Sickness absence and the role of personality, human values and attitudes: Experimental and longitudinal studies

This thesis provides new knowledge about psychological dispositions that are potentially important for understanding sick leave behaviour. Using survey and registry data, the analyses concentrate on sickness absence and the role of personality, human values and attitudes. The first paper finds that personality dimensions seem to predict register-based sick leave, which usually constitutes absence due to more serious mental or somatic health conditions than shorter-term sick leave. The second paper suggests that human values provide guidance primarily in situations where the individual typically has a greater opportunity to assess whether sick leave is necessary, such as attitudes to sick leave and self-certified sick leave, while associations with register-based sick leave were not found. The third paper focuses on gender differences in attitudes to sick leave and concludes that gender differences in sick leave attitudes or sick leave norms are not important drivers of the gender gap in sickness absence, but the results indicate that employees face more tolerant sick leave norms in gender-dominated occupations compared to gender-balanced occupations