ABSTRACT
The study of how personality affects the emotional lives of workers is not new (Weiss & Brief, 2001). For example, Fisher and Hanna (1931), in their classic The Dissatisfied Worker, addressed the problem of emotional maladjustment, which they described as a variety of “disturbances of personality which affect individual adjustment in every phase of life” (Viteles, 1932, p. 586). In regard to this maladjustment, Fisher and Hanna observed that it “breeds within him [the worker] dissatisfaction and thwarts him in his search for happiness and success. Inasmuch as his feelings and emotions are inherent aspects of himself, he carries them with him, so to speak, into every situation he enters. Now, since he does not usually know the reason of his dissatisfaction, does not understand the why for and nature of his maladjustment, it is not surprising that he very frequently attaches or attributes it (his dissatisfaction) to his work or his working situation” (pp. vii-viii).
