Research
Below, I summarize my key programs of research that are interconnected.
Person–Situation Interactions
The first area of my interest is the interplay between personal and situational characteristics, hence person–situation interactions (aka. interactionism). I study person–situation interactions as they pertain to workplace settings, with an emphasis on the situation side. Specifically, I am interested in situational strength (i.e., strong versus weak situations) and its impact on individual work performance. Through multiple studies, I examined situational strength both as a traditional moderator of personality–job performance relationships and as a novel antecedent that directly influences employee outcomes. Some of my ongoing projects in this area include an integrative conceptual review aimed at synthesizing situational and personality strength literatures and a short measure development of situational strength for experience sampling contexts.
Kim, J. J., Son, M., Dalal, R. S., Baines, J. I., Bui, T. N., Tsai, H., Aranda, N., & Kaplan, S. A. (in press). Contextualizing personality–job performance relationships: A cultural tightness–looseness-based meta-analysis. Applied Psychology: An International Review.
DOI ↗Kim, J. J., Dalal, R. S., Aitken, J. A., Kaplan, S. A., Baines, J. I., Zhu, Z., & Hassani, J. (2026). Good versus bad situational strength? The relationship of within-person situational strength shift and stability with affect and job performance. Current Psychology, 45, 1111.
DOI ↗Kim, J. J., Son, M., & Dalal, R. S. (2024). Situational strength. Oxford Bibliographies in Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
DOI ↗Attitudes and Affect/Emotions at Work
My work in this topic broadly involves job attitudes and affect, but more specifically job boredom and work engagement. I am interested in why and how boredom is experienced at work and the underlying mechanisms that explain its relationships with employee performance outcomes and well-being outcomes. Additionally, my colleagues and I developed and tested ecological momentary interventions for emotion regulation, specifically cognitive reappraisal interventions that help employees manage workplace emotions and improve job performance through enhanced positive affect and reduced negative affect. In current projects, I study within-person associations between personality and work engagement, psychosocial effects of boredom and its implications in organizations, and relationships between job boredom and extra-role behaviors.
Kim, J. J., Dalal, R. S., Aitken, J. A., Kaplan, S. A., Baines, J. I., Zhu, Z., & Hassani, J. (2026). Good versus bad situational strength? The relationship of within-person situational strength shift and stability with affect and job performance. Current Psychology, 45, 1111.
DOI ↗Aitken, J. A., Zhu, Z., Baines, J. I., Kim, J. J., Kaplan, S. A., Dalal, R. S., Hassani, J., & Gibson, J. L. (2025). Emotion regulation at work: A micro-randomized trial comparing three cognitive reappraisal interventions. Occupational Health Science, 9, 991–1021.
DOI ↗Kim, J. J., Kaplan, S. A., Aitken, J. A., & Ponce, L. P. (2025). An examination of the daily relationship between job boredom and later burnout and turnover intentions along with mitigating strategies. Current Psychology, 44, 8807–8822.
DOI ↗Zhu, Z., Aitken, J. A., Kim, J. J., Baines, J. I., Kaplan, S. A., Dalal, R. S., & Hassani, J. (2025). The emotion regulation intervention in the workplace: An ecological momentary approach and its impact on employee job performance. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 98, e70020.
DOI ↗Kim, J. J., Kaplan, S. A., Aitken, J. A., & Ponce, L. P. (2024). Within-person dynamics of job boredom and counterproductive work behavior: A latent change score modeling approach. Affective Science, 5, 273–279.
DOI ↗Park, J., Woo, S. E., & Kim, J. J. (2024). Attitudes toward artificial intelligence application at work: Scale development and validation. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 97(3), 920–951.
DOI ↗ [Top 10 most-cited paper published by the journal in 2024]Kim, J. J., Park, J., Sohn, Y. W., & Lim, J. I. (2021). Perceived overqualification, boredom, and extra-role behaviors: Testing a moderated mediation model. Journal of Career Development, 48(4), 400–414.
DOI ↗Employee Performance Behavior
This last area of interest is closely related to the above two areas. The construct of job performance is complex and multifaceted, but here, my interest largely revolves around extra-role performance behavior such as organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior. Specifically, I primarily focus on cognitive, affective, and social factors that influence, or are influenced by, employee performance, as well as boundary conditions that can help or harm performance. A current project in this realm revisits the criterion space and whether (and if so, to what extent) it has changed over time, given the increasingly changing nature of work today. In another project, my colleagues and I examine antecedents and outcomes of individuals' boundary-spanning behavior.
Aitken, J. A., Dalal, R. S., Kim, J. J., & Zhu, Z. (2025). The self-regulation of counterproductive work behavior: A conceptual replication of Aitken et al. (2024). Current Psychology, 44, 15510–15514.
DOI ↗Kim, J. J., Kaplan, S. A., Aitken, J. A., & Ponce, L. P. (2024). Within-person dynamics of job boredom and counterproductive work behavior: A latent change score modeling approach. Affective Science, 5, 273–279.
DOI ↗Kim, J. J., Park, J., Sohn, Y. W., & Lim, J. I. (2021). Perceived overqualification, boredom, and extra-role behaviors: Testing a moderated mediation model. Journal of Career Development, 48(4), 400–414.
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