Sometimes It's Personal: Differential Outcomes of Person vs. Job at Risk Threats to Job Security.

The current paper expands an under-addressed concept within the job insecurity literature, namely, whether threats to job security are specific to the jobholder (person-at-risk threats) or specific to the job (job-at-risk threats). Using a between-person experimental vignette design, 136 employed participants were asked to imagine themselves in either a Person-at-Risk or a Job-at-Risk scenario. As expected, participants in a person-at-risk scenario indicated more negative reactions to job insecurity, as captured by greater anticipated negative affect and poorer perceived social exchanges and organization-based self-esteem.