Keywords

Employment-at-will; contracts; employer; employee; applicant; application

Abstract

Employment-at-will is the default legal framework governing most private-sector employment relationships in the United States, yet little research has examined how explicit employment-at-will language influences applicants’ psychological expectations before organizational entry. Drawing on signaling theory and psychological contract theory, the present study investigated whether the inclusion of an employment-at-will statement in a job advertisement affected relational psychological contract development, anticipated job insecurity, organizational attractiveness, perceptions of psychological contract breach, emotional reactions, and withdrawal intentions. Undergraduate students (N = 253) were recruited through the University of Central Florida’s SONA research participation system. After data screening, the final analytic sample consisted of 76 participants. Using a between-subjects experimental design, participants were randomly assigned to view either a job advertisement containing explicit employment-at-will language or an otherwise identical advertisement without the statement. Participants then completed measures assessing recruitment-stage perceptions before responding to a hypothetical psychological contract breach scenario. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that the employment-at-will manipulation did not produce a statistically significant multivariate effect across the combined dependent variables. Follow-up univariate analyses likewise revealed no significant differences between conditions on any individual outcome measure. Although the experimental manipulation was not supported, correlational analyses demonstrated theoretically meaningful relationships among psychological contract expectations, anticipated job insecurity, organizational attractiveness, breach perceptions, emotional reactions, and withdrawal intentions. These findings suggest that merely including an employment-at-will statement in recruitment materials may not meaningfully influence applicants’ psychological perceptions. The study contributes to the literature by examining legal employment language as a recruitment signal and provides a foundation for future research investigating the conditions under which employment-at-will messaging may shape applicant attitudes and employment relationships.

Thesis Completion Year

2026

Thesis Completion Semester

Summer

Thesis Chair

Dr. Pace, Victoria

College

College of Sciences

Department

Psychology

Thesis Discipline

Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus Access

None

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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