What motivates individuals to work hard and to work well? What determines your job satisfaction? Even before the Hawthorne effect studies, 100 years of research has consistently shown that people’s attitudes about their jobs can pos- itively and negatively impact their affect, loyalty, productivity, performance, and commitment.
Are you driven strictly by economics, or do you have other personal needs to fulfill? There is no single answer. At work, as in the rest of life, our behav- ior often stems from the convergence of many different motives. Hence, I/O psychologists have found that people’s satisfaction at work depends on a host of factors, economic and otherwise—such as leadership quality, a sense of jus- tice, social relationships and comparisons, and the opportunity for advance- ment. Even the mere newness of a job can prove invigorating. In a longitudinal one-year study of new workers, Wendy Boswell and others (2009) found that satisfaction peaks during an initial honeymoon period before trending down- ward and settling in.