Transitions in and out of work are common experiences with major repercussions for people's lives. The complex link between work transitions and psychological adjustment is not well understood, however. In this preregistered study, we analyzed 11 waves of longitudinal data from a representative sample of 13,671 Dutch participants to examine the transactional effects between repeated work transitions (employment and unemployment) and psychological adjustment (self-esteem and life satisfaction). We investigated change trajectories before and after the transitions and tested whether event-related characteristics moderated transition effects. Participants with higher levels of self-esteem and life satisfaction were less likely to experience unemployment and more likely to experience employment, indicating selection effects. Participants decreased in their self-esteem and life satisfaction before the beginning of unemployment indicating anticipatory effects, with larger decreases in self-esteem for participants who ended up experiencing longer unemployment. We found no effects of employment on changes in life satisfaction or self-esteem (except when accounting for unemployment), but participants entering more satisfying jobs showed larger increases in life satisfaction. Results were mostly robust when accounting for gender, age, socioeconomic status, and the Big Five traits, and when using propensity-score matching. Effects did not differ among multiple experiences of the same transition. Together, these findings point to dynamic transactions between employment/unemployment and self-esteem/life satisfaction. Findings highlight the importance of closely assessing the specific timing of pre- and posttransition changes and the existence of large individual differences in reactions to work transitions that seem to be partly explained by event-related characteristics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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揭示工作转变与自尊和生活满意度之间的复杂关系。

工作和下班的转变是常见的经历，对人们的生活产生重大影响。然而，工作转变和心理调整之间的复杂联系尚不清楚。在这项预先注册的研究中，我们分析了来自 13,671 名荷兰参与者的代表性样本的 11 波纵向数据，以检验重复工作转换（就业和失业）与心理调整（自尊和生活满意度）之间的交易效应。我们研究了转型前后的变化轨迹，并测试了事件相关特征是否调节了转型效应。自尊和生活满意度较高的参与者经历失业的可能性较小，而更有可能经历就业，这表明选择效应。在失业开始之前，参与者的自尊和生活满意度下降，这表明存在预期效应，最终失业时间较长的参与者的自尊下降幅度更大。我们发现就业对生活满意度或自尊的变化没有影响（除非考虑到失业），但从事更令人满意的工作的参与者显示出生活满意度的更大提高。当考虑到性别、年龄、社会经济地位和大五特征以及使用倾向得分匹配时，结果大多是稳健的。同一转变的多次经历之间的效果没有差异。总之，这些发现表明就业/失业与自尊/生活满意度之间存在动态变化。研究结果强调了仔细评估过渡前后变化的具体时间的重要性，以及对工作过渡的反应存在巨大的个体差异，这似乎可以部分由事件相关的特征来解释。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。