Breaking cycle of negativity may help land a new job

Looking for a new job, particularly after losing your previous one, can be a slog. Writing applications, endless interviews, and seemingly constant rejections all take a psychological toll, adding to the other mental health impacts of unemployment. In a cruel twist, the negative outlook this creates often poses barriers to people finding work, creating a vicious cycle. 

In their recent paper, Julian Pfrombeck and colleagues look at how this cycle could be broken. While landing a new gig is a complex, time-consuming process that often requires a lot of hard work, the team's findings suggest that taking a break for self-affirmation — in this case, reflecting on important values — could be a useful technique for jobseekers to add to the arsenal.

This paper details two studies which followed the same procedure. In the first, 334 unemployed, job-seeking participants were recruited from an online platform. In the second, 556 participants were recruited from a governmental employment agency in Switzerland; some of this sample were employed and some unemployed, but all were looking for work. 

Firstly, participants were presented with a list of thirteen values, such as creativity, religion, or relationship with friends or family. In the self-affirmation condition, participants were asked to select two or three values that were the most important to them, and in the control condition, two or three that were the least important to them. They then completed a writing exercise in which they reflected on the selected values for ten minutes, with self-affirmation participants reflecting on why the values were important to them, and control condition participants reflecting on why their selected values might be important to someone else.  

To measure impact, the team looked at three outcomes: whether or not participants had found re-employment, the number of job offers they had received, and in the second study the amount of time registered at the employment agency. Two and four weeks after the first study, and eight weeks after the second study, participants indicated whether they had received any job offers or re-entered employment. 

Those who had entered new employment at that time indicated how satisfied they were with their new job on a scale from one to ten, and whether their new job fulfilled their needs. Finally, participants reported how much their salary had changed on a seven point scale.

The team's analyses showed that engaging in self-affirmation made a tangible difference. Those who completed the self-affirmation exercise in the first study were more likely than controls to find new employment within a month (13.7% vs 6.2%*). Similar trends were seen in the second study, with self-affirmers more likely to land a job after four weeks compared to those in the control condition (10.9% vs 3.4%). This boost was short-lived, however; after eight weeks, there was no significant effect of having taken part in the self-affirmation exercise.

Self-affirmation also seemed to make a difference to the amount of time enrolled with the employment agency. Both one and two months after the intervention, those in the self-affirmation group had spent significantly less time registered than in the control group. This is likely because those in the self-affirmation group were more likely to receive job offers within a month than controls, receiving a 118% increase in job offers after intervention in the first study, and a 49% increase in the second. 

And finally, when they did accept a job offer, eventual job satisfaction did not differ between those in the control condition and self-affirmation condition — suggesting that those who had self-affirmed were not simply more likely to accept any offer. (It is also possible, however, that this result may be subject to demand characteristics, or that practicing self-affirmations made participants more likely to give more positive responses about bad gigs.)

The team believes these results suggest self-affirmations may breaks the cycle of low mood or lack of motivation that often results from job hunting, leading to a small, positive change in people's immediate job search experience. This positivity may then act as a motivator, "creating a positive feedback loop" that can encourage people to continue applying for jobs and striving for the best position.

These results also have clear material implications. Self-affirmation exercises are easy, quick, free, and seemingly still improve the outcomes of job hunting. Although the effects of intervention didn't last long, the ease and cost-effectiveness of practicing self-affirmations means it could be repeated on a regular basis. Whether job seekers would see sustained benefits or persevere with the intervention if jobs continued to be difficult to secure, however, remains to be seen. Future research which compares the effect of this intervention with that of simply taking a break from job hunting may also be informative.

While this shouldn't replace other interventions — those that focus on building skills or networking, or just taking a break, for example — intentionally making time to focus on what matters to us seems that it may help jobseekers on their journey, even if only in a small way. 

* Figures provided by author via email.

Read the article in full: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301532120