Seth Kaplan

George Mason University

Assistant Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology

skaplan1@gmu.edu
703-993-8475

Research

My interest is in the psychological experience of work, broadly defined. Here are some current topics that our lab is investigating . . .

1) How can employees make their jobs more meaningful?

Amanda Anderson and I, along with several other students, are developing an intervention to help employees improve their workplace emotions and sense of job-related meaningfulness.

2) The effects of subliminal affective primes on task performance

Xiaoxiao Hu is doing some really interesting work examining how subliminal cues impact how we feel about work tasks and how we perform on those tasks.

3) How accurate are we in predicting how we will feel at work?

Jill Bradley and I, along with several graduate students, are examining whether people really know how they feel while at work? Our findings suggest that people tend to report being feeling better at work than they predict they will feel. This holds even for longtime employees. . .suggesting that we do not "learn" about or correct our misperceptions of what work feels like.

4) How can we train leaders to help employees manage their emotions?

Jose Cortina and I, along with several graduate students, are investigating what leaders can do to help employees manage their emotions and how we can train leaders in this area.

5) How should teams communicate during crises?

Mary Waller, Ron Vega, Kate LaPort, and Suzette Tassin and I are examining how pilots communicate with each other during crises and how we can train them to do so in the most effective ways.

Graduate Students

I am fortunate enough to advise three wondeful students!!

Amanda Anderson

Xiaoxiao Hu

Ronald Vega

Former Students

Alicia Stachowski completed her doctoral dissertation in 2011 and now is an Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Representative Publications

Barsky, A.P. & Kaplan, S.A. (2007). If you feel bad, it’s unfair: A quantitative synthesis of affect and organizational justice perceptions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 286-295.

Barsky, A.P., Kaplan, S.A., & Beal, D. (2011). Just feelings?: The role of affect in the formation of organizational fairness judgments. Journal of Management, 37,248-279.

Kaplan, S.A. Polychronicity in work teams: A theoretical examination of antecedents and consequences. In R.A. Roe, M.J. Waller, & S. Clegg (Eds.), Time in Organizational Research: Approaches and Methods (pp. 103-126). Routledge: London.

Kaplan, S., Bradley, J.C., Luchman, J.N., & Haynes, D. (2009). On the role of positive and negative affectivity in job performance: A meta-analytic investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 162-162-176.

Kaplan, S.A., Santuzzi, A., & Ruscher, J.B. (2009). Elaborative metaperceptions in outcome-dependent situations: The diluted relationship between default self-perceptions and metaperceptions.Social Cognition, 27, 601-614.

Kaplan, S., Stahowski, A., Hawkins, L., Kurtessis, J. (2010). Canaries in the coalmine: On the measurement and correlates of organizational threat recognition. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 19, 587-614.

Kaplan, S., & Tetrick, L.E. (2010). Accidents: An industrial organizational psychology perspective. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 455-472). Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

Stachowski, A.*, Kaplan, S.A.*, & Waller, M.J. (2009). The benefits of flexible team interaction during crises. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1536-1543.

Thoresen , C.J., Kaplan, S.A., Barsky, A., Warren, C.R., & deChermont, K. (2003). The affective underpinnings of job perceptions and attitudes: A meta-analytic review and integration. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 914-945.

Zyphur, M. J., Kaplan, S. A., & Christian, M.S. (2008). A note on assumptions of invariance made in the analysis of multilevel data: Problems and solutions. Group Dynamics, 12, 127-140.

Links

Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Academy of Management

American Psychological Association

George Mason Univerity

George Mason Univeristy I/O

Tulane University