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The moderating effect of the need for closure in the relationship between job insecurity, job performance and mental health was investigated. The need for closure refers to a motivated need for certainty, intolerance of ambiguity and preference for predictability. It was argued that the need for closure may function as a psychological moderator in dealing with job insecurity. Participants comprised 287 workers, who were administered a self-reported questionnaire. Results confirmed the negative relationship between job insecurity, performance and mental health. The need for closure was positively related to job performance and unrelated to mental health. More interestingly, the need for closure exhibited multifaceted patterns of interactions with the different components of job insecurity. Higher need for closure revealed a buffering effect in conditions of higher quantitative job insecurity. In this case, individuals high (vs low) in the need for closure reported better job performance and mental health. Conversely, when qualitative job insecurity was higher, individuals high (vs low) in the need for closure reported an impaired job performance and mental health.

In the context of rapidly changing environmental conditions, innumerable organizations engage in restructuring activities. As a consequence, many employees feel insecure about the future existence of their jobs. While research suggests that such job insecurity has negative consequences for employee attitudes and well-being, less is known about if and how these negative effects can be alleviated by social support from the union. This present study tests for a potential moderator effect of perceived union support in the insecurity-mental health complaints relation using survey data collected among unionized workers in Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. The results indicate that job insecurity is associated with mental health complaints in all participating countries and that union support relates negatively to mental health complaints in one of the participating countries. However, no interaction effect was obtained, thus indicating that union support does not reduce the effects of job insecurity on mental health complaints.

The increased flexibility on the labour market has given rise to feelings of job insecurity in many individuals. The stress literature suggests that the fear of losing one's job could be as detrimental as losing the job itself, and numerous studies indicate that job insecurity may indeed have important consequences for both the individual and the organization. However, the effects of job insecurity are typically greater with regard to short-term rather than long-term consequences. Therefore, the aim of this article is to investigate if short-term consequences (job satisfaction and organizational commitment) mediate the impact of job insecurity on long-term outcomes (mental health complaints and turnover intention). Survey data from four European countries show that the effect of job insecurity on turnover intention is mediated by organizational commitment and job satisfaction. In contrast, it appears that work attitudes partially mediate the effect of job insecurity on mental health complaints.

The research has investigated the role of sexist language, gender stereotypes, and roles prescriptions in the political sphere. It was framed in the tradition of social representations. We have studied the impact of specific linguistic categories – relative both to masculine or feminine declination for a Minister's political office, and to the use of references to stereotypical or counterstereotypical behaviours - on 1) the evaluation of political effectiveness, 2) the associations to the stimulus-words Man/Woman Minister, and 3) the ambivalent sexism towards women (ASI of Glick and Fisk, 1996) and men (AMI, Glick and Fisk, 1999). Participants were 830 genderbalanced Italian citizens (55.3% women) recruited in 2016 on a voluntary basis. The ANOVA model showed that the man minister was judged to be more effective in counter-stereotypical than in stereotypical behaviour; the woman minister was rated as more effective in stereotypical behaviour compared to the man in the same condition The associations presented a more stereotypical orientation, with a negative valence for the man minister than the woman minister.

In the last decades, research on the relationship between contract type, job insecurity and outcomes has been constantly increasing. Previous evidence indicated that job insecurity moderates the impact of contract type (permanent vs temporary) on job satisfaction. The present study aims to investigate these relationships considering two facets (intrinsic and extrinsic) of job satisfaction and psychological contract violation as mediator, in the mediated moderation model. Participants were 638 employees of different Italian organizations, with open-ended or fixed-term contract. As hypothesized, results indicated that job insecurity moderates the relationship between contract type and intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction differently for contract type. The job insecurity effects were more negative for permanent workers regarding intrinsic job satisfaction and more negative for temporary workers regarding extrinsic job satisfaction. The mediated moderation analyses supported the study's main hypothesis, pointing out that psychological contract violation negatively mediated the interaction effects.

An experiment was conducted to investigate whether the need for cognitive closure affects the degree of creativity in small groups. Participants in groups of four performed a task in which they had to create advertising slogans for a given product. Some of the groups were composed of individuals with high dispositional need for closure, whereas other groups were composed of individuals with low need for closure. Results showed that ideational fluency, degree of elaboration, and creativity, as rated by independent judges, was lower in high (vs. low) need-for-closure groups. These results suggest that the tendencies to restrict the number of hypotheses generated and to produce conventional ideas, consequences of the need for closure, lower the degree of creativity in interacting groups.

This article uses psychological contract theory to explore the consequences of job insecurity among union members. We hypothesize that the perception of job insecurity will correlate with a lower level of perceived union support and a higher intention to resign union membership. We also test whether the relationship between job insecurity and membership turnover is mediated by (a lack of) perceived union support. In Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, an association is found between job insecurity and a reduction in perceived union support, and between job insecurity and the intention to resign membership; this association is also fully mediated by (a lack of) perceived union support. None of these hypotheses are corroborated in Sweden. We discuss implications of these findings for future research and for unions in Europe.