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Choice as a Trump Card:

How the Interaction between Concordance and Volition can Improve Job Satisfaction and Work Engagement

Jaleesa S. Donkers (S2475006) University of Groningen

Department of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior Nettelbosje 2, 9747 AE Groningen, The Netherlands

E-mail: <j.s.donkers@student.rug.n>

Author Note

The present paper is my master’s thesis and is written under the supervision of L. Maxim Laurijssen. Correspondence concerning this thesis should be addressed to Jaleesa S. Donkers,

j.s.donkers@student.rug.nl.

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Abstract

It is commonplace that concordance – having your activities align with your own values, desires, and interests – is difficult to achieve at work. Research showed that volition – the ability to choose options and goals (cf. Deci & Ryan, 2000) – leads to concordance. The present research tested the idea that people can experience concordance regardless of volition across two studies (total N = 444), which required a test of the interaction between concordance and volition. Results indicated that autonomy comprises two distinct yet weakly interrelated aspects – concordance and volition, and that volition is indeed not necessary to experience volition. People’s desire to exercise volition was only important under low concordance. In this sense, volition may compensate for low concordance and offers employees an alternative situation. Therefore, organizations can assign activities to employees, as long as they are perceived as concordant, and provide some autonomy as volition to those who desire it.

Keywords: Autonomy, Concordance, Volition, Job Satisfaction, Work Engagement

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Choice as a Trump Card: How the Interaction between Concordance and Volition can Improve Job Satisfaction and Work Engagement

People often indicate that they are unsatisfied with their job because they want to work on what they are passionate about (e.g., Westover, Westover, & Westover, 2010).

Unsurprisingly, working on personally interesting activities is a pleasant and engaging endeavor. Indeed, concordance refers to the idea that people work optimally and feel best when they work on activities and goals that reflect enduring personal interests and values (Shelden & Elliot, 1999). Past research uncovered that concordance is important to people, and that people who pursue concordant goals perceive them to be more effortless compared to people who work on non-concordant goals, even when these goals are perceived to be more difficult (Werner, Milyavskay, Foxen-Craft, & Koestner, 2016). Typically, autonomy research combines concordance with people’s ability to choose – volition (for a review, see Deci & Ryan, 2000), and research often argues that volition is necessary in order to experience concordance (e.g., Sheldon & Elliot, 1999; Sheldon, 2014). Unfortunately, people do not always have the possibility to choose what they work on. But is that really necessary to work concordantly? The present research develops a compensatory model of volition and proposes that the ability to choose activities is largely unimportant when people experience concordance.

To this end, the present research disentangles autonomy as the pursuit of goals that

reflect enduring interests and values – concordance – from the availability of choice and

options – volition. Importantly, the present research deviates from how autonomy is typically

researched (cf. Deci & Ryan, 2000), in which these concepts usually do not stand apart. The

distinction between these concepts, however, is necessary to test the idea that volition is

mostly unimportant when concordance is high, yet becomes more important under low

concordance, which requires the study of the interaction between volition and concordance.

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Particularly, the present research considers the idea that people are less concerned with exercising choice when they do not have a strong desire to change their current situation since they are already working on something interesting. Thus, under high concordance, people are expected to be satisfied and engaged in their activity regardless of their experienced volition. However, when people do not experience concordance, they may develop the desire to switch to working on something else in order to work on more interesting activities and goals, which hinges on the ability to choose. Consequently, volition may provide people an alternative to their current non-concordant tasks. Thus, under low concordance, people may still be satisfied and engaged in the activity as long as they experience high volition. Under low concordance and low volition, however, people are expected to be less satisfied and less engaged compared to people with high volition, because they cannot change their current situation into a more concordant one by pursuing alternative options. In that sense, volition is hypothesized to be compensatory to concordance because choice provides people with options they can use as a means to increase their concordance.

Taken together, people find it important to work on tasks and goals that reflect their enduring interests and values. When people cannot work concordantly, volition may compensate for the lack of concordance via providing alternatives that people can switch to.

The present research contributes to theory by showing that concordance and volition are

interrelated yet separate constructs that comprise autonomy, and by disentangling how

concordance and volition relate to each other in predicting outcomes typically studied within

the realm of autonomy, such as satisfaction and engagement. More practically, providing

employees with choice and options may partly alleviate the natural fact of life that we cannot

always work on things that we find personally relevant and important. And assigning

employees to tasks may be perfectly fine as long as those tasks are perceived to be

concordant.

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Autonomy as Concordance

Concordance refers to the notion that people work on goals and tasks that align with enduring personal interests and core values (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999), and can be seen as a component of autonomy. Indeed, autonomy research often argues that people’s autonomy experience is largely determined by whether tasks are enjoyable and in line with values (cf.

Deci & Ryan, 2000; see also Gagné & Deci, 2005). Moreover, concordance is the result from people working on what they truly – in their core – find valuable, where people engage in activities that are fully integrated and harmonized with what they consider to be their core selves (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Sheldon & Elliot, 1998; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999).

Empirical findings about people’s motivation affirm that pursuing concordant goals is important to people. People are better at selecting their concordant goals when they have an accurate self-insight to recognize what goals they truly want to pursue (Sheldon, 2014).

Research also showed that people who pursue concordant goals are less influenced by temptations (Milyavskaya, Inzlicht, Hope, & Koestner, 2015), are more personally dedicated to their goals (Sheldon & Elliot, 1998), and find them easier to achieve (Werner et al., 2016).

Concordant goals lead to greater goal progress than non-concordant goals, and even more so when people include concrete implementation plans (Koestner, Lekes, Power, & Chicoine, 2002). But even if people perform poorly on their concordant activities and goals, they still perceive them to be meaningful, which can increase their perseverance and eventually the attainment of their goals (Zhang, Chen, & Schlegel, 2018).

More importantly, research uncovered that concordance is also significantly related to

people’s job satisfaction and work engagement (e.g., Bono & Judge, 2003; Judge, Bono,

Erez, & Locke, 2005), which are the focal outcomes studied in the present research. Job

satisfaction is the extent to which people enjoy the majority of their work and it can affect the

functioning of organizations (Locke, 1969; Spector, 1997), as job satisfaction is positively

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associated with job performance (Lawler lll & Porter, 1967), and has a direct positive effect on people’s general life satisfaction (Judge & Watanabe, 1993). People who are satisfied with their job and life in general will be less inclined to switch jobs (turnover) or show withdrawal behavior such as absenteeism and passive behavior at the job (cf. Mobley, 1977). However, a lack of concordance may jeopardize people’s job satisfaction. Working on non-concordant activities may be discouraging because they are less enjoyable and personally irrelevant and, as such, lead to job dissatisfaction (Judge et al., 2005), which undermines the performance of employees. In contrast, high concordance may prevent these negative effects of turnover, lacking performance, and withdrawal behavior by its positive effect on job satisfaction.

Having the ability to work on goals and activities that are enjoyable and reflect enduring interests and values is expected to lead to employees being more satisfied with their job. This makes job satisfaction important to study in relation to autonomy. That is, organizations can potentially improve their effectiveness by improving their employees’ concordance.

Another important outcome of autonomy in this research is work engagement, which refers to a positive and fulfilling state of mind in which people invest their energy into their work (Christian et al., 2011; Shaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, & Bakker, 2002). People are engaged in their work when they display vigor – high levels of energy and effort, dedication – strong involvement in work coupled with enthusiasm and pride, and absorption – being fully concentrated and engrossed at work, which makes detachment from work difficult (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006). Highly engaged employees perform better and are less likely to experience a burnout (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008; Maslach, Shaufeli, &

Leiter, 2001). Furthermore, engaged employees are more committed to the organization, are

pleasant in social functioning, and have a good mental health state (Shaufeli, Taris, & Van

Rhenen, 2008). These positive effects may be overthrown when employees work on lowly

concordant tasks. Working on activities that are not deeply compatible with enduring

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interests and values is a waste of resources (Sheldon, 2002), and organizations do not want to waste resources typically, while activities that are personally meaningful and interesting to people will increase their work engagement (Kahn, 1990). Hence, it is important to study autonomy as concordance in the relation to work engagement because highly concordant activities and goals motivate people to put more effort and energy – vigor – into their work (Sheldon & Elliot, 1998; Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2009). Besides, concordant people are more absorbed in their work because they are less influenced by goal- disruptive temptations (Milyavskaya et al., 2015), and find it difficult to detach themselves from their work, which makes them personally dedicated for a longer period of time (Shaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006; Sheldon & Elliot, 1998). In this manner, the present research expects that people, who are more in personal agreement with their tasks, are also expected to be more engaged in their work. People whose tasks align with their personal deeply felt interests and values should make them more satisfied and more deeply engaged in their work. Consequently, it is predicted that:

Hypothesis 1a: Autonomy as concordance is positively linked to job satisfaction.

Hypothesis 1b: Autonomy as concordance is positively linked to work engagement.

Interestingly, previous research on autonomy seems to suggest that people generally tend to pursue goals that are concordant when they are provided with the freedom of choice to do so (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Having the ability to choose activities, can give people the opportunity to select those activities that are most important and interesting to them and to neglect personally irrelevant tasks and activities. This seems to suggest that autonomy as volition plays a major role in understanding the effects of concordance.

Autonomy as Volition

Typically, autonomy as volition refers to people’s ability and desire to make their

own choices (Deci & Ryan, 2000). In that sense, a strong need for autonomy indicates a

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strong desire to exercise choice and volition, but not necessarily to act independently from others’ influence (Van den Broeck, Ferris, Chang, & Rosen, 2016). For example, when an employee experiences autonomous choice and freely agrees – without pressure – to a manager’s work request during lunch break, this employee’s volition will be satisfied and not undermined because the employee chose to do so (Ryan & Deci, 2006; Trougakos, Hideg, Cheng, & Beal, 2014). Research on autonomy as volition typically argues that it is a fundamental need people share and that it is a vital ingredient in people’s optimal functioning (for a review, see Deci & Ryan, 2000).

People experience happiness when goals are successfully attained. They experience additional happiness – feeling energized – and increased well-being on top of attaining goals when they experience volition (Nix, Ryan, Manly, & Deci, 1999; Ryan & Deci, 2001).

Unsurprisingly, volition is positively linked to job satisfaction. Indeed, volition in the workplace has generally found to lead to more job satisfaction, because employees are provided the freedom to decide for themselves how to accomplish work tasks and how much effort to put in (Saragih, 2011). In fact, volition is related to a substantial amount of job satisfaction related outcomes, including income, job security, promotion prospects, compensation package, along with the importance and challenge of the job (Nguyen, Taylor,

& Bradley, 2003).

People may also be more engaged in their work when they experience volition (e.g., Christian, Garza, & Slaughter, 2011). For instance, the availability of choice and options in the form of job resources has been linked to increased work engagement (Bakker, Emmerik,

& Euwema, 2006; Hakanen, Bakker, & Shaufeli, 2006). For volition enables employees to work in the way they see fit and helps develop a positive self-regard, which in turn results into feeling more energetic, capable, and fulfilled at work, that is, engaged (Hackman &

Oldman, 1980; Hobfoll, 2002; Luthans & Youssef, 2007; Xanthopoulou et al., 2009).

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Hypothesis 2a: Autonomy as volition is positively linked to job satisfaction.

Hypothesis 2b: Autonomy as volition is positively linked to work engagement.

Even though plethora of research seems to confirm the vital importance of choice to people (for a review, see Deci & Ryan, 2000), there is also research indicating that choice is not always preferred or even beneficial. For instance, Botti and Iyengar (2004) showed that participants rather have somebody else assign undesirable and unappealing options to them than choosing those themselves. People also do not prefer to choose when they have to pick from too many options (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Schwartz, 2000). The present research extends this research and introduces a compensatory model of volition in which it is proposed that people do not prefer to exercise volition when they experience high concordance. That is, dividing autonomy into concordance and volition seems to hint at a paradox: if people work concordantly, why would they want to experience choice?

The Interplay Between Volition and Concordance

This research hypothesizes that concordance and volition are two distinct yet related dimensions of autonomy, while autonomy research typically does not apply this distinction (for a review, see Deci & Ryan, 2000), which is unfortunate, because this potential distinction can help to better understand what autonomy truly is. Typically, volition has shown to lead to concordance (e.g., Sheldon & Elliot, 1999; Sheldon, 2014). Indeed, substantial research uncovered that people typically chose for themselves what they like.

However, researchers go on to conclude that, therefore, people cannot experience concordance when they lack volition. But is this really true? Do people really need volition or can they experience concordance without volition? Currently, research has not considered whether autonomy is a dual-faceted construct that comprises volition as well as concordance.

Yet, a true test of whether volition is required to experience concordance requires autonomy

to be split up into concordance and volition. First, it is expected that:

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Hypothesis 3: Concordance and volition are two independent yet related constructs.

Next, when people are working highly concordantly, why would they have a desire to do something else? Previous research on concordance has shown that people rather work on their personal interests and goals, which are also easier to achieve and more meaningful to them (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999; Werner et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2018). Choosing a different activity when people are already working optimally and feel best (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999), would not be in their best interest. Therefore, it is expected that under high concordance, volition becomes irrelevant to people because they are already working on activities and goals that reflect their personal interests and values. When people are working concordantly, there is no desire to work on something else, which makes having other options and possibilities to choose these options become unimportant. Having choice becomes redundant when there is no interest in other options. That is, people feel satisfied and engaged in their work when they are in a highly concordant situation, regardless of how much volition they experience.

Hypothesis 4a: Volition is non-significantly related to job satisfaction when concordance is high.

Hypothesis 4b: Volition is non-significantly related to work engagement when concordance is high.

But if volition would not benefit people in high concordant situations, would volition

then become more of an aid when people are not working concordantly? The present research

proposes a compensatory model of volition. That is, volition is seen as a means that people

use to attain concordance. Research on control (e.g., Landau, Kay, & Whitson, 2015) and

autonomy (Radel, Pelletier, Sarrazin, & Milyavskava, 2011) argued and showed that people

have strong desires to experience control and autonomy, and that people go to great lengths

to ensure that they have control and autonomy. Hence, people generally have a strong desire

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to experience autonomy when it is taken away (cf. Bartholomew, Ntoumanis, Ryan, Bosch,

& Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2011; Radel et al., 2011; Sheldon & Gunz, 2009). This research nuances the general effect that people desire volition by arguing that people particularly desire choice when they experience low concordance.

Under low concordance, volition becomes desirable because it can change people’s low concordant situation into a more concordant one. People become frustrated and dissatisfied when they cannot work on what they feel passionate about. They will start seeking for alternative and more concordant options in attempts to experience more concordance (Carver & Scheier, 1990; Radel, Pelletier, & Sarrazin, 2013). Yet, actually switching to work on something else is contingent on choice – volition. Namely, choice potentially gives people the opportunity to work on other activities and goals. It would only be reasonable, when people gain the ability to choose, to pick activities that they perceive to be more align with their personal interests and values, which makes people more satisfied and engaged (see conceptual models in Appendix A).

Hypothesis 5a: Volition is significantly related to job satisfaction when concordance is low.

Hypothesis 5b: Volition is significantly related to work engagement when concordance is low.

All in all, volition is a means to increase concordance, and having choice may

compensate for a lack in concordance since people can use choice as a tool to increase their

level of concordance. Having the ability to make choices in order to switch to working on

something else provides the availability of alternative activities, tasks, and goals and the

possibility to pursue those options, which may allow people to change their current situation

into a more enjoyable or personally relevant one. In this matter, increasing the level of

volition provides options to pursue a different direction (Deci & Ryan, 2000), which can

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make the situation more concordant and can consequently increase people’s job satisfaction and work engagement.

Study 1

1

The main aim of this study was to test people’s implicit theories towards concordance and volition. Specifically, the first aim was to uncover people’s self-reported experiences of concordance and volition. The second aim was a first exploratory test of the interaction between concordance and volition. Particularly, the first prediction is that people do not express a desire for volition when they are experiencing a highly concordant situation. The second prediction is that people do express a desire for volition when concordance is low, because people want to change their current situation into a more concordant one, which hinges on the availability of alternative tasks and activities to choose from and potentially switch to, that is, volition. Finally, this study aims to uncover what kind of activities and tasks typically perceive to be highly and lowly concordant. The results of this study are then the basis for the tasks used in the experimental design of Study 2.

Method

Participants and Design. A qualitative cross-sectional study was conducted, in which participants were recruited via the Prolific platform and were paid 1.30 GBP in exchange for their participation. 14 participants were excluded from analyses because they did not complete the story check question correctly, indicated that their data should not be used, or did not complete the questionnaire, resulting in a final sample size of 108 participants who took part in the pre-test. Their age ranged from 20 to 67 years old (62%

women, M

age

= 35.86, SD

age

= 11.31). 98.1% participants indicated that their mother tongue was English, while 1.9% indicated that they spoke a different language than English.

1

Study 1 and Study 2 were part of another Master’s thesis (Marloes de Nekker).

Therefore, parts and analyses may overlap. Analyses and coding in Study 1 were done in

collaborative effort, and non-hypothesis specific analyses in Study 2 were shared.

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Participants’ highest level of completed education ranged from Bachelor’s degree (44.4%), to High School degree (31.5%), Graduate or Professional Degree (16.7%), Master of Business Administration (4.7%), and Doctorate Degree (2.8%).

Procedure. Participants completed a three-part questionnaire. In the first part, participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions: high concordance, low concordance, high volition, or low volition. For every condition, a different work-related scenario is shown to the participants.

In the high concordance scenario, people read:

“You are an employee in a large organization. As in many other jobs, there are multiple tasks that you work on during the week. All the available tasks are interesting to you. That is, these tasks are either fun or important to you, and they are in line with your enduring personal interests and values.”

In the low concordance scenario, people read:

“You are an employee in a large organization. As in many other jobs, there are multiple tasks that you work on during the week. None of the available tasks are interesting to you.

That is, these tasks are not fun and not important to you, and they are not in line with your enduring personal interests and values.”

In the high volition scenario, people read:

“You are an employee in a large organization. As in many other jobs, there are multiple tasks that you work on during the week. You can decide which tasks you will do. That is, amongst all the available tasks, you can choose yourself which tasks you do. What you choose is what you will be working on.”

In the low volition scenario, people read:

“You are an employee in a large organization. As in many other jobs, there are multiple

tasks that you work on during the week. You cannot decide which tasks you will do. That is,

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amongst all the available tasks, you cannot choose yourself which tasks you do. You are assigned tasks that you will be working on.”

After reading the scenario, participants were asked to remember and describe a work- related situation they considered similar to the scenario, and they were asked to write down how they experienced their self-reported work situation, which is similar to a paradigmatic- type narrative inquiry (Polkinghorne, 2006). These different work-related scenarios embodied the manipulation, and there were four main predictions to test how concordance and volition interact via these self-reported stories. It was predicted that if concordance is about an enjoyable and personally relevant experience, people would particularly mention aspects of their self-reported situation that they liked in the high concordance scenario, and not mention the presence or lack of volition. Similarly, the second prediction is that people would mention the lack or presence of volition under low concordance, provided that people indeed have a strong desire to change their current situation into a more concordant one, such as switching to another task or activity. Thus, volition is expected to be salient in the low concordance scenario. The final two predictions pertain to volition. The main idea is that volition is only salient for people when they do not work concordantly because volition allows them to select a potentially more concordant activity to work on, and that asking people about volition reminds them of situations in which they experienced low concordance. Thus, the third prediction is that people in the low volition scenario would either mention aspects of their work situation that they did not like (i.e. low concordance) and that they could not change their situation but generally had the desire to do so, or aspects of their work they did like (i.e.

high concordance) and were not bothered about their level of volition. The final prediction is

that people in the high volition scenario would point out the opportunities they perceived to

have changed non-concordant situations with the help of a gain in volition.

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In the second part, participants were asked to rate their personal work situation they described on two self-report measures. These measures included how participants perceived concordance and volition.

In the third and final part, participants were asked to describe three typical activities or tasks that relate to their scenario and self-reported work situation, and their experience of these activities or tasks. It was then measured how participants perceived concordance and volition by asking an open question. These questions were asked after each of the three tasks or activities they had to describe.

In the high concordance scenario, people were asked:

“Please describe what it is about this task or activity that was enjoyable/fun or personally important/in line with your values.”

In the low concordance scenario, people were asked:

“Please describe what it is about this task or activity that made it not enjoyable/not fun, or personally unimportant and not in line with your values.”

In the high volition scenario, people were asked:

“Please describe what it is about this task or activity that made you feel you had a say or choice in this task or activity.”

In the low volition scenario, people were asked:

“Please describe what it is about this task or activity that made you feel that you had no say or no choice in this task or activity.”

Measures

Concordance. Concordance was measured by using a self-constructed 6-item scale

based on the Sheldon and Elliot’s (1999) definition of concordance (for all items, see

Appendix B). Participants indicated their opinion on a 7-point Likert-type rating scale (1 =

Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree). Their scores were averaged into a single

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concordance score, and higher scores reflect higher experienced concordance (M = 4.26, SD

= 1.95, α = .96).

Volition. Volition was measured by using a self-constructed 4-item scale (for all items, see Appendix C). These items were adapted from Wegner and Wheatley (1999).

Participants responded on a 7-point Likert-type rating scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree). Participants’ scores were averaged into a single volition score. Higher scores indicated higher experienced choice (M = 3.39, SD = 1.76, α = .84).

Story Check. Finally, participants were asked to indicate their scenario (high concordance, low concordance, high volition, or low volition) as a means to verify whether they were paying attention. Participants were asked whether their scenario was described as interesting (high concordance) or not interesting (low concordance), and whether they had choice (high volition) in their job or not (low volition).

Results

The answers of participants were analyzed by using an open coding technique through multiple rounds of discussion with another coder. In this technique, an interpretative process breaks down data analytically, and then conceptually similar words are grouped together to form subcategories (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). First, the work-related situation that participants wrote in their answers was reduced into five main keywords. Next, these keywords were grouped together into more general keywords that encompassed the most important aspects per condition in three rounds of open discussion (cf. Corbin & Strauss, 1990). These keywords and relevant characteristics are presented in Table 1. Second, the tasks that people typically mention under each scenario are as well presented in Table 1.

Finally, Table 1 also incorporates several typical excerpts of what people mention in their

situations and provides insight into their presumptions of the four conditions.

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The first aim of Study 1 was to find the underlying assumptions and implicit theories that people hold towards concordance and volition. The analyses uncovered that people’s self-reported situations and activities are mostly in line with our predictions. Indeed, under high concordance, participants mentioned tasks, activities, and situations that they wanted to invest their time and effort into, and that reflected enduring personal interests and values, for example teaching and serving customers. In addition, participants typically mentioned that they found it important to have interactions with other people, solving challenging tasks, and helping others. The following excerpt is an example: “(…) it helped me meet a lot of new people. I have always loved computer hardware and helping people get it set up. There were definitely issues of course, but being able to transfer all the user’s data and put it onto a faster machine was very satisfying. (…) it made me use my problem solving skills and try out many solutions that I did not think would work at first.” Taken together, participants wanted to work on activities and tasks that they enjoyed, that they found personally interesting, valuable, and important, and that contributed to their focal goals. Similarly, participants’

described situations in the low concordance scenario showed a similar pattern but in the

opposite direction. These participants listed situations, activities, and tasks that they (had to)

spend time and effort into that were not interesting, not enjoyable, and not personally

important. For instance, participants typically listed activities and tasks that were repetitive,

did not add value to their work or personal goals, were perceived to be time-consuming, and

most of all were not considered as a core part to their job, such as taking phone calls and

writing reports. The following excerpt shows several aspects of this condition: “(…), which I

don’t like to do, find them boring, and not in line with my interests and think they are not

related to the work, but still I have to work on them as part of the task but during the time I

work on them it’s really hard to do it because I don’t feel like doing something that doesn’t

interest me but at the end of the day I have to complete it”. Under high volition, participants

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typically mentioned that they had the ability to make decisions as well as to select and prioritize their tasks and activities. Tasks and activities that were mentioned include, among others, planning and creating offers. Other characteristics mentioned were having a variety of tasks and being able to delegate their tasks to others. For example, one participant wrote: “I have a varying amount of tasks which need to be completed per week, however the order in which they are completed is my choice”. Participants under low volition felt like they had no control over their activities and a lot of work was assigned to them that had fast approaching deadlines, which were often difficult to complete. Tasks and activities that were for instance mentioned are data input and cleaning. Although several participants mentioned that they had the ability to prioritize tasks, the work still felt compulsory. One example of this is a participant who mentioned that: “(…) not as much priority as other jobs but due to deadlines have to be done first”.

The second aim of Study 1 was to test the concordance-volition interaction. There was a positive correlation between the two variables in this sample (r = .54, p < .01). This seems to suggest that concordance and volition relate to each other, though causal inferences cannot be made due to the nature of the design of this study. Indeed, people’s self-reported situations confirm with the main predictions that concordance is about the extent to which activities and tasks are enjoyable and personally relevant, and that volition is mainly salient when concordance is low. First, within the high concordance condition it was expected that participants would not mention the desire for choice, because when people are already doing what they enjoy and find important, there is no need to have the ability to make decisions that can change the situation. Accordingly, participants did not mention volition in their answers.

This indeed seems to suggest that volition is less important under high concordance.

Contrarily, participants in the low concordance scenario did mention volition, specifically the

lack of volition. Although, the participants under low concordance did not explicitly mention

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that they desired the ability for more choice, yet they did often say that they were ordered by their boss to work on tasks and had no time left to work on matters they wanted to be working on. A participant for example mentioned that: “I hate doing it, it is very tedious and takes a long time which I feel could be better used doing something more productive (…), but it is important to my boss of course which is why it needs to be done”. This might indicate that more volition would benefit these people and change their situation into a more concordant one. Subsequently, this seems to suggest that, indeed, volition is mostly important under low concordance. Therefore, Study 1 provides initial empirical evidence that supports the idea that autonomy entails two distinct but related constructs, namely, concordance and volition.

Interestingly, in both the high and low volition condition, few emotions were shared.

Participants in the low volition scenario mostly mentioned in what ways they had low volition, but did not mention whether they did or did not enjoy it. A typical example of a participant’s answer is: “Sometimes during meetings, we will have to complete certain tasks that are due before we leave the meeting”. Participants in the high volition scenario mentioned that they had the opportunity to work on enjoyable tasks and had an ability to delegate less enjoyable tasks, however, as expected, they did not mention that they were currently working on concordant tasks and activities. This still seems to suggest that participants indeed seem to choose for more concordant tasks when they have high volition.

Moreover, participants had different interpretations and perceptions of volition. Specifically,

a lot of participants under high volition and low volition experienced the ability to prioritize

their tasks and to decide on which one of these tasks they wanted to work on. Although, one

group experienced this as having high volition since they were able to decide what they

wanted to work on, the other group saw this as low volition because at the end of the day all

the tasks had to be finished anyways. Under high volition, a participant said for example:

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“We have weekly activities log, it is up to us to choose what on that list we want to work on providing that all tasks are completed by their deadlines”, while a participant under low volition said: “I am given lots of tasks for different clients and I must order their priority. I must look and ask for deadline dates and critical paths”. This seems to suggest that perhaps the perception of volition plays a bigger role than the actual level of volition itself.

Finally, the third and final aim of Study 1 was to find tasks and activities that people typically consider to be highly and lowly concordant, in order to use these in the experimental design of Study 2. Study 1 uncovered aspects of work-related activities and tasks that employees typically consider highly or lowly concordant. Highly concordant activities can be characterized by, among others, being challenging, personally relevant, and having contact with people (see Table 1). Lowly concordant activities can be characterized by, among others, being not interesting, repetitive, and not part of the job (see Table 1).

Interestingly, the tasks listed by the participants are not considerably different per condition.

For example, in both the high and low concordant situation are similar tasks mentioned that fall under data input. While participants in the low concordance condition mention their tasks more concretely, in the high concordance condition the focus lies mostly on the context of their tasks instead of on the tasks themselves. They mention for example being able to manage, create or organize. Similarly, these contextual aspects are also present in the high and low volition condition. In addition to this, writing reports is found to be a highly volitional task as well as a lowly volitional task.

Brief Discussion Study 1 and Introduction Study 2

Interestingly, Study 1 illustrated that similar tasks are mentioned in all the conditions.

One explanation might be that less enjoyable tasks may still be more or less personally relevant (e.g., Bianco, Higgins, & Klem, 2003; Higgins, Cesario, Hagiwara, Spiegel, &

Pittman, 2010). This seems to reflect the idea that concordance has to do with both the

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enjoyability of an activity as well as its personal relevance. Activities can be more or less enjoyable as well as more or less personally relevant, and activities may be enjoyable but not personally relevant and the other way around. In that sense, the tasks itself may be less important to some people than is the personal relevance of what the task helps a person accomplish. This is an important finding that is taken into account in Study 2

.

Thus, it is predicted that personal relevance could be a more prominent factor for concordance than the enjoyability of the task itself. Moreover, the results of Study 1 suggest that concordance and volition are independent constructs that may interact with each other. Therefore, Study 2 will provide a more causal test of the prediction that concordance and volition uniquely influence people’s displays of job satisfaction and work engagement. Study 2 incorporates an experimental design and manipulates concordance and volition.

Study 2

1

Method

Participants and Sample. An experimental study was conducted. 322 participants took part in an experiment, which took place in a research lab at the University of Groningen.

A total of 19 participants were excluded from the data set due to different reasons. First, some participants were interrupted during their session by for example going to the bathroom, accidentally refreshing the page, or halfway leaving the session. Second, software issues resulted in a wrong task allocation for three participants. Third, there were a few participants who were influenced by earlier received information from previous participants, one participant thought that the task allocation was bogus, and a few participants believed to have received a different task than that was allocated to them. Lastly, there was one participant who deliberately corrupted the task allocation by filling in a number himself

1

Study 1 and Study 2 were part of another Master’s thesis (Marloes de Nekker).

Therefore, parts and analyses may overlap. Analyses and coding in Study 1 were done in

collaborative effort, and non-hypothesis specific analyses in Study 2 were shared.

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although it was explicitly mentioned to ask the experiment leader to do so. The exclusion of these participants resulted in a final sample size of 303 participants. The participants ranged in age from 17 to 34 years old (56.4% women, M

age

= 20.92, SD

age

= 2.91). 50.2% of the participants took part in the study in exchange for a payment of 8 euro’s, the remaining 49.8% participated for course credits (research points). 53.1% of the participants took the English version of the experiment, and 46.9% took the Dutch version. The majority of participants (45.2%) had Dutch as their mother tongue, followed by German (8.3%) and English (4%). The remaining group (42.6%) had a mother tongue other than Dutch, German, and English.

Concordance manipulation. As evidenced by previous research (Bianco et al., 2003)

and Study 1, concordance may refer to activities that are enjoyable and/or personally

relevant. Therefore, concordance was manipulated in two ways. First, concordance was

manipulated via expected task enjoyment. Similar to previous research (e.g., Isen & Reeve,

2005; Reeve, 1989), it was expected that a puzzle game was perceived to be more fun and

enjoyable for undergraduate students than a more administrative task, which was expected to

be less fun and enjoyable according to the results of Study 1. Consequently, a Sudoku puzzle

comprised the highly concordant task (labeled as “puzzle game”), and a reference correction

task comprised the lowly concordant task (labeled as “correcting reference list”). There were

also two word categorization tasks labeled differently (“categorizing topics” and “sorting

text”), which were expected to fall in the middle of the puzzle and reference correction task

(cf. Isen & Reeve, 2005). In addition to task enjoyment, concordance was manipulated via

expected personal relevance by attaching a bonus to either the puzzle game or the reference

correction task. Participants who engaged in the bonus task were able to shorten their session

by half. It was expected that participants find it personally relevant and important to be as

short in the lab as possible, indicated by the accumulation of experience and feedback from

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participants in the lab where this experiment was conducted, as well as since most students value their time because they may perceive their academic career to be stressful (Swick, 1987) and might benefit from having more time available to work on other matters (Macan, Shahani, Dipboye, & Phillips, 1990), which makes it personally relevant for them to have a short session.

Volition manipulation. Volition was manipulated by either letting participants choose freely between one of the four tasks (puzzle game, neutral tasks, or reference correction task) or by assigning participants to a task, being the high concordance task (puzzle game) or the low concordance task (reference correction task). In the low volition condition, participants were required to visit the experimenter, who would then throw a dice that determined which task the participant would do. This was done to ensure that participants believed the assignment was random and to exclude the possibility for participants to believe that some of their answers causally influenced the task they would do (e.g., Wegner & Wheatley, 1999). In actuality, the software randomly assigned participants.

Across the high volition condition (for all conditions, see Table 2), participants were presented with a third and fourth task (the “neutral” tasks: categorizing topics and sorting text) because Feldman, Baumeister, and Wong (2014) showed that participants experience significantly more volition (high volition) than significantly less (low volition) when there are exactly four potential options to pick from.

Design and Tasks. Participants were randomly assigned to either the low or high

volition condition, and whether the reference correction task or the puzzle game had a time

bonus attached (concordance as personal relevance). In the low volition condition,

participants were randomly assigned to the reference correction task or to the puzzle game

(concordance as enjoyability). Thus, half of the participants within the low volition condition

engaged in the expected fun and enjoyable activity (puzzle game) that did have the bonus

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(high expected personal relevance) or did not have the bonus (low expected personal relevance). The other half of participants within the low volition condition engaged in the expected boring and annoying activity (reference correction task) that did have the bonus (high expected personal relevance) or did not have the bonus (low expected personal relevance). Participants were not assigned to the neutral tasks. These tasks were merely present to strengthen the effect of the volition manipulation (e.g., Feldman et al., 2014).

Participants in the high volition condition were completely free to choose any of the four tasks (puzzle game, categorizing topics, sorting text, or reference correction task). Similar to the low volition condition, it was randomly varied whether the reference correction task or the puzzle game was made personally relevant by attaching the opportunity to shorten the session by half (bonus). Thus, participants could decide for themselves whether they wanted the bonus or not, and whether they wanted an – expectedly – enjoyable task (puzzle game) or not (reference correction task), or one of the two neutral tasks.

Across all tasks, participants were instructed that there were 10 rounds. Participants who had the opportunity to earn the bonus were informed that they could shorten the activity up to 5 rounds, reducing the time spent on the complete session by half. There would be one round less for every round that was correctly solved. Across all conditions, participants could only continue after 3 minutes had passed, whether they solved the current round correctly or not. This was done to ensure that time mattered to participants. After each round, participants received performance feedback. Specifically, participants saw whether they solved the current round correctly (presented in green), or not (in red), and how many rounds there were left. Participants who had the bonus task were shown by how many rounds they reduced the task, and how much time they had saved thus far.

In the reference correction task, participants had to correct several lines of references

according to a set of rules. In each reference line there was one mistake present (for the

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English task instruction, see Appendix D). In the puzzle game, participants had to solve a puzzle in which missing numbers had to be filled in according to the game rules (for the English task instruction, see Appendix E). In the neutral task (categorizing topics, sorting text), participants had to alphabetically organize a group of words that have a similar spelling (for the English task instructions, see Appendix F).

Procedure. Upon arrival in the lab, participants read a paper-and-pencil informed consent, in which it was also stressed that there was a possibility for some to reduce their session by half of the time. This was done to ensure that participants believed that the bonus they would encounter later in the session was actually true and not deceptive. Participants were then seated in one of the eight cubicles and everything in the session was presented on the screen, except for task instructions. It was possible to do the experiment in English or in Dutch. Participants were first asked to answer some questions, which included demographic questions (age, sex, and mother tongue), as well as the potential theoretical covariates.

Participants were then instructed that they were going to engage in an activity and afterwards answer some questions about that activity.

In the low volition condition, participants read:

“You will be randomly assigned to one of these activities.

The experiment leader will throw a dice for you later.

The outcome of this dice will determine which activity you will perform.

Click on See Activities in order to continue.”

In the high volition condition, participants read:

“You will be able to choose one of these activities.

The activity you choose is the one you are going to perform.

Click on See Activities in order to continue.”

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On the next screen, participants saw the tasks (correcting reference lists, categorizing topics, sorting text, puzzle game), and this screen comprised the personal relevance manipulation. The task with the bonus was highlighted in green and had a badge next to it that read “up to 15 min shorter”. The other tasks were not highlighted, presented in dark gray, and had a badge next to it that read “30 min”.

In addition to that, participants read:

“Normal (30 min) activities consist of 10 rounds and will take 30 minutes total.

However, one of these activities allows you to finish up to 15 minutes earlier.

You will shorten that particular activity by 3 min (1 round) when you solve the round correctly.”

Participants were then told that they could continue to the next screen to see which task they would actually do. In the low volition condition, participants were told that they would be randomly assigned to a task and that they had to go see the experimenter to throw a dice for them. In the high volition condition, participants were provided the opportunity to choose any of the four tasks. On the next screen, their assigned or self-chosen task was visually confirmed. Again, the bonus task, that is, expected to be personally relevant, was highlighted in green, and the task that they actually would do was highlighted in blue with a large red arrow in front of it. This was done to ensure that participants knew (a) which task they would do, (b) whether it was the personally relevant (bonus) task, and (c) to make visually salient whether they got the enjoyable task or not. Just before the task started, participants were instructed to go see the experimenter and ask for instructions. These instructions were on paper so that participants could see them all the time during the activity.

The instructions also had an example with correct answers (for all the English task

instructions, see Appendix D to F).

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Directly after the task, participants completed the manipulation check and dependent variable measures. Finally, participants were thanked, debriefed upon request, and paid.

Measures

Manipulation Check. Participants’ concordance experience was measured using a self-constructed measure based on the original conceptualization of concordance by Sheldon and Elliot (1999) (see Appendix G for all items). Participants responded on a 7-point Likert- type rating scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 7 = Strongly agree), and their responses were averaged into a single concordance check score with higher scores indicating more perceived concordance (M = 3.34, SD = 1.11, α = .93). Volition was measured using a 4-item self-made scale based on Wegner and Wheatley’s (1999) conceptualization of choice (for all items, see Appendix H). Participants responded on the same rating scale as with concordance, their scores were averaged into a single volition check score, and higher scores reflected more perceived volition (M = 3.69, SD = 2.22, α = .91).

Task Relevance. Participants’ actual perceived importance and personal relevance of the task was measured using 2 adjectives that were adapted from Bianco and colleagues (2003). Every item began with the stem “I found the activity”. The two adjectives were

“important” and “personally relevant”. These two items were averaged into a task relevance score, with higher scores indicating higher personal relevance of the task (M = 3.01, SD = 1.53, α = .78).

Task Satisfaction. Typically, job satisfaction measures include more overarching,

general, and time non-specific items which try to tap into whether an employee “typically

likes” the job (e.g., “I find real enjoyment in my job”, “Most days I am enthusiastic about my

job”, cf. Bolino & Turnley, 2005). In order to conceptually measure job satisfaction within

the context of a session in an experimental study in the lab, which lasts maximally an hour

instead of days, weeks, or years, participants were asked whether they found the task

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enjoyable, fun, annoying, and boring, and were asked specifically about the “activity they engaged in” instead of their job. These four adjectives were asked in the similar form as the task relevance measure, and the four adjectives were adapted from Bianco and colleagues (2003). These 4 items together – with the latter two items reversed – were averaged into a single composite score, in which higher scores reflect more satisfaction (M = 3.99, SD = 1.67, α = .92).

Task Engagement. Task engagement was measured by using the 9-item scale (UWES-9, for all items, see Appendix I), which is a shortened version of the original 17-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES, Shaufeli et al., 2006) and adjusted to the experiment context and timeframe. Participants responded on a 7-point Likert-type rating scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree). The Participants’ scores were averaged into a task engagement score. Higher scores indicated higher levels of engagement (M = 3.61, SD = 1.09, α = .87).

Desire to Switch. So far, volition has been measured via whether participants would want to have choice before they start working on a task. However, as previous research suggests participants’ actual experience of the task is more relevant and participants will mostly desire other options during the performance of their task (Botti & Iyengar, 2004;

Radel et al., 2011). Therefore, the desire to switch after the task was measured by one self- constructed item. Participants responded on a two-point dichotomous scale (1 = Yes, 0 = No) to the question: “in retrospect, would you have rather chosen another task” (Yes = 34%, No = 66%).

Theoretical Covariates. There were several theoretical covariates measured to assess

their potential influence on the main analyses, and participants responded on a 7-point Likert-

type rating scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 7 = Strongly agree). One item measured perceived

task difficulty (“I found the activity difficult”; M = 3.02, SD = 1.95). The second item

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measured participants’ perceived competence with three items (“I felt competent in this activity”, “I felt able to master this activity”, and “I was good at doing this activity”; M = 5.12, SD = 1.64, α = .90). Finally, participants’ experience of time pressure was measured with three items (“I felt time pressure”, “I felt like having too little time”, and “I would have liked to have more time”; M = 2.29, SD = 1.37, α = .83).

Results

Preliminary Analyses. A multivariate ANOVA with the three theoretical covariates

perceived difficulty, F(2, 300) = 63.42, p < .0001, perceived competence, F(2, 300) = 56.16,

p < .0001, and perceived time pressure, F(2, 300) = 14.132, p < .0001 as dependent variables

with the actual task participants did (reference correction task, neutral task, or puzzle game)

revealed significant effects of these theoretical covariates. Similarly, a regression analysis

revealed that perceived time pressure, b = 0.23, SE

b

= .06, t(299) = 4.11, p < .0001, and

perceived competence, b = .55, SE

b

= .07, t(299) = 7.75, p < .0001, but not perceived

difficulty, b = -.09, SE

b

= .06, t(299) = -1.43, p = .16, were significantly related to task

satisfaction. Perceived competence and perceived difficulty share a large conceptual overlap

and may have reinforced each other, r = -.76. Participants felt most competent in the puzzle

game (M = 5.90, SD = 1.03), somewhat less in the reference correction task (M = 4.47, SD =

1.73), and the least in the neutral task (M = 3.70, SD = 1.71). Participants perceived the

neutral task to be the most difficult (M = 4.85, SD = 1.77), followed by the reference

correction task (M = 3.80, SD = 1.98), and the puzzle game (M = 2.06, SD = 1.32), which was

comparatively perceived to be the easiest. Finally, participants perceived most time pressure

in the neutral task (M = 2.71, SD = 1.69), followed by the puzzle game (M = 2.55, SD =

1.31), and the reference correction task (M = 1.74, SD = 1.16). Taken together, in the main

analyses, there will be controlled for perceived time pressure, perceived competence, and

perceived difficulty.

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Manipulation Check. Both the concordance and volition manipulation were built around two focal tasks that were expected to be more (puzzle game) or less (reference correction task) concordant depending on having the bonus (more concordant) or not (less concordant). In order to see whether these expectations were confirmed by the data, two ANOVA’s were run, each with the task (levels: reference correction task, neutral task, and puzzle game) as the independent variable.

The first ANOVA revealed that indeed the puzzle game is perceived to be more fun and enjoyable (M = 4.76, SD = 1.43) than the reference correction task (M = 3.10, SD = 1.58), and the neutral task was a bit less enjoyable than the reference correction task (M = 2.82, SD = 1.63), F(2, 300) = 51.04, p < .0001. The second ANOVA revealed that the reference correction task is perceived to be more personally relevant and important (M = 3.46, SD = 1.71) than the puzzle game (M = 2.89, SD = 1.37), and the neutral task (M = 2.28, SD = 1.27), F(2, 300) = 10.05, p < .0001. Thus, the puzzle task is perceived to be more fun and enjoyable than it is personally important and relevant, whereas the reference correction task is perceived to be more personally important and relevant than it is fun and enjoyable.

Next, two ANOVA’s were run to find out whether the three manipulations (concordance as enjoyability via the actual task, concordance as personal relevance via the bonus, and volition) worked. In the first ANOVA, the three categorical variables (concordance as enjoyability: reference correction task, neutral task, puzzle game;

concordance as personally relevant: low versus high; volition: low versus high) were entered as independent variables and the concordance manipulation check was the dependent variable. Only the actual task participants engaged in – concordance as enjoyability – significantly influenced participants’ overall perceptions of concordance, F(2, 294) = 17.68, p

< .0001, not whether the task had the bonus (concordance as personal relevance), F(1, 294) =

0.44, p = .51, nor the volition manipulation, F(1, 294) = 2.33, p = .13. There were no

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significant interactions (P’s between .20 and .46). On average, participants rated the puzzle game as most concordant (M = 3.73, SD = 1.08), followed by the reference correction task (M

= 2.94, SD = 0.97), and the neutral task (M = 2.81, SD = 0.95). There were also measures that directly tapped into whether the task was enjoyable or whether it was personally important.

This revealed that only the actual task (concordance as enjoyability) significantly influenced the self-reported enjoyment of the task F(1, 294) = 36.43, p < .0001, not the other manipulations or their interactions (P’s between .18 and .82). The manipulations and their interactions did not significantly influence participants’ experienced personal importance of the task (P’s between .42 and .98).

The second ANOVA was identical to the first one, but this time the volition check was the dependent variable. This analysis revealed that participants experienced significantly more volition in the high volition condition (M = 5.95, SD = 1.28) compared to the low volition condition (M = 2.27, SD = 1.32), F(1, 294) = 50.41, p < .0001. There was also a significant main effect for whether participants had the bonus task or not (concordance as personally relevant), F(1, 294) = 19.73, p < .0001, as well as for the actual task participants engaged in (concordance as enjoyability), F(2, 294) = 7.97, p < .0001, and all interactions were significant (P’s < .01). The effect of the actual task is a statistical artifact of the design, and driven by the neutral task. Participants could only choose the neutral task in the high volition condition, and the task was absent in the low volition condition. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the mean for the volition check for the neutral task (M = 6.04, SD = 1.09) is significantly higher than those for the other tasks that were present in both the high and low volition condition (reference correction task M = 2.45, SD = 1.66; puzzle game M = 3.94, SD

= 2.20).

Taken together, the concordance as enjoyability and volition manipulation have

worked, but the concordance as personal relevance manipulation did not. Whether the time

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bonus was present or not did not influence the perceived relevance of the task, though the reference correction task was significantly perceived to be more personally relevant than the puzzle game, regardless of the manipulations.

Hypothesis Testing

All the hypotheses were tested using the final sample size and without the participants who had partaken in a neutral task (categorizing topics and sorting text) resulting in a final sample size of 264 participants. This exclusion of participants was done for the hypotheses testing because the present research is specifically interested in the two remaining tasks (reference correction task and the puzzle game) because they comprise the concordance as enjoyability manipulation.

Hypothesis 1a stated that autonomy as concordance is positively linked to job satisfaction. In order to test this, a simple regression analysis was performed in which concordance as enjoyability and concordance as personally relevant were the independent variables and task satisfaction was the dependent variable. This analysis showed that concordance as enjoyability F(1, 257) = 12.25, p = .001 and concordance as personally relevant F(1, 257) = 11.08, p = .001 were positively related to task satisfaction. However, the interaction of concordance as enjoyability and concordance as personally relevant was not significantly affecting task satisfaction F(1, 257) = .94, p = .33. Therefore, hypothesis 1a is partially supported. That is, both forms of concordance impact task satisfaction, but one does not add above and beyond the effect of the other in terms of task satisfaction.

Hypothesis 1b stated that autonomy as concordance is positively linked to task

engagement. A simple regression analysis with concordance as enjoyable and concordance as

personally relevant as independent variables and task engagement as the dependent variable

showed that concordance as enjoyability F(1, 257) = 2.85, p = .09 and concordance as

personally relevant F(1, 257) = .93, p = .34 as well as their interaction F(1, 257) = .01, p =

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