Resistance to Change

In the social sciences, affect and resistance to change have been hypothesized to be correlated with one another as far back as the first resistance to change studies conducted by Coch and French in 1948. Yet, little has been said both theoretically and empirically about affect as a possible cause of resistance to change. The purpose of this quantitative study is to establish a causal connection between dispositional and situational affect, both directly and indirectly (through organizational support), to resistance to change. A classroom intervention was given to test whether pre levels of affect and perceived organizational support had a causal impact on resistance to change. Latent growth models were created to evaluate these relationships and to allow the inferring of causality. Due to a lack of change in resistance over time, there was not enough variance to capture through the independent variables. However, results provide increased clarity into how the various affect sub-categories (i.e. dispositional, situational, positive, and negative) interrelate with one another.