Lecture 6 Chapter 10 (Stress & health &

Worker Well Being)

10.1 The Problem of Stress

1. Studying workplace stress

 Work stressors
 Task & Role stressors
 Moderators of the stress
process
 Individual differences
and social support
 Consequences of stress
 Burnout & heart
disease
 The origin of stress:
 Work demands (time pressure, emotional job demand, job insecurity, bullying)
 Work resources (job control, right tools to work with, social support, personal
development)
 Work-family conflict (balance work-private life demands)
 Changes at work (mental and emotional demand than physical, time pressure
deadlines, combine work and private life)
Consequences: complaints on mental strain (headache, fatigue, burnout) and
absenteeism and work incapacity: 33% stress related)
 Walter Cannon (the 1st to use the word “stress”): adaptive response to stressful situation
(fight or flight reaction). Ex: social support beneficial for long term health (ps: sudden short
time stress/episodic/acute stress)
 Hans Selye “FATHER OF STRESS”
 Defined stress as “the non-specific response of the human body to any demand
made on it”
 Eustress (good stress: motivate indv to workhard and meet goals) vs Distress (bad
stress: results from overtime stressful situations  negative health outcome)
 General Adaption Syndrome (GAS) ( ps: over time stress)
Alarm reaction (body cope with added stress: heart rate increase, release stress
hormones: adrenaline, noradrenaline, epinephrine and cortisol)  Resistance (body
cope with original source of stress, but resistance to other stressors is lowered) 
Exhaustion (overall resistance drops and adverse consequences: burnout, severe
illness, death unless stress is reduced)
 Recent studies: In addition to physiological reaction to stress, there is also a cognitive
appraisal of situation and of resources available to handle stressors
 Problem-focused coping
Managing/altering the problem causing the stress (Ex: time mgt plan and action plan
to handle a job)
 Emotion-focused coping
Reducing the emotional response to the problem (Ex: avoiding, minimizing, distance
oneself from problem or asking for social support from family)
2. What is a stressor? (limit of tolerance is dependent upon personal & situational factors like
bending and bouncing back of a ruler)

 Stressor: Physical or psychological demands to which an individual responds (look example

at the framework) Psycho: interpersonal conflict, lack of control
 Strains: Reaction or response to stressors

3. Common Stress at Work

 Physical/Task Stressors
 Have negative impacts on employee health (Ex: demands, noise)
 One type of stressor (physical/task) is not made less important by the presence of
another stressor ; Thus, effect of multiple stressors can be cumulative
 Psychological Stressors
 Lack of control/predictability
Perception of control determines his/her response to the situation. The perceptions
are affected by job characteristics and work environment; also related to autonomy
(Ex: Participative decision making and Flextime increases PoC by helping employees
to balance work and family
 Interpersonal conflict
o IC: negative interaction with co-workers, supervisors, or clients range from
heated arguments to subtle incidents of unfriendly behavior
o Negative outcome: depression & job dissatisfaction to aggression, theft,
sabotage
o Occur when:
 Resources at work scarce
 Incompatible interests
 Not being treated fairly
 Role stressors (Role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload)
o Collective term for stressors resulting from multiple task requirements and
roles of employees:
 Role ambiguity: employees lack clear knowledge of expected
behavior
 Role conflict: demands from different sources are incompatible
 Role overload: an employee is expected to fill to many roles at once
 Work – Family Conflict
o Situation that occurs when workers experience conflict between the roles
they fulfill at work and in their personal lives
o Serious consequences on health and well-being of both men and women:
Equal – opportunity stressor
o Flexible time schedules and child care becoming increasingly important to
working men and women
 Emotional Labor
o Regulation of one’s emotions to meet job or organizational demands (stress
of managing emotions when job requires worker to display certain
expressions to clients/customers)
o Regulate emotion through:
 Surface acting: managing / faking one’s expressions or emotions
  Deep acting: managing one’s feelings, including trying to change
one’s emotional state to match the emotions required by the job
 Deep acting results in more authentic, effective and associated with
positive health outcomes than surface acting
o Job with emotional labor often encounter verbal abuse from customers
o Showing false emotion requires cognitive & physiological effort  stressful
over long term
o Reduced by using humor, social support and depersonalize the encounter with
customers, train to regulate emotion (the feel of job control reduces
emotional labor stress)
o Challenge-related stressors: work demands/circumstances that, although
potentially stressful, offer potential gains (Ex: number of projects, time spent
at work, volume of work in a given time, scope of responsibilities)
o Hindrance-related stressors: job demands/circumstances that tend to
limit/interfere with work achievement. (Ex: adm red tape, lack of job security,
stalled career progression and malfunctioning office equipment
o Positive relationship of HRS and turnover / withdrawal behavior; negative
relationship with job satisfaction and commitment. It is vice versa for CRS
positive and negative relationship

4. Consequences of Stress (Strains)

 Behavioral Consequences of Stress (absence, late, drug, alcohol, accident,turnover, violence)

The effects of stressors on three important behavioral outcomes:
Information processing
o Chronic stress has negative effects on memory, reaction time, accuracy and
task performance, difficult focusing attention
o Stress  premature reactions to stimuli  restricted use of relevant cues 
increased error on cognitive tasks
High motivation, energy and attentiveness
Performance
o Hypothesis: Performance & stress have an inverted
U relationship
As arousal/stress increases, performance
increases, but only up to a certain point & then
performance begins to decline
o Simple task with moderate arousal results in the boredom Extreme stress
highest performance (Ex: laboratory)
Complex task with moderate to high levels of stress
are detrimental to performance (Ex: nurse)
o The effect of stress on performance depend on: The complexity of task and
personality characteristic of indv performing tasks
Counterproductive work behavior
Stressor including workplace conflict predicted counterproductive behaviors
 Psychological Consequences of Stress (anxiety, depression, burnout, fatigue, job tension)
Burnout
o Extreme state of psychological strain resulting from prolonged response to
chronic job stressors that exceed an indv’s resources to cope with them
o 3 components/dimensions of burnout:
 Emotional exhaustion: feel emotionally drained by work
  Depersonalization/cynicism: indv become hardened by their job
and tend to treat clients like objects
 Low personal accomplishment: can’t deal with problems effectively
and understand/identify with others’ problems
o Different occupation has different burnout dimension that is measured by
Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)
o Early warning sign of burnout (high level of exhaustion & cynicism led to
more serious burnout in certain situations
o Perception of fairness (tipping point someone became burnout):
 No fairness; the early pattern grows to burnout
 Fairness; early pattern of burnout diminishes
o Focus on indv and job to reduce burnout; stress management, skills training &
job design
 Physiological Consequences of Stress (heart disease, stroke, digestive problems, headache)
o Overactivation of sympathetic nervous system  stress hormones  increase
heart rate and cardiac output in preparation for increased physical and
cognitive activity
o Initially, these changes can improve decision making & physical performance
o Chronic activation of SNS leads to wear and tear on coronary arteries & heart
o Physiological outcome of stress has vicious circle or snowball effect. Three
types of outcomes:
 Cardiovascular outcomes: change in blood pressure, heart rate,
cholesterol
 Gastrointestinal outcomes: digestion problem
 Biochemical outcomes: increase in cortisol and catecholamines (stress
hormones)
o Long term stress hormone level  decrease immune system and development
of coronary heart disease

5. Work Schedules (Managing work-life balance)

 Shift Work
 Scheduling of work into temporal shifts; common in particular occupational groups
such as nurse, blue-collar workers, and public safety personnel
 Centered on 24 hrs / Circadian cycle of humans: human tends to be active during
hours of light and inactive during hours of darkness
o Circadian disturbance leads to adverse health, performance and satisfaction
 2 different types of shift work:
o Fixed shift: a particular shift permanently assigned to workers
 Day shift (7.00 am – 3.30 pm)
 Afternoon/evening shift (3 pm – 11.30 pm)  swing shift
 Night shift (11.30 pm – 7 am)  midnight/graveyard shift
o Rotating shift: a shift that changes over a certain period of time (rapid: every
week ; slowly: every 3 months) More frequent shift changes for less senior
workers
 Lead to sleep disturbances  medical & psychological (anxiety)
 Permanent night shift nurses have fewer problems with health, sleep
and social activities than rotating shift nurses
 Flexible and Compressed Workweek Schedules
  Flextime
o schedule in which individual workers are given discretion over the time they
report to work and the time they leave work on a given day (not common in
manufacturing company due to interdependence among workers)
o Workers expected to work during core period (10 am – 3 pm) and permitted
to arrive as early as 7 am or leave as late as 9 pm (40hours per week)
o Benefit: psychological advantages of perceiving control over work schedule
and better balance of work non work / work life
 Compressed workweek
o Schedule that permits to work for longer than 8 hours a day and fewer than 5
days a week (common in manufacturing organizations)
o 4/10 plan: permit to accumulate the 40 hours of workweek in 4 days
 Consequences of Flextime and Compressed Workweek Schedules
o Flextime
 Higher productivity and lower absenteeism
Professional&managers:only little effect on productivity&absenteeism
Non managerial: Flextime is less effective  unable to communicate
o Compressed workweek
 Higher performance ratings, unaffected absenteeism & productivity
o Both
 Green trends: reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions
 Increase worker satisfaction, reduce traffic
 Work well in individualistic culture and collectivistic culture

10.3 Reducing and Managing Stress

Occupational Health Psychology: area of psychology involves the application of psychology to

improving the quality of work life and to protecting and promoting safety, health and well-being of
workers.

The approach to stress reduction and management: Primary, Secondary and tertiary interventions

1. Primary Prevention Strategies – Stressor Director

 Scope: Preventive – reduce the number of stressors (stressor-directed ; proactive approach)

 Target: alter work environment, technologies or organizational structures
 Underlying assumption: Most effective approach to stress mgt is to remove stressors
 Ex: Job redesign to increase autonomy & worker participation in decision making,
participative management, clearer role descriptions, cognitive restructuring (changing
perception and thought processes that lead to stress), flexible work schedule (flextime,
shorter workweeks, job sharing)
 Problem-focused coping (manage the source of stress)

2. Secondary Prevention Strategies – Response Directed

 Scope: Preventive/reactive – modify individual’s response to stressors (damage control /

band-aid approach)
 Target: Individual
 Underlying assumption: May not be able to reduce stressors, so best to focus on indv’s
reactions to these stressors
 Emotion-focused coping
 Ex: Special training (Relaxation training, biofeedback, stress mgt training), no special training
(physical fitness, healthy eating, weight control, reduce smoke).
Stress mgt training are described as cognitive behavioral skills training program ( Secondary
technique with primary technique)
 Common type of cognitive behavioral skills training is stress inoculation (primary and
secondary technique) that consists of:
 Educational component (learn how a person responded to past stressful experience)
 Rehearsal (learning various coping skills: problem solving, time mgt)
 Application (practicing those skills under simulated conditions)
 Relaxation and Biofeedback Techniques
