EXAMINING ALEXITHYMIA IN AFFECTIVE EVENTS THEORY Nicholas Howald A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2019 Committee: Margaret Brooks, Advisor George Bullerjahn Graduate Faculty Representative William O'Brien Michael Zickar ii ABSTRACT Margaret Brooks, Advisor Personality constructs are often used in organizational psychology as predictors of job performance, job satisfaction, and other important outcomes. Alexithymia is a personality trait which has received very little attention in the organizational literature, but may also be a useful predictor of these outcomes. Alexithymia describes the relative inability to think about, identify, and express emotions. This trait is integrated with Affective Events Theory in order to explore whether it affects emotions and other outcomes. Through two studies from distinct samples, the role of alexithymia as a moderating variable is tested. In addition, the incremental predictive validity of alexithymia above and beyond the five-factor model of personality is examined. The results indicate that alexithymia may act as a moderator of some emotional experiences at work, but primarily seems to affect outcomes for college students. Alexithymia significantly incrementally predicts variance in several outcomes for students and employees and may be especially useful for predicting contextual performance. Implications for future research and practice involving alexithymia are discussed. iii This dissertation is dedicated to my wife, Kelsey. Thank you for your constant love and support. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Maggie, for her guidance and advice throughout my graduate career. Additionally, I’d like to thank my committee members for the time and the feedback they’ve given me on this dissertation. This work would not have been possible without the support from my family. Thank you for helping and encouraging me throughout my undergraduate and graduate experiences. To Mom, especially, thank you for always motivating and believing in me. I want to acknowledge the close friends I’ve made at Bowling Green who have provided invaluable advice, assistance, and companionship over the past four years – thank you to Brendan Lortie, Shelby Wise, Sami Nesnidol, and Ivica Pavisic for making graduate school a more enjoyable and edifying experience. Finally, thank you to all Bowling Green graduate students, alumni, and faculty who have helped me throughout graduate school and have directly or indirectly made this dissertation possible. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 Alexithymia ........................................................................................................... 2 Affective Events Theory ........................................................................................ 6 The Present Studies ................................................................................................ 13 METHOD ......................................................................................................................... 15 Study One .............................................................................................................. 15 Participants and Procedure .......................................................................... 15 Measures .................................................................................................... 15 Alexithymia .................................................................................... 15 Five-factor model traits ................................................................... 16 Events ............................................................................................. 16 Emotions......................................................................................... 17 College satisfaction ......................................................................... 17 College engagement ........................................................................ 17 Student counterproductive work behaviors ...................................... 17 Student organizational citizenship behaviors ................................... 18 Academic performance ................................................................... 18 Study Two ............................................................................................................. 18 Participants and Procedure .......................................................................... 18 Measures .................................................................................................... 19 Five-factor model traits ................................................................... 19 vi Work events .................................................................................... 20 Emotions......................................................................................... 20 Alexithymia .................................................................................... 20 Job satisfaction ............................................................................... 20 Engagement .................................................................................... 21 Counterproductive work behaviors .................................................. 21 Organizational citizenship behaviors ............................................... 21 RESULTS ......................................................................................................................... 22 DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................... 30 Mediation and Moderation ..................................................................................... 30 Prediction of Workplace Outcomes ........................................................................ 34 Alexithymia and Emotions ..................................................................................... 36 Limitations ............................................................................................................. 37 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 39 REFERENCES . ................................................................................................................ 41 APPENDIX A. TABLES ................................................................................................... 52 APPENDIX B. FIGURES ................................................................................................. 58 APPENDIX C. STUDY ONE INSTRUMENT .................................................................. 63 APPENDIX D. STUDY TWO INSTRUMENT ................................................................. 98 APPENDIX E. IRB LETTER ............................................................................................ 122 EXAMINING ALEXITHYMIA IN AFFECTIVE EVENTS THEORY 1 INTRODUCTION Organizational psychologists have widely accepted the utility of personality traits for predicting employee performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991), job satisfaction (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002), and several other workplace outcomes (e.g., Alarcon, Eschleman, & Bowling, 2009; Christian, Bradley, Wallace, & Burke, 2009; Bono & Judge, 2004). The measurement of a person’s “relatively stable and enduring pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions” (Barrick & Mount, 2000, p. 20) can uniquely contribute to prediction by tapping into motivational tendencies to act a certain way (e.g., committing energy and effort toward completing a work task) rather than an employee’s capacity to act (e.g., ability to complete a work task). Throughout several meta-analyses and primary studies, measures of personality traits have shown incremental validity beyond that of ability measures in predicting important outcomes, demonstrating their utility to both researchers and practitioners (Barrick & Mount, 2005). By far the most commonly used structure of personality traits is the five-factor model (Goldberg, 1990). This model posits that the personality traits of conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability, extraversion, and openness to experience cover a broad domain of human personality and explain much of human behavior. Several researchers have expanded beyond the five factors to include more specific personality facets that are arranged hierarchically below the broad factors (Ashton, 1998), as well as personality aspects that are conceptually located above the facets, but below the broad factors (DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007). Scholars have also worked toward identifying personality traits which exist independently from the space of the five factors (Ashton, Lee, & de Vries, 2014). In fact, the development of the five-factor model has been criticized for intentionally neglecting traits that could have been included in a more complete model of personality (Block, 1995). There is EXAMINING ALEXITHYMIA IN AFFECTIVE EVENTS THEORY 2 substantial evidence that several such traits outside of the five-factor model exist and can usefully predict behavior, including religiosity (Paunonen & Jackson, 2000), honesty-humility (Ashton & Lee, 2005), proactive personality (Bateman & Crant, 1993), and the dark triad of personality (Spain, Harms, & LeBreton, 2014). Another personality