Self-inconsistency or self-expansion from wearing multiple hats? The daily effects of enacting multiple professional identities on work meaningfulness.

Abstract

People increasingly support themselves through multiple jobholding-concurrently performing more than one job-and spend time enacting their professional identities each day. In accordance with self-consistency theory, scholars have emphasized that having to act out more than one professional identity promotes a fragmented sense of self for multiple jobholders, which impedes the meaningfulness of their work. However, we assert that this prevailing view about self-inconsistency is incomplete and problematic because it overlooks consideration for how enacting multiple professional identities may be a self-expanding and stimulating experience that satisfies basic needs for growth and exploration. By jointly applying self-expansion theory and self-consistency theory to the day-to-day experience of wearing multiple hats, we unpack how and why enacting multiple professional identities has countervailing implications for work meaningfulness through its effects on stimulation and self-alienation. We also consider the moderating role of identity contrast on these pathways to meaningfulness. We investigate our assertions in a series of preregistered studies-a comprehensive test of our model in a 15-day experience sampling study (Study 1) as well as constructive replications of each stage of our model (Study 2). Overall, we offer novel insights about the day-to-day tension between stimulation and self-alienation for people who act out multiple professional identities and the impact on the meaningfulness of their work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).