The WSC lab conducts research across multiple categories within I/O Psychology. Expand the options below to see excerpts from some of our most recent journal publications:
AI & Robots
Mejia, C., Crandell, H., Broker, E., & Shoss, M. K. (2024). Working with service robots in the dining room: Employees’ perspectives and realities. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology: Special Issue on Human-Robotic Interactions in Hospitality and Tourism: Opportunities, Challenges, and Advancements, and Beyond, 15, 878-896.
“[R]esearch revealed that restaurant and foodservice workers who regularly
use service robots in the dining room experience a complex set of issues and challenges related to robot reliability, management training and support, leveraging the robot to entertain the customer, feelings of dread, anger and frustration, and indications of decreased physical exertion as a proxy for well-being.”
Shoss, M. K., & Ciarlante, K. (2022). Are robots/AI viewed as more of a workforce threat in unequal societies? Evidence from the Eurobarometer survey. Technology, Mind, and Behavior: Special Issue in Work, Technology, and Inequality. https://tmb.apaopen.org/pub/rv1x9zq4/release/2
” Utilizing the Eurobarometer 87.1 dataset, we found that country inequality, as operationalized via the Gini Index, was positively associated with perceptions that AI/robots pose threats of general job loss….These findings advance theory on inequality and suggest that the broader context—both objective and perceived—may play a role in how people view disruption associated with AI/robots at work.”
Selenko, E., Bankins, S., Shoss, M. K., Warbuton, J. †, & Restubog, S. (2022). Artificial intelligence and the future of work: A functional-identity perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 31, 272-279.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09637214221091823
“[W]e propose a functional-identity framework to examine AI’s effects on people’s work-related self-understandings and the social environment at work. We argue that the conditions for AI to either enhance or threaten workers’ sense of identity derived from their work depends on how the technology is functionally deployed (by complementing tasks, replacing tasks, and/or generating new tasks) and how it affects the social fabric of work.”
Shoss, M. K.,Behrend, T., Crandell, H., & Tracy, M. (2026). Health and stress and AI. In G. Yankov, I. Hernandez, & I. Thompson (Eds.),SIOP Handbook AI for I-O Psychologists: Research and Applications. SIOP Frontiers Series.
Job Insecurity & Precarious Work
Rudolph, C. Shoss, M., & Zacher, H. (2025). Dynamic and reciprocal relations between job insecurity and physical and mental health. Journal of Applied Psychology, 110(7- July), 948–962. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001259
“We find that lower physical health predicted subsequent increases in job insecurity and higher physical health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. However, job insecurity did not have a significant influence on physical health. Furthermore, higher job insecurity predicted subsequent decreases in mental health, and higher mental health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. This pattern of findings suggests a dynamic and reciprocal within-person process wherein positive deviations from one’s average trajectory of job insecurity are associated with subsequently lower levels of mental health and vice versa.”
Shoss, M. K., Min, H†., Horan, K. †, Schlotzhauer, A. E. †, Nigam, J. A. S., & Swanson, N. G. (2023). Risking one’s life to save one’s livelihood: Precarious work, presenteeism, and worry about disease exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 28(6), 363–379. doi: 10.1037/ocp0000366.
“[T]he findings suggest that precarity related to being able to keep one’s job and a sense of powerlessness at work contribute to concerns about the risk of COVID-19 exposure at work and, simultaneously, behaviors that may contribute to the health risks faced by others. This research provides added support to the argument that precarious work should be addressed in order to improve both worker well-being and public health.”
Shoss, M. K., Su, S., Schlotzhauer, A.†, Carusone, N.† (2023). Working hard or hardly working? An examination of job preservation responses to job insecurity. Journal of Management, 49, 2387-2414. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206322110787
Employee Adaptation to Change
Shoss, M. K. & Kueny, C. (2022). From speculation to substantiation: Empirically-testing societal changes in impact of fit on job satisfaction from 1989, 1998, 2006, and 2016. Group & Organization Management, 47, 1181-1217.https://doi.org/10.1177/10596011211058545
“[W]e analyzed repeated large-scale population surveys in the United States to examine the impact of fit between desiring and receiving job characteristics on job satisfaction across four time points (1989, 1998, 2006, and 2016). Moderated polynomial regression analyses indicated that employees in more recent years experience greater dissatisfaction by deficiencies in intrinsically-rewarding job characteristics.”