Values guide our attitudes and behavior, but to what extent and how do individual values determine our overall well-being? Self-determination theory holds that particular types of values (i.e., intrinsic or extrinsic) matter most, but the person-environment fit perspective argues that any values can be beneficial as long as they align with values prevalent in one’s environment. The evidentiary support for these competing claims is inconclusive. We use the World Value Survey to see how these perspectives do in predicting life satisfaction, happiness, and health in youngsters aged 18 to 30 around the world. Our results generally confirm hypotheses derived from self-determination theory, showing that the type of values held by youngsters and the type of values prevailing in their environments account for significant variation in young peoples’ life satisfaction, happiness, and health. The pattern of evidence suggests that youngsters benefit from attaching greater importance to intrinsic values related to affiliation and community contribution rather than to extrinsic values that relate to financial success and accumulation of power.

Answering the call for a more theory-driven approach in recruitment research, this article integrates insights from self-determination theory and value congruence to account for the attractiveness of respectable organizations (projecting an image of sustainability and social responsibility) and impressive organizations (projecting an image of high profitability and prestige). We argue that respectable organizations mostly appeal to job seekers pursuing intrinsic personal values (e.g., self-development, satisfactory social relationships), and that impressive organizations mostly appeal to those pursuing extrinsic personal values (e.g., financial success, high esteem). We tested these hypotheses in a vignette study among 188 students. Results partially supported the hypotheses. Although intrinsic personal values did not increase the attractiveness of respectable organizations, extrinsic values increased the attractiveness of impressive organizations.

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There is an ongoing debate about how supervisors should communicate desired end‐states to subordinates, that is, whether they should set concrete goals (according to goal setting theory) or communicate abstract visions (according to transformational leadership theory). In this paper, we draw on construal level theory (CLT) to reconcile both views and develop a model of when supervisors communicating concrete goals versus abstract visions are seen as more effective. According to CLT, being psychologically removed from (vs. near to) an event or object makes people construe the event or object in a more abstract (vs. concrete) way, which, in turn, leads people to process abstract (vs. concrete) information more fluently and thus evaluate the sender of this information more favorably. Accordingly, supervisor effectiveness may be higher in conditions where communication and psychological distance to the supervisor converge (vision/far and goals/close) rather than diverge (vision/close and goals/far). We tested this hypothesis in two experiments, using different operationalizations of psychological distance. In these studies, we found supervisor effectiveness to be higher when vision was communicated at a far versus near distance and goals were communicated at a near versus far distance.

Technological innovations, among which the use of video interviews in personnel selection, are welcomed by organizations for reasons such as reductions in cost and time and the ability to reach a more global labour market. The literature to date suggests that applicants do not share this enthusiasm and feel less attracted towards organizations that use video interviews versus face-to-face interviews. In this study, we extended the literature by studying pre-instead of post-test reactions and testing two explanatory mechanisms, namely expected chances to demonstrate potential and to use nonverbal cues. In a first within-subjects experiment among 38 students, the results of two t-tests showed that participants preferred the face-to-face interview above the video interview and that they expected lower chances to demonstrate potential and to use nonverbal cues in the video interview. In a second betweensubjects experiment among 121 potential job seekers, these results were partially replicated. The results of a t-test and a mediation bootstrap analysis with PROCESS showed a significant indirect effect of interview medium on organizational attraction via expected chances to demonstrate potential but not via expected opportunities to use nonverbal communication. This study has important practical implications for organizations in the current context of talent shortages.