical, hypocritical and cunning (Lee and Ashton, 2006).

Considering this description, it is not unexpected that low Honesty-Humility is linked with a certain range of questionable behaviors. Low Honesty-Humility individuals have an inclination to deceive, craft, and break rules, searching for the chance to take part in self-interested behaviors (Lee et al., 2005a). The HEXACO Honesty-Humility dimension has consistently predicted workplace deviance and CWBs (Zettler and Hilbig, 2010; O'Boyle et al., 2012). For example, antisocial behaviors toward the organization and co-workers (i.e., workplace vandalism, absenteeism and alcohol abuse at work) were negatively correlated with the Honesty-Humility trait (Lee et al., 2005b).

In relation to the health impairment process, the Honesty-Humility trait has been shown to moderate the effects of a job stressor (i.e., job insecurity) on CWB (Chirumbolo, 2015). Moreover, stressful situational factors, such as the perceived absence of organizational politics, elicit more CWB in individuals with a low score of the Honesty-Humility trait (Wiltshire et al., 2014).

### Grit and the Inclination to Persist in Frustrating Behaviors for Long Term Goals

Scholars have recently proposed a personality construct known as Grit, which represents "perseverance and passion for longterm goals" (Duckworth et al., 2007). Gritty individuals have higher educational achievements, at work and in training, gritty professors promote better educational performance of their students, where cadets who show a high grit score are more

likely to graduate in an elite military academy (Duckworth et al., 2007; Duckworth and Quinn, 2009; Eskreis-Winkler et al., 2014). Gritty workers outperform their colleagues because they invest more effort in their work, thus allowing people to persevere in tedious and frustrating behaviors (Duckworth et al., 2011). Another important construct protective toward frustrating behaviors is self-control, partially associated to Grit, but distinguished because it focuses on aligning actions and intentions for achieving one's targets. The importance of selfcontrol in the workplace has been documented in relation to CWB, where this construct moderates the relationship with emotional labor. Moreover, individuals with high selfcontrol are capable of nullifying the effects of depersonalization, organizational misidentification, and passive CWBs (Hirschi and Gottfredson, 2000).

Regarding the relationship with job demands, motivational intensity theory, which is based on a model of how people regulate efforts, provides a natural platform for building predictions about how Grit affects job demands' perception (Brehm and Self, 1989). Based on this theory, people's work effort is the sum of the significance given to achievements and the environmental condition for reaching such goals (i.e., team structure, teamwork, etc.). The personal meaning given to success defines how much job demands people are willing to accept to reach their goals. A trait as Grit may affect the inclination to manage job demands toward burnout and its components (Path a) by making the attainment of goals appearing less difficult and stressful (Littman-Ovadia and Lavy, 2016). In contrast to self-control, Grit includes the notion that passion can influence the achievement of goals and also moderate the influence of job demands on perceived exhaustion. For example, a gritty employer might work for extended hours to complete an assignment because he/she feels passionate toward his/her work and does not feel stressed while doing it.

Apart from this evidence, research on Grit in the domain of the classic I/O outcomes is still in its preliminary phase, although some research on the effects of strong character (conceptually close to Grit) on counterproductive behaviors has recently been conducted (Engel, unpublished doctoral dissertation). Considering this premise, Grit seems to be a promising candidate as a moderator of the two relations of the health impairment process.

### HYPOTHESES

As seen, CWBs are a likely manifestation of the psychological strain in reaction to job demands, such as interpersonal conflict, emotional demands, workload, role conflict, and role ambiguity (Spector and Fox, 2005; Barling et al., 2009). High levels of such job demands are found to be related to the occurrence of CWBs in several studies (Fox et al., 2001; Marcus and Schuler, 2004; Krischer et al., 2010; Grijalva and Newman, 2015). Research demonstrated that the relation between such stressors and CWB can be moderated by traits such as Honesty-Humility (Chirumbolo, 2015). On the other hand, if the role of job demands in determining CWB is clear, the stressor-emotion model conceptually bypasses the mediation of exhaustion as a manifestation of frustration that leads to CWB, and it is not exhaustive in explaining the moderators of this two-stage process. Indeed, exhausted employees have a higher inclination toward CWBs, whereas employees with higher self-control seem to be less sensitive to exhaustion (Marcus and Schuler, 2004). Moreover, Smoktunowicz et al. (2015) has recently shown that high job demands are indirectly related to high CWBs, with job burnout operating as a mediator. In their conclusion, the authors state that "Future research needs to clarify if the mediating effect of job burnout in the job demands–CWB relationship may be specific for certain components of burnout. . ." (p. 345). Certainly, several studies have identified exhaustion as a possible predictor (and mediator) of the emergence of CWB, but its role has never been tested in relation to this two-stage process.

This evidence suggests that the two-stage process of health impairment can be an explicative organizational behavior model for predicting CWB, with exhaustion as a mediator and the personality dimensions of Grit and Honesty-Humility as potential moderators. Personality traits can affect the stress– strain relation in different ways, for instance influencing the reactivity of individuals toward stress perception, as suggested in the reactivity model (Bolger and Zuckerman, 1995). The emergence of CWB is related to the vulnerability model of interaction (Parkes, 1994), where personality is accountable for rendering the individual more or less vulnerable to the effects of stressful events. Recall that in the health impairment process, passion can affect the perception of effort; secondly Grit can also moderate the emergence of CWBs, due to its focus on self-control and the attention for long term goals. Regarding Honesty-Humility, literature has already shown this trait to be one of the strongest predictors and regulators of CWB (Lee et al., 2005a). Less is known instead on the possible interactions between Honesty-Humility and job demands in relation to exhaustion. Competing theories indicate that this relationship could have gone in either direction: it is possible that low Honesty-Humility individuals would be less likely to feel and take care of job demands, thus finding a charged workplace less distressing than high Honesty-Humility individuals; on the other hand, the Honesty-Humility trait is usually negatively related with exhaustion (Wiltshire et al., 2014).

We expect to find a full mediation between: job demands → exhaustion (H1a)→ CWB (H1b), or a partial mediation considering a significant direct effect of job demands on CWB (H1c). We expect a negative moderation effect of Honesty-Humility on the relation between exhaustion → CWB (H2b); if the model is based on a partial mediation, we expect another negative moderation between job demands → CWB (H2c), where for higher levels of exhaustion or of job demands, those high in Honesty-Humility should show lower levels of CWB. We will also explore a possible interaction of Honesty-Humility with job demands → exhaustion (H2a), considering that this relationship could have gone in either directions. Concerning Grit, we expect a negative moderation effect on the relation between job demands → exhaustion (H3a) or/and on exhaustion → CWB (H3b). Specifically, we hypothesize that gritty people's job demands will less likely lead to exhaustion, and that for these people also exhaustion will less likely lead to CWB. Moreover, if the model is based on partial mediation, we expect another negative moderation between job demands → CWB (H3c; **Figure 2**).

### MATERIALS AND METHODS

fpsyg-07-01799 November 29, 2016 Time: 14:6 # 5

A total of 208 employees operating in the private service sector filled and returned the questionnaire (response rate 80%). Their age ranges between 20 and 60 years with an average of 41 years (SD = 9.65). The majority of the sample has higher vocational training (24%) or a high school degree (51%). Most participants work as clerks (63%), 4% are company managers. Most participants (80%) do not supervise staff; only five participants supervise more than five employees. This study was approved by the Ethical Review Committee at the University of Verona. The present sample belongs to a study designed with multiple research purposes.

#### Instruments Job Demands

Three specific job demands have been included in the questionnaire: role conflict, emotional demands and hassles. Role conflict has been assessed by using four items derived from the Ivancevich and Matteson (1980) role conflict scale. An example item is "I receive conflicting requests from two or more people" (from 1 = never to 5 = always). Emotional demands are based on a scale developed by Van Veldhoven and Meijman (1994) and include four items. An example is "Does your work put you in emotional situations?" (1 = never, 5 = always). Hassles scale (Bakker, 2014) has been used to detect them and it is composed of six items. Examples are: "I have to deal with administrative hassles"; "I have many hassles to go through to get projects/assignments done"; (1 = never, 5 = always).

#### Exhaustion

Three exhaustion items of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (Demerouti and Bakker, 2008) have been used. Example items are "There are days when I feel tired before I arrive at work" and "After my work, I usually feel worn out and weary" (1 = totally disagree, 4 = totally agree).

#### CWB

Counterproductive work behavior has been assessed by using the CWB scale, i.e., a part of the Individual Work Performance Questionnaire (IWPQ), and we have considered the five CWB items (Koopmans et al., 2012). Example items are: "I spoke with colleagues about the negative aspects of my work" and "I spoke with people from outside the organization about the negative aspects of my work." Each item has been rated on a five-point rating scale (0 = never, 4 = very often).

#### Honesty-Humility

Participants have completed the Italian version of the 10-item scale for measuring the Honesty-Humility component of the HEXACO-PI-R (Ashton et al., 2006). "I wouldn't use flattery to get a raise or promotion at work, even if I thought it would succeed" and "I wouldn't pretend to like someone just to get that person to do favors for me." Each item has been rated on a five-point Likert scale (5 = strongly agree; 1 = strongly disagree).

#### Grit

The personality trait of Grit has been assessed by using the Short Grit Scale, an eight-item self-report questionnaire with established construct and predictive validity (Duckworth and Quinn, 2009). Participants have endorsed items by indicating consistency of passions"I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest" (reverse-scored) and consistency of effort "Setbacks don't discourage me," over time, by using a 5-point Likert-type scale (5 = very much like me, 1 = not at all like me).

#### RESULTS

#### Descriptive Statistics

**Table 1** shows the means, standard deviations, correlations, and the internal consistency indexes of the scales. All scales present acceptable reliability indexes. In relation to socio-demographic variables, Honesty-Humility shows positive correlations with length in service (0.25, p < 0.01) and Grit instead presents a positive correlation with the number of supervised staff (0.17, p < 0.05). A significant and positive correlation is found between most of the job demands measures, exhaustion and CWB, by partially confirming the first hypothesis (H1a; H1b; H1c). Considering possible moderation effects, Honesty-Humility and Grit showed negative correlations with all the constructs mentioned above. Honesty-Humility also shows a positive correlation with length in service, meanwhile Grit with the number of collaborators directed. Both traits are positively correlated between them and with the job role (**Table 1**).

#### Hypotheses Testing

Following the statistical procedure used by Fox et al. (2001) and suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986), we have tested the steps of the health impairment process on CWB (H1a; H1b; H1c). We have also tested the role of Grit and Honesty-Humility at each stage of the process. The single regressions analyses (**Table 2**) have revealed that the presence of exhaustion as a mediator substantially reduces the direct effect of the job demands on CWB, [job demands → CWB: β = 0.18, p < 0.01; job demands, (exhaustion) → CWB: β = 0.08, p > 0.05]. This invalidates the presence of a partial mediation model (H1c) whilst supporting a full mediation (H1a; H1b); it also makes the analyses of the traits' moderation effects on the job demands → CWB relationship not relevant to be conducted (H2c; H3c). Regarding the moderation effect of Honesty-Humility, results revealed a significant positive effect on the relation between job demands and exhaustion only (H2a), whereas Grit is a significant negative moderator of the relation between exhaustion and CWB (H3b).

We next tested the single regression effects found in a comprehensive model, which consists of a full mediation model of exhaustion on job demands-CWB, with the moderations of Honesty-Humility on Path a, and Grit on Path b. We mean-centered and used bootstrapping following the PROCESS procedure recommended by Hayes (2013). The results of these analyses revealed a significant indirect effect of exhaustion 95% CI [0.196,0.474], that fully mediated the effect of job demands on CWB, as revealed by single regressions. Honesty-Humility significantly moderates the effects of job demands on exhaustion, B = 0.16, p < 0.05. A simple slope analysis revealed that for lower Honesty-Humility scores, job demands have a stronger positive influence on exhaustion. Data were plotted and the graph (**Figure 3**) revealed that for higher levels of job demands this effect disappears. For Grit, results showed that for lower scores, exhaustion exerts a higher positive influence on CWB, B = −0.18, p < 0.05. As for Honesty-Humility, a simple slope analysis was conducted and data were plotted (**Figure 4**). The graph showed that at higher levels of exhaustion the effect of Grit is particularly

TABLE 2 | Regression analyses of moderation effects of Honesty-Humility on Path a, and of Grit on Path b.

N = 208. Path a main predictor = Job demands; Path b main predictor = Exhaustion; R2 = Explanation rate; 1R 2 = Change in explanation rate in each step; ∗p < 0.05. ∗∗p < 0.01.

relevant and robust, such that for those scoring low on Grit, exhaustion has a stronger influence on CWB.

The simple slope analyses revealed that the interactions of both personality traits were significant for all the levels of the moderators (+\– 1SD), moreover the moderator effects follow an incremental pattern.

#### DISCUSSION

The current results contribute to the job stress literature by providing evidence for the potential applicability of the health impairment process outside the area of health research. The present study satisfies the need for clarification regarding the mediating effect of certain components of burnout (such as exhaustion) in the job demands–CWB relationship. Indeed, as suggested by Balducci et al. (2011), it seems likely that the health impairment process reflects an underlying mechanism of human functioning at work. Specifically, we have found that the health impairment process postulated by the JD-R model (Demerouti et al., 2001) also emerges in relation to CWB. Findings indicate that exhaustion mediates the job demands–CWB relationship. High levels of job demands are indirectly associated with higher CWB frequency, with an increase in exhaustion operating as mediator.

Spector and Fox (2005) suggested that CWB may be a reaction to frustration at work due by job demands, and proposed that frustrations are caused by environmental stressors. Considering this evidence and the recent work of Smoktunowicz et al. (2015), it is more plausible to consider the stressor-emotion model as a two-stage process, fairly associable with the health impairment. This is in line with Bolton et al. (2012), who have showed how exhausted employees could have a general higher propensity to engage in CWB.

These findings contribute to the knowledge on mediating mechanisms, explaining the associations between job demands and CWB. The mediating function of exhaustion can be attributed to the reduction of productive behaviors, so that employees may be more likely to use their working hours for other kinds of behaviors, such as CWB (Smoktunowicz et al., 2015). Concerning the moderating traits, we confirm that Honesty-Humility affects the stressor–strain relation by influencing the reactivity of individuals toward stress perception in relation to job demands, as suggested in the reactivity model (Bolger and Zuckerman, 1995). The emergence of CWB is instead more related to the vulnerability model of interaction of Parkes (1994), where the personality trait of Grit is accountable for rendering the

individual less vulnerable to the effects of stressful events (**Figure 5**).

### The Moderation Effects of the Two Traits on the Health Impairment Process

The moderations show that for higher Honesty-Humility scores, job demands have a stronger positive impact on exhaustion, while this effect vanishes for lower levels of Honesty-Humility. Individuals with low scores of Honesty-Humility would be less inclined to feel and take care of job demands, finding a charged work environment less distressing than the individuals with high Honesty-Humility scores. Lower levels of Honesty-Humility are associated with egoistic and deceitful attitudes. Behaviorally speaking, a person with high Honesty-Humility cooperates with others even when one might take advantage of her/him (e.g., by giving too much workload). This disposition to help others is not present in people with low Honesty-Humility. Therefore, they are less likely to experience exhaustion. Literature lacks studies that compare the impact of the Honesty-Humility trait on job stress. In the study of Wiltshire et al. (2014), simple slope analyses revealed that the relation between the perceptions of organizational politics and job stress was more robust at lower levels of Honesty-Humility. It is conceivable that those low in Honesty-Humility would be less inclined to perceive the negative effects of organizational politics, for example by finding a politically charged work environment less unpleasant than those high in Honesty-Humility because of their greater disposition to use maneuvers to prosper in that workplace. Regarding the moderation between Honesty-Humility and CWB, literature has widely shown this trait to be one of the strongest predictors and this strong relation could have hidden the indirect effect researched (Lee et al., 2005b).

Grit represents perseverance and passion for long-term goals and in this definition lies the sense about how Grit could moderate CWB, mainly because of its focus on developing self-control for long term aims (Duckworth et al., 2007). Grit and strength of character include a wide range of attributes: The specific strength impact on individuals' efficiency at work, mostly related with certain challenging professions (Lavy and Littman-Ovadia, 2016). Grit workers not only dedicate more stamina in a particular task at a given time, but they do it with permanent strength over the years for seeking their long-term goal (Duckworth et al., 2007). For this reason, the relevance accredited to the work domain by highly passionate workers is the capacity of "run a marathon" (Littman-Ovadia and Lavy, 2016) and to avoid CWB, which is the major expression of career short-sightedness.

Certainly, most of the research on Grit is longitudinal for this reason, and this is also the most important limitation of the current research. However, evidence from longitudinal studies in the work stress area clearly shows that organizational demands such as workload, role conflict, and hassles have causal consequence on outcomes such as exhaustion and, ultimately, CWB (Balducci et al., 2011; Smoktunowicz et al., 2015). For this reason, the direction of the relations examined is plausible. Nevertheless, longitudinal data is required for a solid proof of the results found, especially in relation to the Grit interaction effect on CWB. Future research should also consider a more representative sample of workers, considering also careers particularly exposed to exhaustion (Di Fabio, 2014; Di Fabio and Kenny, 2015).

A direct practical implication of the current research is the interesting question whether organizations should hire honest and humble or gritty workers. While honesty and perseverance are traits that are probably universally considered to be positive qualities in people, our research suggests that at least Honesty-Humility can have negative consequences for workers' burnout. It should be noted, however, that Honesty-Humility is positively correlated with length of service, such that people who are more honest also stay longer in their companies. Grit is also positively correlated with the number of supervised staff, which indicates that perseverance may be

#### REFERENCES

an important leadership component. Finally, both personality traits tend to co-occur (i.e., are positively correlated) and are related to workers' job role. This means that the combination of both traits might be particularly suitable for management positions.

#### AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

All authors listed, have made substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2016 Ceschi, Sartori, Dickert and Costantini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

# Promoting Well-Being: The Contribution of Emotional Intelligence

#### Annamaria Di Fabio1 \* and Maureen E. Kenny2

1 Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 2 Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Boston, MA, USA

Adopting a primary prevention perspective, this study examines competencies with the potential to enhance well-being and performance among future workers. More specifically, the contributions of ability-based and trait models of emotional intelligence (EI), assessed through well-established measures, to indices of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being were examined for a sample of 157 Italian high school students. The Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test was used to assess ability-based EI, the Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Inventory and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire were used to assess trait EI, the Positive and Negative Affect Scale and the Satisfaction With Life Scale were used to assess hedonic well-being, and the Meaningful Life Measure was used to assess eudaimonic well-being. The results highlight the contributions of trait EI in explaining both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, after controlling for the effects of fluid intelligence and personality traits. Implications for further research and intervention regarding future workers are discussed.

#### Edited by:

Pablo Fernández-Berrocal, University of Málaga, Spain

#### Reviewed by:

Riccardo Sartori, University of Verona, Italy Harsha Perera, University of New South Wales, Australia

#### \*Correspondence:

Annamaria Di Fabio<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 25 May 2016 Accepted: 25 July 2016 Published: 17 August 2016

#### Citation:

Di Fabio A and Kenny ME (2016) Promoting Well-Being: The Contribution of Emotional Intelligence. Front. Psychol. 7:1182. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01182 Keywords: ability based emotional intelligence, trait emotional intelligence, hedonic well-being, eudaimonic wellbeing, primary prevention perspective, health promotion, healthy business, healthy organization

### INTRODUCTION

As a construct of long-standing interest in the field of psychology, well-being deserves additional attention for its primary prevention potential for fostering health and performance in the workplace (Zelenski et al., 2008; Heuvel et al., 2010). While mental health professionals focus on restoring a state of well-being to workers who suffer from psychological distress, primary prevention and health promotion professionals seek to promote well-being and enhance factors that protect individuals from the negative effects of psychological risk (Hage et al., 2007). Interest in study of health promotion and well-being is expanding as numeroussocial, economic, biological, psychological and cultural factors pose threats to the attainment of well-being. In Italy, for example, young people as future workers are growing up in an era of rapid social change, job instability, and high unemployment. Economic insecurity, unstable and shifting work opportunities, and the subsequent increase in the number of people living in poverty pose risks to well-being for many youth and young adults (Masten, 2014; Di Fabio and Bucci, 2016; Di Fabio and Palazzeschi, 2016). While psychologists recognize the importance of systemic change to remedy these social and economic problems, they are also interested in identifying individual factors that foster well-being among future workers and can serve as assets that protect individuals from psychological harm and ultimately foster well-being and performance in the workplace (DeNeve and Cooper, 1998; Friedman and Kern, 2014; Gori et al., 2015).

Researchers (Antonovsky, 1987a; Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) in the field of positive psychology recognize that optimal human functioning requires more than the absence of risk or pathology and have been seeking to identify factors that contribute to the development of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being (Ryan and Deci, 2001; Ryff and Singer, 2008; Waterman et al., 2010). Hedonic well-being entails the realization of happiness, pleasure attainment and pain avoidance, while eudaimonic well-being refers to the fulfillment or actualization of one's full potential (Ryan and Deci, 2001). Hedonic well-being has been defined in research as subjective well-being (SWB) (Kahneman et al., 1999), operationalized as the prevalence of positive affect (PA) over negative affect (NA). In addition to these affective dimensions of SWB, life satisfaction is often considered a cognitive component of SWB (Pavot and Diener, 1993; Diener et al., 1999), although there is some debate about whether a precise definition of SWB should be restricted to affective indicators (Diener et al., 1999; Deci and Ryan, 2008). Lent (2004), however, suggests that life satisfaction entails both affective and cognitive dimensions, which has been supported by research (e.g., Arrindell et al., 1991; Lucas et al., 1996; Keyes et al., 2002) documenting moderate to strong relationships between positive–negative affect and life satisfaction. Research by Keyes et al. (2002) supports the conceptualization of PWB – psychological well-being and SWB as conceptually distinct constructs and the inclusion of life satisfaction as a dimension of SWB, despite some overlap across several indicators of SWB and PWB.

Eudaimonic well-being, referred to in research as both PWB (Ryff and Singer, 2008) and EWB – eudaimonic well-being (Waterman et al., 2010), emphasizes personal growth, mastery, life purpose and meaning (Ryff and Singer, 2008). Although a sense of SWB often accompanies PWB, pleasureful activities are considered insufficient to nurture and sustain PWB in the long-term (Ryan and Deci, 2001). PWB thus goes beyond the attainment of SWB (Ryff and Singer, 2008) and is derived from a sense of fulfillment, meaning, and self-realization. Research has found PWB to be broadly associated with indices of physical and mental health (Deci and Ryan, 2000) and is recognizably relevant to prevention, health promotion, and vocational psychology for its attention to selecting life goals and activities that are congruent with the true self and with deeply held values. To the extent that work is a source of identity, meaning, and personal connection (Blustein, 2006), work uncertainty and instability threaten both SWB and PWB.

Emotional intelligence (EI) has gained attention as a focus of research and intervention for its promise as a set of skills that can be taught to enhance coping resources and promote well-being (Schutte et al., 2007; Martins et al., 2010; Sánchez-Álvarez et al., 2015, 2016; Fernández-Berrocal, 2016). The connection between EI and a range of positive outcomes across the academic, social, psychological and career domains among adolescents has been well-documented (Di Fabio et al., 2014; Perera and DiGiacomo, 2015). Research has also found EI to be associated with a variety of individual and social resources, such as resilience, positive self-evaluation, and social support (Di Fabio and Kenny, 2012a; Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014b; Perera and DiGiacomo, 2015). With regard to intervention, Di Fabio and Kenny (2011) found that a 10-h school-based intervention was effective in increasing EI and reducing career indecision among Italian high school students. Research with young adults in Belgium also demonstrated that EI can be increased with training, with EI gains sustained over a 6 months period (Nelis et al., 2009). Subsequent research applying the same EI intervention with Belgian university students revealed that intervention gains in EI led to positive changes in personality characteristics (increased agreeableness and extraversion and decreased neuroticism) assessed 6 months following intervention. Gains in psychological well-being, subjective health, quality of social relationships, and employability as reported by a prospective employer were also demonstrated at completion of the intervention in comparison with students receiving a different intervention or no intervention (Nelis et al., 2011).

A significant association between EI and well-being is supported by conceptual models that explain the possible causal mechanisms through which EI might influence well-being and by existing research that document some of those relationships. In a review of existing literature pertaining to EI, health, and well-being, Zeidner et al. (2012) suggest that EI influences SWB by fostering adaptive methods of coping with social challenges, social stress and interpersonal conflicts; promoting the development of supportive social networks; decreasing negative and increasing positive emotions; and enhancing emotional regulation. EI is also conceptually related to the PWB focus on personal growth and self-actualization (Zeidner et al., 2012). Skills in interpersonal (social) and intrapersonal (emotional awareness and internal self-regulation) EI should contribute to positive relationships with others and the capacity for mastery over one's environment that allow for personal growth, a sense of meaning in life, and self-actualization (Zeidner and Olnick-Shemesh, 2010; Friedman and Kern, 2014). These conceptualizations of the pathways between EI and well-being are supported by studies documenting relationships between EI and social support (e.g., Di Fabio and Kenny, 2012a; Perera and DiGiacomo, 2015) and between EI and coping efficiency, stress reduction and emotional regulation (Mikolajczak et al., 2008, 2009).

Emotional intelligence has been conceptualized and assessed according to several different models and numerous measures, which has contributed to some controversy and complexity in the literature. Stough et al. (2009) identify the two primary approaches to defining and measuring EI as ability-based (Mayer and Salovey, 1997) and trait-based self-report (Bar-On, 1997; Petrides and Furnham, 2000, 2001). The abilitybased model conceptualizes EI as a set of skills best assessed by performance-based problem-solving measures (Austin and Saklofske, 2014). The Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Intelligence Scale (MSCEIT; Mayer et al., 2002) is a frequently utilized performance measure of ability-based EI that assesses skills in the perception, understanding and management of emotions and the integration of emotion and cognition to enhance problem solving.

The trait model views EI as an emotion and personality-related disposition that is best assessed by self-report questionnaires. A number of trait-based self-report EI measures are available,

with the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i; Bar-On, 1997) and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Scale (TeiQue Petrides and Furnham, 2000, 2001) being among the most common. The Bar-On model is sometimes referred to as a "mixed-model" that includes self-reports of social-emotional personality dimensions and self-competencies (Bar-On, 1997), such as adaptability, stress-management, intrapersonal, and interpersonal awareness. The TEIQue focuses on selfperceptions of social-emotional personality factors, such as self-control, emotionality, and sociability. The TEIQue includes a dispositional measure of well-being entailing self-esteem, trait happiness, and trait optimism and the Bar-On includes an assessment of general mood that overlap with dispositional measures of personality and have some overlap with, but are not identical with state measures of affect or well-being (Mikolajczak et al., 2009). Moderate correlations have been found among various trait EI measures (Brackett and Mayer, 2003), suggesting that they overlap but are not identical (Freudenthaler et al., 2008).

Debate has focused on the extent to which EI is best understood and assessed as a set of emotion-focused abilities or as a blend of personality traits and social and emotional abilities (Zeidner et al., 2012). Ability-based and self-report trait measures of EI have been found to be generally uncorrelated, with overlap emerging only across subscales or dimensions of ability-based and trait-based measures that relate to similar affective content (Brackett and Mayer, 2003; Parker et al., 2011). For example with regard to overlap, persons who rate themselves positively on intrapersonal EI as assessed by traitbased measures also performed well in identifying and describing their own feelings and were knowledgeable about the influences of specific moods and emotions on reasoning and behavior as assessed through ability-based measure (Parker et al., 2011). The lack of overlap between trait and ability measures has been understood as a function of method variance related to different assessment methods (self-report vs. performance) and as a function of different individual difference domains (intelligence vs. personality) (Parker et al., 2011). Although both ability-based and trait EI constructs have some association with measures of personality and fluid intelligence, ability-based models assessed by performance measures have been found to overlap more with fluid intelligence, and trait models assessed by self-report measures overlap more with personality measures (Di Fabio and Palazzeschi, 2009). With regard to method variance, it is possible that the trait models of EI correlate with selfreports of personality because both measures assess positive self-perceptions (Zeidner et al., 2012). Although some scholars view the limited overlap between trait and ability measures as an indication of incompatibility of the two approaches (Mayer et al., 2008), other scholars argue that the two approaches focus on unique and complementary dimensions of EI (Austin et al., 2008; Mikolajczak et al., 2008; Parker et al., 2011).

To analyze the validity of EI as a construct distinct from personality and intelligence, programmatic research has assessed the contributions of both ability-based EI as assessed through the MSCEIT and trait models of EI assessed through the EQi and TeiQue to a variety of academic, social and career outcomes, controlling for the effects of fluid intelligence and personality. For example, both ability-based and trait measures explain academic grade point for high school and college students beyond the effects of fluid intelligence and personality, with ability-based measures explaining a greater share of the variance than selfreport trait measures (Di Fabio and Palazzeschi, 2009). Perceived social support was also related, aside from the influences of fluid intelligence and personality, with both ability-based and trait EI, although trait EI was the more robust predictor for this outcome (Di Fabio and Kenny, 2012a). Studies of career decisionmaking also found both ability-based and trait EI to be significant predictors, but that trait EI was more robust than abilitybased EI in explaining varied dimensions of decision-making (Di Fabio and Kenny, 2012b; Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014a). Because both trait and ability-based EI explain academic, social, and career outcomes beyond the contributions of personality, evidence suggests that EI is distinct from the major dimensions of personality. Moreover, overall findings suggest that when dependent variables are self-reported, trait EI is the stronger predictor (Di Fabio and Kenny, 2012b; Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014b), and that when the dependent variables are performance measures, ability-based EI explains more variance than selfreport (Di Fabio and Palazzeschi, 2009). As mentioned above, the latter findings may be attributed to method variance as well as conceptual distinctions in EI as a personality construct and type of intelligence (Parker et al., 2011).

An emerging body of research has begun to examine relationships between EI and indices of hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being. The limited literature reveals some consistencies, but is also complicated by the use of varied measures of EI and well-being among different population samples. With regard to the relationships between self-reported trait EI and hedonic well-being, for example, research has consistently identified significant and positive relationships across studies of university students in Spain and community samples in Australia (Palmer et al., 2002; Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal, 2005; Gannon and Ranzijn, 2005; Gignac, 2006; Gallagher and Vella-Brodrick, 2008). Among high school students in Italy, Di Fabio and Saklofske (2014b) found that hedonic well-being was associated with trait measures of EI, but not with ability-based measures. Studies of trait EI and eudaimonic well-being are limited, but reveal positive findings. For example, an association between self-report measures of EI and eudaimonic well-being has been documented among professional employees in India (Raina and Bakhshi, 2013). Tennant et al. (2007) developed a new measure of EI, including items reflecting both eudemonic and hedonic domains, that was correlated with self-report measures of EI among university students in the United Kingdom. Perera and DiGiacomo (2015) found that trait EI was related to well-being, as measured by the Tennant et al. (2007) instrument. Evidence was found for a direct relationship and an indirect relationship mediated through perceived social support and engagement coping.

Findings for ability-based EI are more limited and reveal inconsistencies. Whereas Di Fabio and Saklofske (2014b) found no significant association between hedonic well- being and ability-based EI as assessed by the MSCEIT among Italian high

schools students, Burrus et al. (2012) found a robust association between ability-based EI and hedonic and eudaimonic well-being for a US. sample of college and university students. Burrus et al. (2012) used a newly developed performance measure of emotional management, the Situational Judgment Test of Emotion Management (STEM; MacCann and Roberts, 2008), for assessing ability-based EI. The STEM presents participants with brief scenarios describing emotional situations that could potentially elicit negative emotions and asks participants to choose which of four options offered would be the best approach for managing the given situation. In a study of Spanish university students, Extremera et al. (2011) found that ability-based EI as assessed with the well-established MSCEIT measure was related with concurrent levels of both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing and with gains over a 12-week time period for both wellbeing constructs. Moreover, the gains in well-being explained by ability-based EI were greater for eudaimonic than for hedonic well-being. Inconsistencies in existing research are difficult to assess given the variations in measures of EI used across varied samples. As noted by Zeidner et al. (2012) in their research review, a systematic and fine grained approach to measurement of both criterion and predictor variables may be helpful in offering clarification for the field and providing a research base for preventive intervention.

The current study was designed to replicate and clarify understanding of the associations between EI and eudaimonic and hedonic well-being among young people preparing for work and further education, to inform the knowledge base for developing appropriate competencies for healthy personal and work lives (Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014b; Di Fabio and Kenny, 2015). This study parallels prior research that examines the distinct contribution of EI by controlling for both fluid intelligence and personality (e.g., Di Fabio and Palazzeschi, 2009; Extremera et al., 2011; Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014a). Controlling for personality, for example, is desirable as a method for accounting for the overlap between trait measures of EI and self-reports of personality (Zeidner et al., 2012). This study adds systematically and specifically to the limited existing research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being by assessing for a single sample the relative contribution of ability-based EI and two models of trait EI, in explaining two types of wellbeing. The findings extend current research by using two wellestablished measures of self-report trait EI and a well-established performance measure of ability-based EI in explaining hedonic and eudaimonic well-being for students attending Italian high schools. Based upon theoretical conceptualization and the significant findings observed in prior research assessing selfreported trait and ability models of EI, we hypothesized that:

H1. Ability-based EI (Mayer et al., 2002) and trait EI based on both the Bar-On (1997) and the Petrides and Furnham (2000, 2001) and models will explain a significant percentage of incremental variance beyond the variance explained by fluid intelligence and personality traits in relation to hedonic well-being (PA, NA and life satisfaction).

H2. Ability-based EI (Mayer et al., 2002) and trait EI based on both the Bar-On (1997) and the Petrides and Furnham (2000, 2001) models will explain a significant percentage of incremental variance beyond the variance explained by fluid intelligence and personality traits in relation to eudaimonic well-being (meaningfulness).

## MATERIALS AND METHODS

### Participants

One hundred and fifty seven high school students, 46 males (29.30%) and 111 females (70.70%), attending their last year of high school in Tuscany participated in the study. Participants were mostly White and from middle-class families and ranged from 17 to 21 years of age (M = 18.31; SD = 0.54). Participants were recruited in a school system located in the province of Florence with different addresses: classical (12.7%), linguistic (38.2%), scientific (33.1%), psycho-socio-pedagogic (16.9%).

### Measures

#### Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM)

To assess fluid intelligence, the APM test (Raven, 1962) in the Italian version (Di Fabio and Clarotti, 2007) was administered. The test has two series of items: Series I composed of 12 items and Series II composed of 36 items. Participants are asked to choose one correct response from eight possible options for each item. The Cronbach's alpha as reported by Di Fabio and Clarotti (2007) was 0.91, and the alpha for the current study was 0.90.

#### Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ)

To assess personality traits, the (Caprara et al., 1993) was administered. The questionnaire has 132 items assessing five personality dimensions, with response options on a 5-point Likert scale format, from 1 = Absolutely false to 5 = Absolutely true. Reliability of the questionnaire scales was examined by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient that ranged from a value of 0.73 for Agreeableness to 0.90 for Emotional Stability. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients are: 0.81 for Extraversion, 0.73 for Agreeableness, 0.81 for Conscientiousness, 0.90 for Emotional Stability, and 0.75 for Openness.

#### Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT)

To assess ability-based EI, the Mayer Salovey Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (Mayer et al., 2002) in the Italian version (D'Amico and Curci, 2010) was administered. The measure has 141 items and provides a total score and four subscale scores: Perceiving Emotions (PE), Facilitating Thought (FT), Understanding Emotions (UE), and Managing Emotions (ME). The total score was used in the current study. Split half reliabilities for subscales reported by D'Amico and Curci (2010) are: 0.72 for ME, 0.75 for UE, 0.77 for FT, 0.90 for PE (D'Amico and Curci, 2010). The split half reliability for the total score for the current sample was 0.83.

#### Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Inventory (Bar-On EQ-i)

To assess trait EI, the Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Inventory (Bar-On EQ-i, Bar-On, 1997) in the Italian version (Franco and

Tappatà, 2009) was administered. The questionnaire has 133 items with Likert scale response options ranging from 1 = Not at all true of me to 5 = Absolutely true for me. The measure yields a total Emotional Quotient (QE) and scores for five subscales: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Adaptability, Stress Management, and General Mood. Reliabilities were examined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the Italian version of the EQ-I and they are the following: 0.95 for the total score, 0.91 for Intrapersonal, 0.84 for Interpersonal, 0.81 for Adaptability, 0.87 for Stress Management, 0.83 for General Mood (Franco and Tappatà, 2009).

#### Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TeiQue)

The Italian version (Di Fabio, 2013) of the TeiQue (Petrides and Furnham, 2004) was also used assess trait EI. The questionnaire has 153 items with Likert scale response options ranging from 1 = Completely disagree to 7 = Completely agree. The measure provides a total score, and four subscale scores: Well-being, Self-Control, Emotionality, and Sociability. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total score in the Italian version was 0.96 (Di Fabio et al., 2016). Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the four subscales are also adequate and they are the following: 0.93 for Well-being, 0.81 for Self-Control, 0.92 for Emotionality, and 0.80 for Sociability (Di Fabio et al., 2016). The alpha for the total score for the current sample was 0.92.

#### Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)

Positive Affect and Negative Affect were assessed as affective components of hedonic well-being using the Italian version (Terracciano et al., 2003) of the PANAS (Watson et al., 1988). The measure consists of 20 adjectives, 10 referring to PA (i.e., enthusiastic, interested, determined) and 10 referring to NA (i.e., afraid, upset, distressed). A participant specifies the intensity of affect experienced, using a Likert scale ranging from 1 = Very slightly or not at all to 5 = Extremely. The Cronbach's alpha was 0.72 for PA and 0.83 for NA.

#### Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS)

Life satisfaction was also assessed as a component of hedonic well-being, consistent with the argument that life satisfaction entails an affective assessment of feelings about one's life (Lent, 2004), using the Italian version (Di Fabio and Gori, 2015) of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS, Diener et al., 1985). The questionnaire consists of five items, which are rated using a 7-point Likert scale that ranges from 1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient reported by Di Fabio and Gori (2015) was 0.85, and for the current sample, the Cronbach's alpha was 0.90.

#### Meaningful Life Measure (MLM)

Life meaningfulness was measured as a component of eudaimonic well-being, using the Italian translation (Di Fabio, 2014) of the MLM (Morgan and Farsides, 2009). The questionnaire consists of 23 items with a Likert response format ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree.  Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the five dimensions are adequate for the Italian version: 0.87 for Exciting life to, 0.86 for Accomplished life, 0.85 for Principled life, 0.84 for Purposeful life, 0.87 for Valued life (Di Fabio, 2014). The Cronbach's Alpha for the total score used in this study was 0.85.

#### Procedure and Data Analysis

Questionnaires were administered, following Italian laws for privacy, by a trained research assistant to students in their high school classes. The administration of the questionnaires adhered to the requirements of privacy and informed consent in Italian law (Law Decree DL-196/2003) and the ethical standards for research of the Declaration of Helsinki revised in Fortaleza (World Medical Association [WMA], 2013), followed and approved by the Department of Education and Psychology of the University of Florence (Italy). Informed consent was recollected for each participant. Questionnaires were administered in counterbalanced order to control for ordering effects. Ten-minute breaks were provided after the APM and after the BFQ to limit fatigue.

In reference to preliminary data, the following analyses were performed: descriptive statistics, including means and standard deviations.

The Pearson's correlation was then conducted in order to investigate the relation between the variables under investigation.

Eight separate hierarchical regression analyses were completed to examine predictors of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, with PA, NA, and life satisfaction as separate indices of hedonic well-being, and with life meaningfulness as the index of eudaimonic well-being. For all analyses, fluid intelligence was entered at the first step, personality traits at the second step, and ability-based EI at the third step. For step four, trait EI assessed through TeiQue was entered in four of the analyses and trait EI assessed through EQ-i was entered for the other four analyses. In evaluating the accuracy of regression analyses standard errors and confidence intervals were considered. There were no missing data in the data set.

### RESULTS

Means, standard deviations and correlations among APM, BFQ, MSCEIT, TeiQue, Bar-On EQ-I, PANAS PA, PANAS NA, SWLS, MLM are reported in **Table 1**.

In the analyses explaining hedonic well-being as assessed by PA, fluid intelligence was not significant in step one. In step two, personality traits explained a significant 32% of the variance; at the third step, ability-based EI was not significant; at the fourth step, trait EI assessed through the TeiQue explained an additional and significant 2% of the variance (**Table 2**). When trait EI assessed through the EQ-i was entered at the fourth step instead of trait EI assessed through the TeiQue, the fourth step explained an additional and significant 8% of the variance (**Table 4**).

In the analyses explaining hedonic well-being as assessed by NA, fluid intelligence was not significant in step one. At the second step, personality traits explained a significant 16% of the variance; at the third step, ability-based EI was not significant; at step four, trait EI assessed through the TeiQue explained an additional 2% of the variance (**Table 2**). When trait EI assessed

through the EQ-i was entered at the fourth step instead of trait EI assessed through the TeiQue, the EQ-i explained an additional significant 8% of the variance (**Table 4**).

In the analyses assessing hedonic well-being as assessed by life satisfaction, fluid intelligence was not significant at the first step. At the second step, personality traits explained a significant 21% of the variance; at the third step, ability-based EI was not significant; at the fourth step, trait EI assessed through the TeiQue explained an additional and significant 9% of the variance (**Table 2**). When trait EI assessed through EQ-i was entered at the fourth step instead of trait EI assessed through TeiQue, the EQ-i explained a significant 7% of the variance (**Table 4**).

For the analyses assessing life meaningfulness as a component of eudaimonic well-being, fluid intelligence was not significant at the step one. At the second step, personality traits explained a significant 18% of the variance; at the third step, ability-based EI was not significant; at the fourth step, trait EI assessed through the TeiQue explained an additional significant 4% of the variance (**Table 3**). When trait EI assessed through the EQ-i was entered at the fourth step instead of trait EI assessed through the TeiQue, trait EI assessed through the EQ-i explained an additional and significant 10% of variance over step three (**Table 5**).

#### DISCUSSION

The current study was designed to examine the contribution of EI, including ability-based EI and two measures of self-report trait EI, to indices of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being in young people, with concern from a prevention perspective for their well-being as future workers. Analyses were completed to assess the incremental variance, beyond the effects of fluid intelligence and personality traits, of ability-based EI and two different self-report EI models.

The overall findings partially support the two main hypotheses that focused on the contributions of EI, in explaining hedonic and eudaimonic well-being beyond the variance explained by fluid intelligence and personality traits. More specifically, trait EI, as assessed through the TeiQue (Petrides and Furnham, 2000, 2001) and the EQ-i (Bar-On, 1997), explained significant variance across the three indices of hedonic well-being and the MLM of eudaimonic well-being. These findings with Italian high school students thus confirm prior research documenting relationships between self-report measures of EI and hedonic well-being with Italian college students (Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014b), with Spanish university students (Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal, 2005), and with community samples in Australia (Palmer et al., 2002; Gannon and Ranzijn, 2005; Gignac, 2006; Gallagher and Vella-Brodrick, 2008). The current results are also consistent with prior research that has found self-report measures of EI to be associated with eudaimonic well-being (Tennant et al., 2007; Raina and Bakhshi, 2013), indicating that self-ratings of one's EI are related to the self-ratings of one's life as meaningful and pleasant.

Our hypothesis that ability-based EI would be associated with both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being was not supported which conflicts with some prior findings. The discrepancy

fpsyg-07-01182 August 12, 2016 Time: 15:24 # 6

#### TABLE 3 | Hierarchical regression.

fpsyg-07-01182 August 12, 2016 Time: 15:24 # 8

N = 157. ∗∗p < 0.01. ∗∗∗p < 0.001. The contributions of fluid intelligence (First step), personality traits (Second step), ability-based emotional intelligence Total (Third step) and trait emotional intelligence assessed through TeiQue Total (Fourth step) to life meaningfulness (MLM). APM, Advanced Progressive Matrices; BFQ, Big Five Questionnaire; E, Extraversion; A, Agreableness; C, Consientiousness; S, Emotional Stability; M, Openness; MSCEIT, Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test; TeiQue, Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire; MLM, Meaningful Life Measure.

between the current and other findings might be understood by variations in measures used. Burrus et al. (2012), for example, used a new and unique measure of EI with US students. In their study of Spanish university students, Extremera et al. (2011) employed the well-established MSCEIT, as used in the current study for measuring ability-based EI, but employed a measure of well-being that was different than the current study. Our findings are consistent with previous research among Italian high school students, which found no relation between abilitybased EI as assessed by the MSCEIT and hedonic well-being (Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014b). Further research will be needed to discern whether the difference in our findings and the Extremera et al. (2011) findings are related to national, developmental, or measurement differences.

Our findings do confirm prevailing evidence that self-report measures of EI are more robust than ability-based EI in explaining well-being and other psychological constructs assessed through self-report (Zeidner et al., 2012). While this may partly be understood as an issue of method variance, we have also found that when EI is conceptualized affectively, rather than cognitively, EI is more strongly related to other self-perceptions, including well-being (Di Fabio and Kenny, 2012b; Di Fabio et al., 2014). Our finding that trait EI explains well-being beyond the variance explained by personality, however, suggests that trait EI cannot be understood simply as a broad based personality factor. While trait EI, as assessed by both the EQ-i and TeiQue, is clearly associated with trait dimensions of personality, such as extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, and openness assessed in this study, our findings and a preponderance of prior evidence (Di Fabio et al., 2014) suggest that trait EI goes beyond those factors in explaining a variety of important psychological outcomes. The current study expands that body of literature by affirming the contributions of two measures of trait EI beyond personality factors in explaining both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and suggests that the two trait measures of EI contribute somewhat differently to well-being.

While the current study confirms prior research on the contributions of trait EI to other self-report psychological constructs, our findings also affirm complexities and variations based upon the self-report measures employed. The current results are most similar to research that has employed similar measures of trait EI (e.g., Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014b), and illustrate that the extent to which trait EI explains hedonic wellbeing can vary depending on the conceptualization and choice of measure. In this study, the variance accounted for by the EQ-i was more robust than for the TeiQue in explaining dimensions of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. In prior research (Di Fabio and Saklofske, 2014a,b), the TeiQue was more robust, explaining twice as much variance as the EQ-i in relation to three career dimensions, resilience, and positive core self-evaluation. While the explanation for these differences in not clear, our findings highlight how results can vary across studies related to measures and selected outcome variables and that different measures and models of trait EI, while overlapping, are not identical. Although further research is necessary to replicate and expand the current findings, it is possible that the EI components incorporated in the EQ-i, such as adaptability, stress management, and general mood, are more aligned with wellbeing, and whereas self-control and sociability as assessed by the TeiQue are more aligned with career decision-making. Further research might examine these nuances.

Given the interest among proponents of positive psychology in the promotion of meaningfulness and optimal functioning in the work environment (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008; Heuvel et al., 2010), the promise of EI as a contributor to eudaimonic well-being is noteworthy. Heuvel et al. (2010) emphasize the

TABLE 4 | Hierarchical regression.

Schedule (Positive Affect); PANAS NA, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Negative Affect); SWLS, Satisfaction

 With Life Scale.

N = 157. ∗∗∗p < 0.001. The contributions of fluid intelligence (First step), personality traits (Second step), ability-based emotional intelligence Total (Third step) and trait

emotional intelligence assessed through EQ-i Total (Fourth step) to life meaningfulness (MLM). APM, Advanced Progressive Matrices; BFQ, Big Five Questionnaire; E, Extraversion; A, Agreableness; C, Consientiousness; S, Emotional Stability; M, Openness; MSCEIT, Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test; Bar-On EQ-I, Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory; MLM, Meaningful Life Measure.

importance of identifying personal competencies/resources, as well as organizational factors, that enable employees to be happy, engaged and productive in the new and ever-changing workplace. Our findings suggest that the promotion of trait EI may function not only as a method for enhancing hedonic well-being, including PA, life satisfaction, and reduced NA, but may also serve to enhance a sense of a meaningful life. Given the threats posed to well-being by social and economic change and work uncertainty, factors associated with life meaning are worthy of continued research attention and consideration for intervention for fostering healthy individuals and organizations (Zeidner et al., 2012; Friedman and Kern, 2014; Snyder et al., 2014).

Despite the contribution of the current study in documenting the contributions of trait EI, based on both the Bar-On (1997) and the Petrides and Furnham (2000, 2001) models, for both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, the limitations of the study should be considered. Our results are correlational and causality cannot be concluded. Further research is needed to determine how trait EI can best be enhanced and whether those gains can lead to gains in both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Longitudinal research is also needed to systematically test the causal mechanisms that promote well-being as a function of EI intervention. We have noted differences in prior research based upon sample characteristics, such that the findings of this study based on high school students in the Tuscany Region of Italy cannot be generalized to other samples. The current findings deserve replication with participants more representative of all Italians across geography and age and could be also replicated in other national contexts. We studied only one aspect of eudaimonic well-being, such that the relationship of EI to other components of eudaimonic well-being, such as existential fulfillment (Längle et al., 2003), sense of coherence (Antonovsky, 1987b), and authenticity (Wood et al., 2008), should also be studied. This study controlled for the association of EI and personality measures among the predictor variables, but other potential confounds between EI and the criterion measures (e.g., well-being and mood as a component of trait EI) need to be considered and controlled. The use of objective measures of well-being will help in this regard. While well-being is a subjective construct and thus reasonably assessed through selfreport, further research should include more objective indices of well-being, including physical health, educational or work productivity, and creative achievements.

Despite the limitations of the current study, the findings add to and extend the literature highlighting the positive associations and potential benefit of diverse models of trait EI, suggesting promise of the construct for continued research in positive psychology (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) and positive organizational behavior (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008). While continued research is needed to support the evidence base for EI intervention (Zeidner et al., 2012), trait EI could be a potential focus for enhancing the subjective and psychological well-being of young and future workers and for maintaining and fostering health and performance in a challenging work environment (Di Fabio, 2015; Di Fabio and Palazzeschi, 2015; Arnoux-Nicolas et al., 2016).

## AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

AD and MK conceptualized the study, chose the theoretical framework and chose the measures. AD collected the data and with MK wrote the methods and results. Then the authors wrote the paper together and read and revised the manuscript several times.

#### Di Fabio and Kenny Emotional Intelligence and Well-Being

#### REFERENCES

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Italian adolescents and young adults. J. Psychoeduc. Assess. 34, 501–506. doi: 10.1177/0734282915621223

evidence of validity. J. Positive Psychol. 5, 41–61. doi: 10.1080/174397609034 35208

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2016 Di Fabio and Kenny. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

# Expatriates' Multiple Fears, from Terrorism to Working Conditions: Development of a Model

Gabriele Giorgi1 \*, Francesco Montani2 , Javier Fiz-Perez1 , Giulio Arcangeli3 and Nicola Mucci3 \*

1 Department of Psychology, European University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 2 Montpellier Business School, Montpellier, France, 3 Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

Companies' internationalization appears to be fundamental in the current globalized and competitive environment and seems important not only for organizational success, but also for societal development and sustainability. On one hand, global business increases the demand for managers for international assignment. On the other hand, emergent fears, such as terrorism, seem to be developing around the world, enhancing the risk of expatriates' potential health problems. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between the emergent concept of fear of expatriation with further workplace fears (economic crisis and dangerous working conditions) and with mental health problems. The study uses a quantitative design. Self-reported data were collected from 265 Italian expatriate workers assigned to both Italian and worldwide projects. Structural equation model analyses showed that fear of expatriation mediates the relationship of mental health with fear of economic crisis and with perceived dangerous working conditions. As expected, in addition to fear, worries of expatriation are also related to further fears. Although, the study is based on self-reports and the cross-sectional study design limits the possibility of making causal inferences, the new constructs introduced add to previous research.

#### Edited by:

Sara Bonesso, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy

#### Reviewed by:

Chiara Ghislieri, University of Turin, Italy Riccardo Sartori, University of Verona, Italy

#### \*Correspondence:

Nicola Mucci<EMAIL_ADDRESS>Gabriele Giorgi<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 12 May 2016 Accepted: 27 September 2016 Published: 13 October 2016

#### Citation:

Giorgi G, Montani F, Fiz-Perez J, Arcangeli G and Mucci N (2016) Expatriates' Multiple Fears, from Terrorism to Working Conditions: Development of a Model. Front. Psychol. 7:1571. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01571 Keywords: expatriate workers, work-related stress, economic stress, fear in the workplace, stress, health promotion, workplace, occupational medicine

## INTRODUCTION

The globalization of markets that has taken place in recent decades was a great opportunity for companies to become known and to operate in a wider context (Biemann and Andresen, 2010; Andresen et al., 2014). This phenomenon led to the possibility that many of the managers who served in a national territory could be transferred to foreign countries, characterized by different cultures and work processes (Sims and Schraeder, 2005).

However, working globally involves changes in occupational dynamics and in the levels of job complexity, and it also requires great skills of adaptation and adjustment (Black et al., 1991; Black and Gregersen, 1999). Most of the researches conducted on adjustment in a foreign country concerned so-called expatriate workers or expatriates (Sims and Schraeder, 2005), who are those workers sent from their own organization to follow projects or to lead company sectors abroad. An expatriate can be properly defined as one who works in a foreign country for a period of at least 6 months (Birdseye and Hill, 1995; Jones, 2000; Chan et al., 2015). However, shorter forms of expatriation also exist, as shown in the present study.

Supporting expatriates in performing their tasks in a new environment is nowadays essential for companies. Accordingly, researchers have studied expatriated performance and adaptation and evaluated the influence of specific practices of human resource management on their behavior. Relevant dimensions have been identified (Mol et al., 2005; Cheng and Lin, 2009), such as training, to support expatriates in dealing with different cultural values, unexpected behavioral rules, and language barriers. On the other hand, the dark sides of the expatriation experience have also been studied, such as the possible failure of the assignment, leaving without having finished the task, or psychologically withdrawing and performing worse than they usually would. Failure may be particularly expensive in human and monetary terms (Baruch, 2004).

However, adaptation/adjustment may be defined as the comfort degree (or the stress absence) associated with the role of the expatriate (Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al., 2005); expatriates who fail to face the demands of a job and do not properly adapt to a new environment may experience high levels of stress (Perone et al., 2008).

The scenario of stressors among expatriates seems complex, from the micro-environment and the macro-environment to the mega-environment (Lei et al., 2004). In particular, according to Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al. (2005), work assignments to be carried out abroad lead to greater stress when the following situations occur:

Black et al. (1991) observed that expatriates tend to suffer a greater number of relapses after periods of stress. Jones (2000), in a review, identified some risk factors that could not only adversely affect health, but could also lead to developing fear and anxiety of expatriation: risk of being involved in accidents; quality of living conditions; working conditions; risk of disease contagion; fear of being involved in violence; kidnappings and terrorist acts.

These risk factors are analyzed below:

poor quality water could cause the development of oral infections or gastrointestinal problems. The same effects can also be produced by eating non-controlled food. As far as lifestyle is concerned, a lack of leisure activities and difficulties in communication (for example, poor Internet and telephone functionality) may be a concern.

Given that anxiety could significantly decrease people's psychological well-being and mental health, there is increasing empirical research on the effect of fear in the workplace (Mueller and Tschan, 2011). Fear, especially if chronic, may damage, in particular, the immune, the nervous and the cardiovascular systems (Shiba et al., 2016).

The human body may be weakened by states of fear, especially if chronic. In particular, the immune, the nervous and the cardiovascular systems are damaged, but equally, the gastrointestinal tract and the reproductive system are not spared. In particular, the fear may compromise the decoding of emotions and decision making processes, making the subject susceptible to intense emotions and impulsive reactions and, consequently, to making inappropriate actions. Fatigue, depression, accelerated aging, and even premature death may be the further consequences of long-term fear (Shiba et al., 2016).

Furthermore, the literature shows that expatriate workers have an increased risk of consuming psychotropic and narcotic substances as well as of abusing of psychotropic drugs (Aubry et al., 2012; Bianchi et al., 2014; Kaeding and Borchers, 2016).

Our study enhanced the literature by being the first to look at a set of important fears among expatriates. In particular, we aimed to find out how the emergence of fear of expatriation, induced by mental health problems, might impact on the expatriate's further fears in the workplace, using data from a survey of 265 Italian expatriate workers.

Building on the stress perspective (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984; Lazarus, 1991), we have, in particular, examined the following issues: how mental health is associated with fear; the relationship between fear of expatriation and fear of economic crisis as well as perceived dangerous working conditions; the mediation of fear with mental health and the development of further fears.

We intend to conceptualize fear of expatriation due to the risk factors discussed above. Indeed, this study contributes to the literature on expatriates' health by testing an emergent model for the prevention of mental health issues. This paper proceeds as follows. First of all, we present the conceptual model and the derived hypotheses. Then, we explain the methodology used. Finally, the results and discussion (including limitations and research perspectives) are considered.

#### Model Development

fpsyg-07-01571 October 8, 2016 Time: 16:28 # 3

Expatriate workers often experience difficulties in their adjustment to new work and living situations and, consequently, they are at risk of developing mental health problems (Costa et al., 2015; Zhu et al., 2016). This situation may enhance the fear of violence and of poor living and working conditions during the experience abroad (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). This fundamental concept is the basis of our conceptual model (**Figure 1**).

With this in mind, workers can be severely traumatized not only by actual violence but also from any potential violence (Bader et al., 2015). For instance, terrorism is quickly spreading (Leistedt, 2013).

Data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) (2015) regarding global terrorism shows that in 2014 such attacks relate to 95 countries. In 2014, the worldwide attacks numbered 13,463 (35% more than in 2013), which led to more than 32,700 deaths and more than 34,700 injured people. The geographical distribution is highly concentrated. Sixty percent of these attacks took place in five countries (Iraq, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria), while 78% of the fatalities caused by terrorism took place in five countries (Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria). The strategy of the most developed terroristic groups – e.g., Islamic State of Iraqi and the Levant (ISIL) and Boko Haram – not only provides for violent attacks on military or civilian points, but also for kidnapping, torture, and rape. These practices increase the fear of the people – particularly those who are located in the directly involved geographical areas – and of international public opinion. Workers with mental health problems might be particularly vulnerable to developing fears of these practices. The use of social media by ISIL has allowed for the extreme visibility of this organization with a widespread dissemination of its terroristic contents (United States Department of State Publication Bureau of Counterterrorism, 2015) and might increase anxiety in workers with pre-existent mental health problems or stress (Solberg et al., 2015; Glad et al., 2016; Paz García-Vera et al., 2016).

The context of living and working conditions in the host country is another factor associated with expatriates' psychological well-being. Frazee (1998) pointed out that healthcare is one of the main issues for expatriates: more than one-third of international assignments are dissatisfied with the health assistance they receive.

The standard of healthcare around the world varies in a very important way. However, discrepancies may exist even among different regions of the same country. In addition, expatriates might be afraid of not receiving an adequate and timely treatment for all types of injury and, moreover, the sanitary conditions might not be good, increasing the risks of contagions or illness. These concerns affect virtually all expatriate workers, but may result in real states of fear in subjects with mental health problems and may generate the acute and chronic worsening of any already existing clinical situation (Pierre et al., 2013; Cleary et al., 2014; Wilde and Gollogly, 2014).

Hypothesis 1: Mental health problems generate fear of expatriation.

The second part of the model is focused on the development of further fears in the workplace.

Despite the numerous relevant stressors in global assignments, in our conceptual framework we mainly focused on two areas of fear of expatriation. The first is related to violence, intended both as physical and psychological. The second is related to the perceived impeded living and working conditions (including workplace safety, illness contagion, and lifestyle).

As already explained, the presence of a pre-existing state of fear or anxiety may enhance the likelihood of negative stimulus to elicit fear. Indeed, emotions are specific to the context and imply a person-environment relationship.

The fear of expatriation might negatively influence the perception of the safety environment and the anxiety caused by economic crisis. Moreover, expatriates are often exported to societies with weaker and less expensive H&S policies (Heymann, 2003), raising a perception of unsafe working conditions (Curcuruto et al., 2015).

In our model we expect a mediation process of fear of expatriation among mental health and further fears in the workplace. First, mental health problems generate anxiety and fear. Fear can impair the formation of long-term memories and can cause damage to certain parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus (Besnard and Sahay, 2016). This can make it even more difficult to regulate fear and can leave a person anxious most of the time.

Hypothesis 2: Mental health problems, through the mediation of fear of expatriation, influence further fears in the workplace: dangerous working conditions and economic stress.

### MATERIALS AND METHODS

#### Procedure and Participants

This study was conducted in a large international company dealing with technology and services in heavy industry. The expatriate managers employed in this company were all invited to participate in the study. Expatriation services in this company are usually in short form. Expatriates spend cyclically 28 days outside the workplace (often in platforms or yards located worldwide). The final respondents were 265 employees (response rate = 70%) working in multiple locations (Italy, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, Australia, etc.).

The survey was administered through the corporate Intranet, ensuring anonymity, and privacy rules. A video, in which an industrial psychologist and an occupational physician explained the procedure of questionnaire compilation and the survey aims, was also made available through the corporate Intranet.

The sample consisted of only men in managerial positions. Workers were, on average, relatively young: 18.9% 30 years old or younger, 48.3% from 31 to 40 years old, 23.4% from 41 to 50 years old, and only 9.4% were over 50. Regarding job tenure, 23.8% of the participants had worked from 0 to 5 years, 30.9% of participants had worked from 6 to 10 years, 30.9% of the participants had worked from 11 to 20 years, and 14.3% of participants more than 20 years. Finally, the majority of employees had long working hours (17.4% 50 h per week, 26.6% 50–60 h per week, 56% more than 60 h per week).

### Measures

After collecting some socio-demographic variables, participants completed the scales on fear of expatriation, economic stress, dangerous working conditions and psychological distress. The scales used in this study are described below.

#### Fear of Expatriation

Fear of expatriation was measured by a new questionnaire, developed by our research group and called Fear of expatriation scale (Supplementary Material).

The measure is composed of two dimensions:

The scores were collected, for each dimension, through a fivepoint Likert scale (from 1: "strongly disagree" to 5: "strongly agree"). As this instrument was developed for this research, we evaluated the construct validity and reliability of the fear of expatriation scale in order to investigate its psychometric properties. We assessed the construct validity (convergent validity and discriminant validity) of the scale by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in order to compare the hypothesized factorial model involving two distinct factors – fear of violence/terrorism and fear of the working and living conditions – with a one-factor model. Results showed that the hypothesized two-factor model yielded a good fit to the data (χ 2 [4] = 9.35, ns; CFI = 0.99; RMSEA = 0.07; SRMR = 0.02) and outperformed that of the one-factor solution (χ 2 [4] = 20.25, p < 0.01; CFI = 0.97; RMSEA = 0.11; SRMR = 0.02; 1χ 2 (1) = 10.90, p < 0.01), thus supporting the distinctiveness between the two sub-dimensions of fear of violence/terrorism and fear of the working and living conditions. Furthermore, standardized regression coefficients of items on each factor were all higher than 0.50 (Hair et al., 2007), thus supporting the convergent validity of the factors (range = 0.62–0.85). However, CFA results also indicated that the correlation among latent constructs was higher than 0.89. This therefore suggests that the two dimensions might be best combined on an overall scale of fear of expatriation (Kline, 2011). Accordingly, in our subsequent analyses to test Hypotheses 1 and 2, we considered only the overarching fear of expatriation scale, and not its separate dimensions. Finally, internal consistency, which was assessed by the calculation of reliability coefficients (Cronbach's alpha), was 0.86, 0.76, and 0.80 for the overall fear of expatriation scale, the fear of violence/terrorism dimension and the fear of the working and living conditions dimension, respectively. Thus, this indicated good internal consistency of the measure (Nunnally, 1978).

#### Economic Stress

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Economic stress was measured with the scale about subjective economic stress included in the recent Stress Questionnaire (SQ), developed and validated in Italy (Giorgi et al., 2013; Mucci et al., 2015). The economic stress measure is composed of two dimensions:

Each dimension includes five items in a five-point Likert scale (from 1: "strongly disagree" to 5: "strongly agree").

#### Dangerous Working Conditions

We used a scale, included in the above mentioned Stress Questionnaire (Giorgi et al., 2013; Mucci et al., 2015), that covers two factors in a five-point Likert scale (from 1: "strongly disagree" to 5: "strongly agree"):

#### Psychological Distress

This was measured with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12; Goldberg and Hillier, 1979; Fraccaroli et al., 1991). The scale asks whether the respondent has experienced a particular symptom or behavior related to general psychological health recently. Each item is rated on a four-point Likert-type scale (0- 1-2-3). A higher score indicates a greater degree of psychological distress. In this study we particularly focus on the sub-dimension "anxiety and insomnia" (seven items, e.g., "Considering the last few weeks, have you recently [. . .] felt constantly under strain?").

### RESULTS

Following Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) two-step structural equation modeling (SEM) procedure, we tested a measurement model (CFA) by determining whether each measure's estimated loading on its expected underlying factor was significant. This allowed us to establish discriminant validity among the study constructs. Then, a structural model was performed to estimate the fit to the data of the hypothesized model in which fear of expatriation mediates the relationship of mental health problems with economic stress and perceived dangerous working conditions (Hypotheses 1 and 2). A CFA was, therefore, performed with Mplus, version 7.11 (Muthén and Muthén, 1998–2010), with the four variables measuring mental health problems, fear of expatriation, economic stress, and perceived dangerous working conditions. Moreover, the variables' dimensions were used as indicators of their corresponding latent constructs in the measurement and structural models. These dimensions were formed by averaging the items of each sub-scale for the four latent variables. We therefore obtained three indicators for mental health problems, two indicators for fear of expatriation, two indicators for economic stress, and two indicators for perceived dangerous working conditions.

To evaluate the model fit, we considered chi-square (the higher the values are, the worse is the model's correspondence to the data), and used both absolute and incremental fit indexes. Absolute fit indexes evaluate how well an a priori model reproduces the sample data. In our study, we focused on three absolute fit indexes: the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), for which values of less than 0.08 are favorable, and the root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA), which should not exceed 0.10 (Browne and Cudeck, 1993; Kline, 2011). Incremental fit indexes measure the proportionate amount of improvement in fit when a target model is compared with a more restricted, nested baseline model (Schreiber et al., 2006). We considered the comparative fit index (CFI), for which values of 0.90 or greater are recommended (Schreiber et al., 2006).

As expected, the hypothesized four-factor model yielded a good fit to the data: χ 2 (20) = 61.17, CFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.09, SRMR = 0.05 (**Table 1**). Additionally, as shown in **Table 2**, this model had a significantly better fit than alternative, more parsimonious models (p < 0.01), supporting the distinctiveness of the study variables. **Table 2** displays the descriptive statistics, correlations, and reliability coefficients of the variables.

In order to examine the hypothesized model, we performed SEM with Mplus. SEM offers the following advantages:

Thus, we tested our proposed structural model and compared it with alternative models. Additionally, when conducting SEM analyses, we controlled for the effects of age and organizational tenure on both the mediator and the dependent variables. Fit indexes for each tested model are presented in **Table 3**.

The hypothesized model (Model 1), which is a full mediation model, displayed a good fit to the data: χ 2 (35) = 70.37, CFI = 0.96; RMSEA = 0.06; SRMR = 0.06. Specific inspection of direct relationships further revealed that mental health problems were positively associated with fear of expatriation (β = 0.64, p < 0.01), thus supporting Hypothesis 1. Additionally, fear of

#### TABLE 1 | Fit indices for confirmatory factor analyses.

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N = 265. CFI, comparative fit index; RMSEA, root-mean-square error of approximation; SRMR, standardized root mean square residual; 1χ 2 , chi-square difference tests between the best-fitting model (Hypothesize four-factor model) and alternative models. MHP, mental health problems; FEX, fear of expatriation; FEC, fear of economic crisis; DWC, perceived dangerous working conditions. ∗p < 0.01.

N = 265. Internal Consistency coefficients (Cronbach's alphas) appear along the diagonal in parentheses. ∗∗p < 0.01.

expatriation, in turn, was positively related to economic stress (β = 0.40, p < 0.01) and perceived dangerous working conditions (β = 0.66, p < 0.01), thus providing preliminary support for Hypothesis 2. Completely standardized path coefficients for Model 1 are depicted in **Figure 2**.

To assess whether the hypothesized model was the best representation of the data, we then compared its fit to that of different alternative models. First, we assessed a partial mediation model, which included two additional direct paths from mental health problems to economic stress and perceived dangerous working conditions. This model yielded an adequate fit to the data (χ 2 [33] = 67.21, CFI = 0.96; RMSEA = 0.06; SRMR = 0.05), but it was not significantly better than Model 1, as revealed by the chi-square difference (1χ 2 [1] = 3.16, ns). Moreover, the additional direct relationships of workplace mental problems with economic stress (β = 0.13, ns) and dangerous working conditions were not significant (β = 0.03, ns).

Next, we compared the hypothesized model with a nonmediation model (Model 3), which only included direct paths from mental health problems and fear of expatriation to economic stress and perceived dangerous working conditions. Results revealed that the non-mediation model was a slightly worse fit to the data than the hypothesized fully-mediated model (χ 2 [35] = 81.61, CFI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.07; SRMR = 0.06). However, because this model had the same degrees of freedom as the hypothesized model, the statistical significance of the chisquare difference could not be calculated. Accordingly, we used the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), instead of the chisquare, to compare the two models. The hypothesized model is considered to be superior to the non-mediation model if the former has an AIC value lower than the latter by four or more units (Burnham and Anderson, 2002). Results revealed that Model 3 had an AIC of 7301.58 compared to an AIC of 7290.35 for Model 1, suggesting that the hypothesized full mediation model represents a superior fit to the data than the non-mediation model (1AIC = 11.23).

Furthermore, because mental health problems, fear of expatriation, economic stress, and perceived dangerous working conditions were all measured at the same time, reverse relationships could also be expected between the four variables. In order to rule out this possibility, we therefore compared the hypothesized model against a set of alternative models that specified all the possible reverse indirect relationships among the study variables, namely: the indirect relationship of economic stress and perceived dangerous working conditions with fear of expatriation via mental health problems (Model 4); the indirect relationship of economic stress and perceived dangerous working conditions with mental health problems

#### TABLE 3 | Fit indices for nested structural models.

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N = 265. CFI, comparative fit index; RMSEA, root-mean-square error of approximation; SRMR, standardized root mean square residual; Akaike Information Criterion 1χ 2 = chi-square difference tests between the best-fitting model (Model 1) and alternative models; 1 AIC, Akaike difference test between the best-fitting model (Model 1) and alternative models. FEX, fear of expatriation; FEC, fear of economic crisis; DWC, dangerous working conditions; MHP, mental health problems. ∗p < 0.05.