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Cognitive and affective identification: Exploring the links between different forms of social identification and personality with work attitudes and behavior
Author(s) -
Johnson Michael D.,
Morgeson FredericK P.,
Hekman David R.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of organizational behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.938
H-Index - 177
eISSN - 1099-1379
pISSN - 0894-3796
DOI - 10.1002/job.1787
Subject(s) - neuroticism , extraversion and introversion , psychology , identification (biology) , organizational identification , cognition , organizational citizenship behavior , social psychology , personality , big five personality traits , social cognition , social cognitive theory , cognitive psychology , organizational commitment , botany , neuroscience , biology
Summary Individuals often identify with groups in order to either reduce perceived uncertainty or to feel better about who they are as individuals. This suggests that cognitive and affective identification are two distinctive forms of social identification in organizational settings. Because neurotic individuals are highly motivated to reduce perceived uncertainty, they will tend to identify cognitively with groups. Extraverted individuals, on the other hand, are highly motivated to enhance how they feel about themselves and thus identify affectively with groups. Across three studies, we develop measures of cognitive and affective identification and then show that neuroticism is positively related to cognitive identification, whereas extraversion is positively related to affective identification. We also find that affective identification provides incremental predictive validity over and above cognitive identification in the prediction of organizational commitment, organizational involvement, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.