The Effect of Gender and Work Experience on Psychological Attributes at Workplace

Abstract

For the past few years,the focus of the organizational psychologist is to work on creating a positive workplace environment and focusing on studying the perceived positive psychological attributes at the workplace. One of the primary reasons behind it is to develop and maintain a cordial and positive work climate for employees to have better interpersonal relations, violence-free climate, manager-employee relations, organizational policies, motivators, etc. All these psychological factors may influence the work environment in both a positive and negative manner. One of the perceived positive psychological attributes at the workplace is work locus of control, which describes whether employees reason out internal or external factors as the reason behind their actions and decisions. This might be leading to aggression and violence at the workplace, and thereby their personal growth might get influence. Hence, the present study aimed to explore the effect of gender and years of experience on the psychological constructs- violence prevention climate, work locus of control, and personal growth initiative using a 2x2 factorial design. For standardized scales pertaining to work locus of control, violence prevention climate and personal growth were administered on a sample of 200 employees (both male and female). The findings of the study highlighted that there was no significant gender difference on the three psychological constructs. However, years of experience did have a substantial effect on personal growth initiative and work locus of control. Additionally, a significant difference between years of experience on “practices and response” and “pressure for unsafe practices” dimension of violence prevention climate was also obtained.