The interplay between perceived support and proactive personality: Effects on self-verification perceptions and emotions

Abstract

The extent to which individuals feel that they are known and understood by others (i.e., self-verification perceptions) is related to a number of important employee outcomes. However, we know little about what contextual and personal factors are associated with self-verification perceptions, and if such perceptions are related to employees’ discrete emotions. Time-lagged data collected from 163 employees revealed that perceived organizational and supervisor support were positively associated with self-verification perceptions, which were in turn related to more positive and less negative emotions. We also found that having high proactive personality significantly enhanced the relationship between perceived organizational support and self-verification perceptions but reduced the relationship between perceived supervisor support and self-verification perceptions. The results provide evidence of the importance of supportive work environments and proactive individual traits to help employees feel known and understood.

Keywords:

• self-verification perceptions
• perceived organizational support
• perceived supervisor support
• proactive personality
• discrete emotions

Acknowledgment

We wish to thank Sebastian Schuh for his constructive comments on a previous version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by research grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 71902092) and the Outstanding Researcher Support System at Nottingham University Business School China, awarded to Jie Wang.