ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to ask and begin to answer a series of questions related to the role of personality in coping with the economic stressors of job insecurity and job loss. It focuses on two theories and provides particular insight into the potentially beneficial and/or adverse role of personality in coping with job loss and insecurity: S. E. Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources theory and B. L. Fredrickson's Broaden-and-Build theory. The chapter reviews a number of different personality constructs ranging from relatively stable trait-like dispositional variables to state-like variables that are more amenable to modification or intervention. The primary significance in the research on cultural values as a moderator of reactions to job insecurity may be to help identify those individuals at greater risk for such negative reactions. Conservation of resources also predicts that individuals with greater resources are more capable of resource gain and those with limited or fewer resources are more susceptible to resource loss.
