Copyright © The British Psychological Society Reproduction in any form (including the internet) is prohibited without prior permission from the Society The impact of job insecurity and contract type on attitudes, well-being and behavioural reports: A psychological contract perspective Nele De Cuyper* and Hans De Witte Research Group Stress, Health and Well-being, Catholic University Leuven, Belgium Research on the impact of job insecurity for temporary employees has been largely exploratory and atheoretical in nature. This paper addresses this issue by considering the role of job insecurity on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, life satisfaction, and self-rated performance among permanent employees (N ¼ 396) as compared with temporary ones (N ¼ 148). Hypotheses are formulated using the tradition of transactional versus relational psychological contract types. Psychological contract theory assumes (1) that job insecurity effects are due to a violation of the relational psychological contract, and (2) that permanents as compared with temporaries engage more in relational psychological contracting. As a result, job insecurity is expected to be problematic in terms of outcomes for permanents, but not for temporaries. Results validate the assumptions made in psychological contract theory. Furthermore, job insecurity proved problematic for permanents but not for temporaries when job satisfaction and organizational commitment are concerned. No such differential effects are observed for life satisfaction and self-rated performance. Implications for future research are discussed. Along with the increased incidence of temporary employment throughout Europe (Brewster, Mayne, & Tregaskis, 1997), a growing body of psychological literature has warned against its detrimental effects for the individual. This has been described in the flexible firm model (Atkinson, 1984) where temporaries are associated with the organization’s periphery, which, in turn, has been associated with less favourable job characteristics (e.g. Beard & Edwards, 1995; Saloniemi, Virtanen, & Vahtera, 2004; Millward & Brewerton, 1999). Furthermore, general theoretical frameworks (e.g. the vitamin model; Warr, 1994) include stressors that are exacerbated in temporary employment arrangements, the most prominent of which is job insecurity (Bu ¨ssing, 1999; Klandermans & Van Vuuren, 1999; Pearce, 1998): temporaries as compared with permanents are consistently higher on job insecurity (De Witte & Na ¨swall, 2003; Kinnunen & Na ¨tti, 1994; Parker, Griffin, Sprigg, & Wall, 2002). These observations have *Correspondence should be addressed to Nele De Cuyper, Research Group Stress, Health and Well-being, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, 3000 Leuven, Belgium (e-mail: nele.decuyper@psy.kuleuven.be). The British Psychological Society 395 Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2006), 79, 395–409 q 2006 The British Psychological Society www.bpsjournals.co.uk DOI:10.1348/096317905X53660