Patterns of optimism and employee well-being – a person-oriented approach to explanatory style in hungarian employees

Abstract

Employee well-being is increasingly recognized as a key aspect of individual and organizational performance. Optimistic mindset – conceptualized as explanatory style of interpretation of positive and negative events – is an important aspect of employee well-being. The present study aims to explore different types of explanatory styles in Hungarian employees in relation to their well-being and relies on a recently developed situational judgment test of the optimistic mindset, the MQ Test (Kovács – Martos, 2017) measuring optimism as a reaction to positive and negative situations. In the present study, cross-sectional data of 992 Hungarian employees were analyzed using a person-oriented approach (Bergman – Lundh, 2015). Cluster analysis revealed five patterns of explanations for positive and negative events that were tentatively labeled as ‘Winner’, ‘Fighter’, ’Lucky’, ’Survivor’ and ’Wonder seeker’ clusters. Associations of the clusters with well-being indices (self-efficacy, self-esteem and life satisfaction) indicated that there are significant differences between the cluster members. Results are interpreted with regard to the potential resources and weaknesses of the five strategies in organizational functioning as well as to the possibility of using explanatory style development in job related trainings.