Traditionally, research on emotional labor examines affective consequences through a within-day stressor-strain framework based on the initial impact model. However, the accumulation-effect model posits that emotional labor yields lagged consequences, making cross-day relationships critical yet understudied. This study initially investigated this across-day process through affective inertia, defined as the tendency for emotional states to persist over time. Using daily diary data from 110 preschool teachers across 10 workdays, we employed random effects and autoregressive models to examine these temporal dynamics. Challenging the conventional unidirectional assumption, our findings reveal a cyclical process driven by a reverse causal pathway. Specifically, prior-day exhaustion significantly predicted the subsequent day's affective state, indicating that apparent affective inertia is largely attributable to exhaustion carryover. After accounting for this reverse dynamic, the direct lagged effects of emotion regulation emerged: Prior-day surface acting predicted increased exhaustion 2 days later, whereas prior-day deep acting predicted reduced exhaustion. This study advances the stressor-strain literature by proposing a cyclical mechanism wherein exhaustion actively perpetuates subsequent strain. The theoretical and practical implications of this dynamic model are discussed.
Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we assess whether financial worries may explain why co-occurring macrolevel objective and subjective stressors (i.e., increased food prices, energy prices, safety concerns; jointly constituting a resource loss caravan) affect the level and development of employee exhaustion and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). By doing so, we investigate how and when macrolevel stressors spill over into the work sphere, affecting individuals' work-related experiences. We conducted a 6-wave longitudinal study with German participants (N = 241 at Time 1) in 2022 and 2023 against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which caused an energy crisis and inflation across Europe. As hypothesized, the macrolevel stressors predicted higher levels of exhaustion, mediated by financial worries. Surprisingly, the macrolevel stressors predicted a stronger (and not a weaker) decrease in exhaustion over time. The macrolevel stressors marginally predicted the level of OCB and did not predict changes in OCB. Our results support the effects of combined objective and subjective macrolevel stressors on employees, contributing to research on conservation of resources theory at the macro-micro intersection.
Wartime deployment is a significant stressor for military families, particularly spouses of reserve soldiers, who must navigate abrupt transitions to new roles and responsibilities. However, limited research has examined the psychological well-being of these spouses during active conflicts. The present study aimed to examine the levels of satisfaction with life (SWL) and subjective happiness among spouses of Israeli nonprofessional reserve soldiers during the ongoing Israel-Hamas War and to identify sociodemographic, deployment-related, mental health, and psychological protective factors associated with these outcomes. A total of 293 female spouses of reserve soldiers participated in this cross-sectional study. Data were assessed with validated self-report questionnaires between April and June 2024. Results show that despite high levels of psychological distress, participants reported moderate levels of SWL and happiness. Younger age, higher income, success in household management, and self-compassion positively predicted SWL. Happiness was negatively associated with perceived stress and depression. Importantly, social support and meaning in life emerged as significant protective factors for both SWL and happiness. These findings indicate that spouses of reserve soldiers may maintain meaningful levels of positive well-being alongside significant distress during wartime deployment. The results highlight the clinical importance of strengthening psychological resources, particularly social support, self-compassion, and meaning making, in interventions aimed at promoting the well-being among military spouses during active conflict.
The effort-reward imbalance (ERI) model plays a crucial role in explaining workplace stress, with extensive empirical evidence highlighting its negative impact on employees' mental and physical health. However, few studies have examined how employees' past ERI perceptions shape their emotional reactions to present ERI from a temporal perspective, leading to the partial absence of an ERI narrative. Integrating the temporal and stress appraisal theory, we developed a temporal ERI model, which supposes that (in)congruence between current and past ERI may yield different results and explanations when predicting individual stress responses compared to the traditional ERI model. Using polynomial regression and response surface analysis on two-wave panel data from 2,717 employees in a Japanese manufacturing company, we found that psychological distress peaked when current and past ERI diverged from each other in either direction. Additionally, future job uncertainty mediates a part of this (in)congruence effect. These findings highlight the need to incorporate a temporal construct, ERI (in)congruence, into the existing model, which can explain the additional variance of stress-related outcomes, thereby completing ERI story. Stabilizing ERI perceptions, even in imbalanced conditions, may mitigate distress by reducing uncertainty, offering a novel insight for organizational stress management.
Appraising stressors as either challenges or hindrances has been known to influence various individual and workplace outcomes. Assessing workplace stressors, their corresponding appraisals, and outcomes at a single point in time or even in a longitudinal time frame fails to capture the potential richness of how the interplay between these variables unfolds at the daily level. Drawing from the challenge-hindrance stress framework, we employed a daily diary design to investigate the day-level associations between challenge and hindrance appraisals of emotional demands (EDs), role conflict (RC), and role overload (RO) and job satisfaction and job performance, respectively. A sample of 123 working adults completed the daily diaries tapping into stressors, appraisals, and outcomes over the course of four consecutive days. To estimate the between- and within-person mediation effects, we deployed a two-level multilevel mediation analysis. At the between-person level, challenge appraisals mediated the relationship between EDs, RC, and RO with job performance and job satisfaction; EDs and RO had significant and negative associations with job satisfaction. Appraising EDs as challenges had also a negative association with job satisfaction. Moreover, appraising RC and RO as challenges was associated with job performance at the within-person level. No significant associations between the stressor appraisals and the focal outcomes were observed at the between-person level. Overall, the current investigation contributes to understanding the challenge-hindrance stress framework by uncovering the dynamics on a daily basis.
The beneficial effects of health behaviors on job performance are well documented. Specifically, engaging in practices such as obtaining sufficient quality and quantity of sleep, maintaining regular physical activity, and following a nutritious diet has been linked to enhanced functioning and improved work-related outcomes. While some research has explored the role of energy in the context of health behaviors and job performance, investigations examining energy as an underlying mechanism in this relationship remain limited and fragmented. The present study addresses this gap by investigating energy-particularly its emotional, mental, and physical dimensions-as a potential mediator between health behaviors and performance. Utilizing a daily-diary design, data were collected from 72 participants, and proposed direct and indirect effects were tested using multilevel path analyses. The findings support significant fixed effects of the health behaviors studied on three-dimensional energy and performance. Broadly, individuals who more consistently engage in healthy lifestyle behaviors reported higher energy levels and demonstrated stronger task and contextual performance. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.
Grounded in conservation of resources theory, this study investigates how emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and its outcomes, such as complaining behavior and employee voice, within the workplace context. It also reveals a negative association between complaining behavior and employee voice. Conducted with 450 employees from a large plastic corporation in Taiwan, this study utilized a time-lag design and structural equation modeling to mitigate common method bias and ensure unbiased estimates. The findings indicate that authoritarian leadership positively influences complaining behavior while negatively impacting employee voice, with emotional exhaustion mediating these relationships. Additionally, the study underscores the theoretical model's applicability in understanding the directional effects of complaining behavior on employee voice in organizational contexts. This study contributes theoretical insights and practical implications for future studies in human resource management.
The study presents the development and validation of a multidimensional scale designed to assess negative capability, which encompasses the ability of employees to navigate ambiguity, uncertainty, and emotional complexity within demanding work settings. The study involved qualitative interviews with 49 intensive care unit personnel, including nurses, technicians, administrators, and therapists from both public and private health care institutions, utilizing a sequential mixed methods approach to explore the construct in depth. Subsequent to the item generation phase, 574 nondoctoral intensive care unit employees from public hospitals participated in both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Furthermore, 513 individuals working in private health care facilities engaged in a nomological evaluation and a second-order confirmatory factor analysis to rigorously test the scale's validity. The findings substantiated a five-factor model of negative capability, encompassing tolerance of ambiguity, strategic patience, emotional containment, reflective restraint, and adaptive openness. The 33-item scale exhibited robust validity and reliability, demonstrating significant relationships with psychological resilience, workplace adaptability, and burnout. This investigation enhances the domain of occupational health psychology by equipping organizations, particularly in the health care sector, with a methodologically sound instrument to gain insights into and bolster employees' capacities to manage stress and uncertainty in high-pressure environments.
This study explores the crossover mechanisms of emotions and experiences between leaders and followers, with particular focus on how gender shapes these dynamics within leader-follower pairs. Drawing on Westman's (2001) crossover model, we conducted an exploratory vignette study with 190 working professionals and MBA students. Through qualitative analysis of participants' responses to a single open-ended question following scenarios depicting positive and negative leader-follower interactions, we found support for all three of Westman's proposed crossover mechanisms, with indirect crossover emerging as the dominant pathway. The study revealed multiple indirect crossover mechanisms, including general affect and discrete emotions, perceptions of leader support, and work attitudes. Gender differences were observed, with female dyads showing stronger responses to positive scenarios and male dyads demonstrating slightly more intense reactions to negative scenarios. The findings contribute to crossover and leadership theory by illuminating how leader influence operates through the transmission of emotions and experiences beyond traditional behavioral mechanisms. Our results suggest that organizations should expand leadership development programs to include awareness and management of emotional crossover processes while accounting for gender-specific dynamics. The study provides a foundation for future research on gender dynamics and boundary conditions in leader-follower crossover processes.
Employees' prohibitive voice is important for organizational success, as it may help to reduce or prevent current and future losses. However, expressing prohibitive voice involves social risks and may therefore incur personal costs for employees. Drawing on the approach-avoidance framework and the spillover hypothesis, this daily diary study examines the ways prohibitive voice can have a negative cross-domain effect on employees' nonwork lives by giving rise to work-life conflict. We propose an affective pathway (via anxiety) and a resource-based pathway (via ego depletion) as the mechanisms through which this effect may run. The final sample included 89 employees. Analyses were based on survey data from up to five consecutive workdays and three daily measures (k = 349). Results from a multilevel path model showed that employees' morning prohibitive voice was positively associated with anxiety and ego depletion in the afternoon. Ego depletion was further positively related to work-life conflict in the evening. Mediation analysis suggested that the effect of morning prohibitive voice reaches through to evening work-life conflict via a resource-depletion pathway. Overall, our findings indicate that prohibitive voice can interfere with employees' after-work lives by depleting their regulatory resources.
Anchored in the job demands-resources model, this study examined the effects of an online self-training job crafting intervention specifically designed for remote work. The intervention's effectiveness was tested on job crafting behaviors, work engagement, job boredom, work-to-home conflict, and remote work performance, using an experimental design with randomized intervention and control groups. Participants (N = 87) completed the pre- and postintervention measurements through an online survey. Results revealed that the intervention led to an increase in seeking social resources in the intervention group, relative to preintervention levels and to the control group. Results also indicated a buffering effect of the intervention on seeking challenge job demands. No effect was found on reducing hindrance job demands, while a decrease in seeking structural resources was observed in the intervention group. The intervention did not significantly impact work engagement, job boredom, and remote work performance. Nonetheless, results indicated a decrease in work-to-home conflict among participants in the intervention group after the intervention, relative to preintervention levels. These findings hold both theoretical and practical value by suggesting that job crafting interventions offer a promising, though improvable, approach to promote remote workers' job crafting behaviors and functioning at the work-home interface.
Drawing on conservation of resources theory and the shift-and-persist model, this study examines the dual effects of negative family events on work engagement and builds a model to explore the underlying mechanisms. We first conducted an experiment (N = 176) to test the mediation hypotheses and then performed a questionnaire survey (N = 314) to examine the moderated mediation model. The results revealed that negative family events have a double-edged impact on work engagement: a negative effect via family-work conflict and a positive effect through work-family compensation. Furthermore, family motivation positively moderated the relationship between negative family events and work-family compensation, thereby strengthening the positive indirect effect on work engagement. These findings highlight the complexity of the relationship between negative family events and work engagement, emphasizing the importance of individual motivation in shaping resource recovery and management processes. The study provides valuable insights for both theoretical development and organizational practices aimed at supporting employees to navigate the challenges posed by family stressors.
By drawing on the transactional theory of stress, achievement goal theory, and self-determination theory, we tested whether controlled motivation and amotivation are mediating mechanisms in the relationship between stressors (i.e., perceived performance climate and challenge stressors) and reduced professional efficacy (strain indicator). The results from a two-wave study including 1,081 engineers and technologists show that employees who perceive a performance climate and challenge stressors experience controlled work motivation and amotivation, which, in turn, fuel their perceptions of reduced professional efficacy. Our findings also illustrate that amotivation is the predominant mechanism in the stressor-strain relationship, thereby advancing understanding of its underlying process. Our results have important practical implications for how leaders can prevent the evolvement of employees' controlled motivation and amotivation.
This sequential mixed methods research examined whether cognitive crafting-changing the perceptions of one's work-enhances work outcomes in rigid, low-autonomy jobs. Study 1 surveyed 526 subway drivers, finding that cognitive crafting was more strongly related to work meaningfulness, job satisfaction, work engagement, person-job fit, and occupational commitment than task or relational crafting. Study 2, a randomized controlled trial with 108 subway drivers, tested a 6-week cognitive crafting program (workshop and guided practice). Compared to controls, participants reported higher cognitive crafting, meaningful work, job satisfaction, work engagement, and occupational commitment; person-job fit was higher between groups but showed no within-group change. Task and relational crafting did not change, suggesting intervention specificity. Mediation analyses indicated that work meaningfulness linked cognitive crafting to downstream outcomes. Findings highlight cognitive crafting as a compensatory strategy in constrained work contexts and offer guidance for context-sensitive workplace interventions.
Individual differences may moderate music therapy's effectiveness for anxiety reduction. This randomized controlled trial (N = 150) examined the effects of relaxing music, vitality music, or active control conditions on anxiety and physiological measures among college students following stress induction. Relaxing music produced substantial anxiety reduction (39% decrease), significantly outperforming vitality music (15% decrease) and active control (16% decrease). Vitality music showed no therapeutic advantage over control, challenging assumptions about universal music therapy benefits. Physiological measures confirmed these effects: Relaxing music enhanced parasympathetic activation and reduced sympathetic arousal compared to other conditions. Personality moderation analyses were underpowered, limiting conclusions about individual differences. Exploratory findings suggested potential effects of openness to experience requiring validation in larger samples. These findings establish relaxing music as an effective anxiety intervention while demonstrating that benefits depend on specific musical characteristics rather than music per se. Results support implementing targeted relaxing music protocols in campus mental health services, moving beyond generic approaches to evidence-based, characteristic-specific interventions.
Accurate comparison of stress across countries is important in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and in a postpandemic world. To date, there is no universal stress measure available that is invariant across widely spoken languages and that possesses the precision of an interval scale. This study applied Rasch methodology to examine and enhance measurement characteristics of the widely used 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) and to establish measurement invariance across 25 languages using data from the COVIDiSTRESS global survey (n > 75,000). The partial-credit Rasch model was used to achieve the best unidimensional model fit, using subtest to control for local dependency stemming from method effects. In a series of country specific subtest analyses, the PSS-10 met the expectations of the Rasch model in all samples besides Filipino. In all samples, the PSS-10 was unbiased by language, age or sex, confirming its invariance across language versions. Results permitted the creation of a global conversion algorithm to transform the ordinal PSS-10 scores into universal interval-level data, affording valid comparisons of stress scores around the globe with high precision. This conversion does not require alteration of the original scale format and can be conducted using tables published in this article.
Persistent externalizing behavior is a prevalent issue that can escalate into criminal activities and recidivism if left untreated. Given the negative consequences, it is important to improve the effectiveness of interventions that target externalizing behavior. Elevated stress levels are often associated with persistent externalizing behavior, suggesting that stress-reducing approaches may enhance therapeutic outcomes. This meta-analysis therefore examines the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) in reducing stress and externalizing behavior in adolescents and adults with persistent externalizing behavior. It also evaluates whether MBIs combined with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) yield greater effects than MBIs alone and explores potential differences in effectiveness between adolescents and adults. A total of 22 studies (23 reports), comprising 89 effect sizes and 1,474 participants (796 experimental, 678 control), were included. Three-level meta-analytic techniques were used to account for heterogeneity within and between studies. Moderator analyses were conducted for intervention type, sample, publication, and study design characteristics. A significant overall effect was found for MBIs in reducing stress and externalizing behavior. Interventions combining MBIs with CBT were more effective than MBIs alone. Contrary to expectations, no significant differences were observed between adolescents and adults in the effectiveness of MBIs. The results of this multilevel meta-analysis highlight the effectiveness of MBIs in treating persistent externalizing problem behavior in both adolescents and adults. The findings underscore the increased efficacy of MBIs when integrated with CBT, emphasizing their potential in addressing (persistent) externalizing behavior.
This study aimed to examine the relationship between occupational stress and anxiety/depressive symptoms among employees and evaluate the potential moderating role of occupational health literacy in this relationship. The results suggested that occupational stress increased the risk of anxiety/depressive symptoms. The association of occupational stress with anxiety/depressive symptoms was mitigated with higher levels of occupational health literacy. This study is the first to demonstrate the protective moderating effect of occupational health literacy on the association between occupational stress and anxiety/depressive symptoms among employees, providing valuable reference for future research on the prevention of anxiety/depressive symptoms related to occupational stress.
Passion Toward Work is gaining popularity due to its positive outcomes. However, the instruments to assess this passion possess psychometric limitations still unresolved, especially for specific workers. This study aims to replicate and propose a shortened Spanish version of the nine-item Passion Toward Work Scale for health care workers. Eight hundred sixty-seven health care workers participated, with the total sample filling the shortened six-item scale and 315 participants completing the original nine-item version. Exploratory structural equation model showed excellent fit indices for the reduced six-item scale, validating three items for harmonious passion and three items for obsessive passion. Invariance analysis confirmed that this harmonious and obsessive passion possess the same meaning and structure regardless of gender, job position, and work experience. Also, the findings demonstrated the criterion validity of the reduced scale in predicting secondary traumatic stress. This study encourages using this six-item scale for assessing workers when time is limited, especially at work. We emphasize the importance of developing better instruments to measure passion toward work considering work-related factors, emotions and recovery activities to distinguish between both passions.
