O tym, czy Polacy umieją mądrze gospodarować pieniędzmi, mówi prof. Agata Gąsiorowska z Uniwersytetu SWPS.

Assoc. Prof. Agata Gąsiorowska of the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities ponders if the Poles know how to manage their money wisely.

We examined the role of work-related emotions and personal resources operationalised as psychological capital (PsyCap) in the relationship between events occurring at work and employees’ work engagement. Using affective events theory and broaden-and-build theory as theoretical frameworks, we theorise that the perceived frequency of positive and negative events at work and work engagement is mediated by positive and negative work-related emotions and moderated by PsyCap. The results of path analysis on a sample of US and Polish employees showed that PsyCap moderated the relationship between the perceived frequency of negative work events and negative work-related emotions, however, we also found culture-specific effects of PsyCap. Our study contributes to the human resource development (HRD) literature by providing evidence of the role of personal resources in the event–emotion–engagement process in the workplace. Also, our findings deepen the understanding of HR developers in multinational organisations and provide suggestions on how they can implement PsyCap trainings based on culture-specific work environment.

Building upon Gasiorowska and Zaleskiewicz's (2021, 2023), we explored how a control threat and attachment style influence social relationship preferences. This experiment aimed to investigate how experiencing a control threat affects individuals with secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment patterns when they can choose between seeking assistance from the market, asking a close person for help, or coping with the situation alone. Participants with different attachment styles were randomly assigned to either the lack of control condition ( n = 290) or the having control condition ( n = 277). Individuals with an anxious attachment were more inclined to choose the market-exchange option and less likely to select the agentic and communal options when faced with a control threat. Meanwhile, those with an avoidant attachment exhibited a higher tendency to choose the agentic option, while their preference for noncontingent help decreased after exposure to the control threat. Surprisingly, secure attachment individuals showed an increased preference for noncontingent help and decreased preferences for market exchange and self-reliance when exposed to the control threat compared to when they had control. These findings suggest that participation in market relationships may meet vital psychological needs and serve as a safeguard against attachment insecurities.

We define the need for sense-making as the desire to find reliable connections between the objects, situations, and relationships that people encounter. We have proposed and tested that there are possible individual differences in the need for sense-making and that these individual differences are insightful in characterizing individuals and their behaviors. A correlational study (N = 229) showed that need for sense-making was positively related to self-esteem, extroversion, conscientiousness, openness, and sense of control. Additionally, a higher need for sense-making was associated with greater perception of it as an important part of people’s identity. Thus, need for sense-making is relevant to understanding individual differences and can furthermore comprise a significant element of people’s identity. These results break new ground in the study of individual differences in the need for sense-making and can be of great importance in work and organizational psychology.