We investigate the mechanisms that underpin the establishment of a psychological contract breach using an intra-individual procedure. Thirty-seven distinct storylines reveal how selected stimuli shake employees' psychological contracts to attention and cause perceptions of breach as a result of an iterative process of disrupting (introducing triggers that prompt a shift from automatic processing to conscious attention of psychological contract terms), appraisal (revealing elements—goals, attribution, fairness, and resources—playing a role in appraising and making sense of triggers), and (problem-solving).
