Worker Stress, Negative Attitudes,
and Counterproductive
Employee Behavior
INP3004
Dr. Victoria L. Pace
We will look at
 Worker Stress
 Negative Attitudes
 Counterproductive Work Behavior
(CWB)
Today
A stressor is an environmental
event that is perceived by an
individual to be threatening
Worker stress involves the
physiological and/or
psychological reactions to events
that are perceived to be
threatening or taxing
 Negative stress (or distress) can
cause stress-related illness and
can affect absenteeism, turnover,
and work performance
Defining Worker
Stress
Situational stress is stress arising
from certain conditions that exist in
the work environment or the
worker’s personal life
 Stressful occupations include air
traffic controller, health-care
provider, police officer, and
firefighter
 Characteristics of these jobs
related to worker stress include
heavy workload, poor working
conditions, physical dangers,
and dealing with difficult clients
and coworkers
Sources of
Worker Stress
Some negative organizational conditions
that can cause stress and affect work
performance include work task stressors,
such as
 Work overload, which results when a
job requires excessive speed, output,
or concentration
 Underutilization, resulting from
workers feeling that their knowledge,
skills, or energy are not being fully
used
Sources of
Worker Stress
Organizational sources of worker stress include
work role stressors, such as

Job ambiguity, which results from a lack of
clearly defined jobs and/or work tasks

Lack of control, a feeling of having little
input or effect on the job and/or work
environment

Physical work conditions, including extreme
temperatures, loud/distracting noises,
crowding, poor lighting and ventilation
(Human Factors is a field that studies the
interaction of people and their
environments, particularly when doing
tasks)

Interpersonal stress, which results from
difficulties dealing with others (coworkers,
customers, supervisors) in the workplace
Sources of
Worker Stress
Work role stressors (continued)

Emotional labor, which involves the
demands of regulating and controlling
emotions in the workplace

Harassment, including sexual
harassment, harassment due to group
membership (e.g., gender, race, sexual
orientation), and being singled out by a
coworker or supervisor

Organizational change, including
mergers, changes in work technology,
personnel/managerial changes

Work-family conflict: cumulative stress
that results from duties of work and
family roles
Sources of
Worker Stress
 Emotional display rules are particularly
pertinent for employees in customer service
roles.
 However, smiling when you’re not feeling
happy can take its toll. We call the effort
needed to display emotion that may be
inconsistent with our actual feelings emotional
labor.
 Emotional dissonance is stressful
Emotional labor can take two forms:
 Surface acting– pretending (to not be angry
when actually fuming over a rude customer, for
example)
 Deep acting– getting yourself to actually feel
the positive emotion (convincing yourself that
your displayed emotions are authentic)
We know from research that deep acting tends to
lead to less stress and fewer negative effects on
the part of the person doing emotional labor
than does surface acting.
Emotional Labor
Individual (dispositional) sources of
work stress include
 The Type A behavior pattern, a
personality characterized by
excessive drive, competitiveness,
impatience, and hostility



Measured by the Jenkins Activity Scale (JAS)
and the Framingham Type A Scale (FTAS)
Susceptibility to stress vs.
hardiness, the notion that some
people may be more resistant to the
health-damaging effects of stress
Self-efficacy, an individual’s beliefs
in his/her abilities to engage in
courses of action that will lead to
desired outcomes
Sources of
Worker Stress
Physiological measures of stress include
blood pressure monitoring, EKGs for heart
rate, or blood tests for stress-linked
hormones (cortisol) and cholesterol
 Difficulties with such measures
include variation of such
physiological processes within each
person throughout the day, and
variation between individuals
 Medical personnel are needed to
administer such measures
Measurement of
Worker Stress
Self-report assessments of stress include
reports about organizational conditions
and reports about psychological and/or
physical states
 Reports on organizational conditions
involve questions about job autonomy,
feedback, task identity, task
significance, skill variety, workload,
etc.
 Self-report measures of
psychological/physical stress include
the Stress Diagnostic Survey, the
Occupational Stress Indicator, and the
Job Stress Survey
Measurement of
Worker Stress
Measurement of stressful life events
involves self-reports of significant events
in a person’s recent history that can cause
stress


One measure is the Social
Readjustment Rating Scale, a checklist
where individuals total the numerical
“stress severity” scores associated with
significant life events experienced in
the past year
Research suggests that persons with
high personal stress indexes perform
more poorly, have higher absenteeism,
and change jobs more frequently
(Bhagat, 1983)
Measurement of
Worker Stress
Person-environment fit (P-E fit) refers to
the match between a worker’s abilities,
needs, and values, and organizational
demands, rewards, and values


P-E fit is positively related to
organizational commitment and
negatively related to turnover (Hult,
2005)
Measurement of P-E fit involves
assessing worker skills and abilities,
along with job demands and features
of the work environment
Measurement of
Worker Stress
Stress-related illnesses include ulcers,
colitis, high blood pressure, heart disease,
and migraine headaches. Stress can worsen
common colds and infections.
 The relationship between stress and
performance is complex, and generally
is curvilinear (involving an inverted U),
where both very low and very high
stress are associated with poor
performance
Effects of Worker
Stress
Job burnout is a syndrome resulting from
prolonged exposure to work stress that
leads to withdrawal from the organization
 Burnout is especially high in human
service professions
 Burnout can be measured with the
Maslach Burnout Inventory
 Burnout occurs in three phases:
1. Emotional Exhaustion– often also accompanied
by feelings of being drained or physically weary
2. Depersonalization– treating the people you serve,
care for, or instruct as objects
3. Low Personal Accomplishment– frustration over
lack of importance or meaning of the work
Effects of Worker
Stress
Ashkanasy, Hartel, & Daus (2002) found that
 Negative moods were associated with low job
satisfaction, and more absence and turnover
Others have linked negative emotion to increased
levels of Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)
Emotions at work
Counterproductive Work Behavior
includes such things as
 Forms of Withdrawal: Lateness,
Absence, Turnover
 Withholding effort and/or
information
 Interpersonal Aggression
(bullying, gossiping, incivility),
Sabotage, Theft
Counterproductive
Work Behavior
(CWB):
Subtle and More
Obvious Forms of
Aggression
Counterproductive work behaviors
(CWBs) are deviant, negative behaviors
that are harmful to an organization and
its workers



Meta-analyses suggest that CWBs are
more prevalent in younger employees
and those with lower job satisfaction
(Lau et al., 2003)
CWBs, and workplace aggression and
violence, are linked to trait negative
affectivity, anger, and other personality
variables (Douglas & Martinko, 2001)
The incidence of CWBs is negatively
related to the incidence of
organizational citizenship behaviors
(Dalal, 2005)
Negative
Employee
Attitudes and
Behaviors
Alcohol and drug use in the
workplace is related to workplace
accidents, decreased productivity,
increased absenteeism and
turnover, costing billions of dollars
annually
 Workers who report problems
with alcohol or drugs have
greater job instability and
lower job satisfaction
 Employee Assistance
Programs (EAPs) involve
counseling provided for a
variety of worker problems,
particularly drug and alcohol
abuse
Negative
Employee
Attitudes and
Behaviors
What motivates employee withdrawal
and aggression?
Personality factors:
 Negative Affectivity, Trait Anger and
Trait Anxiety have been positively
linked to CWB
 Agreeableness, Conscientiousness,
and Emotional Stability have
displayed negative relationships to
CWB
Needs:
 Need for well-being
 Need for self-esteem
 Need to uphold norm of justice
We will look at these needs on the
next few slides
Counterproductive
Work Behavior
 Frustration
 They’re holding you back from
your goal or introducing barriers
to goal attainment
 Frustration can lead to
aggression against those
considered at fault, but also
those not associated with the
frustrating event. (Encounter
rude customers at work get
annoyed with your roommate)
 Environmental Stressors
 Heat, smoke, noise
Lack of Well-Being
Self-esteem
 They’re engaging in physical or
verbal abuse toward you or those
you care about
 How we interpret the other’s
motives (intentional, directed at
us) influences our response; some
people exhibit hostile attribution
bias (aggressive people are more
likely to think of others as having
hostile intent)
 Retaliation can also occur due to
embarrassment, shame
Norms
 “That’s not how we do things”
 Justice: “It’s not right/fair”; Desire
to even the score
 Enforcing social rules and
understandings
Threat to Self-Esteem,
Violation of Norms
Organizational coping strategies
 Stress management programs and other
training
 Job redesign to enhance person-job fit
 Orientation/socialization and
buddy/mentoring programs (especially for
newcomers)
 Increasing employee sense of control
(responsibility, autonomy)
 Using rewards rather than punishments
 Eliminate unhealthy work conditions
 Encourage co-worker support and
teamwork rather than competitiveness
 Enhance communication (more information
and understanding can facilitate tasks and
lead to greater feelings of security)
 Employee assistance programs (EAPs)
Coping with Stress
Individual coping strategies are
techniques such as exercise, meditation,
humor, cognitive restructuring, or
letting it go (forgiveness) that can be
used to deal with work stress
 More efficient work methods,
including time management, may
also be used, although their
success depends on individual
commitment
 Vacation time and voluntary
absences may also be used to
reduce stress, although the missed
work may increase stress upon the
employee’s return to work
Coping with
Worker Stress
Today, topics included
 Employee Stress
 Negative Attitudes
 CWB
Next lecture, we cover
 Leadership and Power in Organizations
(Chapter 13 and parts of 14)
Don’t forget!
 The Service Learning Project presentations
are coming (ask one group member to
submit it per group; see Syllabus for due
date). The class will view and rate the
presentations and you may later deliver
your group’s “product” to a client
organization. Let’s do such a great job that
those clients rave and send me a letter or
email  (If they do, I’ll pass it on so that you
can add it to your resume/application
materials if desired.) I will also ask them to
respond to a satisfaction survey.
Summary