The purpose of the study was two‐fold. First, the study tested the claim suggested by Newman et al. (2011) (Human Resource Development Quarterly, 22, 37–47) that data from the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale appears to be redundant with the variance that is uniquely common to job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and job involvement. Second, the study tested the hypothesis that the variance in work engagement that is uniquely common to the set of job attitudes studied in Newman et al. is largely positive affect. Analyses not conducted in Newman et al. (2010) (Handbook of Employee Engagement: Perspectives, Issues, Research, and Practice, pp. 43–61) were performed to deconstruct the explained variance in work engagement into commonality coefficients representing all possible subsets of variables. The findings demonstrate that variance uniquely common to job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and job involvement did not dominate the regression effect as previously suggested. Further, the study found that almost 50% of the variance that was uniquely common to the job attitudes studied was common with positive affect. The results of this study will help scholars and scholar‐practitioners understand the complex relationships between work engagement, job attitudes, and positive affect.