Gravitational Hypothesis

Cognitive Ability, Mobility, and Person–Job Match

Although the context within which workers are moving, the labor market or the market where workers find work and organizations find employees, was a focus of mobility researchers for years, the gravitational hypothesis placed a lens specifically on workers'characteristics. The state of the labor market, such as whether jobs were plentiful or not, was a key contextual factor for the frequency and type of worker mobility. Frequency is the rate or speed with which workers move across jobs in the labor market. Type of mobility is the direction of movement: upward, downward, or lateral. In some research, type of mobility is determined by the change in the salary of the work. An upward move denotes a move to a job with a higher salary than the job held previously, a downward move denotes a move to a job with a lower salary than the job held previously, and a lateral move denotes a move to a job with the same salary as that held previously. In a labor market where jobs are plentiful, workers are expected to move more frequently and have greater opportunities to move to work with higher wages. The worker's characteristics played a decidedly backseat role in the mobility process.

The gravitational hypothesis suggested that worker characteristics, specifically general cognitive ability, should play a more central role in understanding the mobility of workers in the labor market. Moreover, type of mobility should relate directly to whether or not workers gravitate to work that matches their cognitive ability level. Upward moves suggest a move to work of greater cognitive demands than the work held previously. Downward moves would suggest a move to work of lesser cognitive demands and lateral moves would suggest a move to work of the same cognitive demands compared with the job held previously. Although higher salaries were always preferred over lower ones, this conceptualization of mobility type requires a more complicated calculus to determine whether one move would be preferred to another. Both worker cognitive ability and job cognitive demands need to be considered and the match between them evaluated. Sometimes improving the match requires a move down in job demands and sometimes it requires a move up.

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