Optimism and Coping as Moderators of the Relation Between Work Resources and Burnout in Information Service Workers.

The moderating effect of individual characteristics on the relation of burnout and environmental work resources was examined. Little work has been done to apply the concept of burnout among information services (IS) professionals (A. S. Huarng, 2001). The current study further investigates resources and their contribution to burnout in the IS field. Personal moderator variables were optimism, pessimism, and coping styles. The predictor variable was an index of work-related resource conditions. The outcome variables were 3 burnout subscales. The relation of work resources to burnout was significantly moderated by personal moderator variables. As predicted by the conservation of resources model (S. E. Hobfoll, 1989), personal factors moderated the impact of work resources typically under conditions in which the resources were low. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resilience to traumatic exposure among soldiers deployed in combat.

We examined the influence of positive psychological capital (PsyCap), a metaconstruct that combines established psychological predispositions to be resilient to stress, on the well-being of soldiers during combat deployment. Among U.S. Army personnel deployed in Iraq, cognitive appraisal of stress mediated the effects of trait PsyCap on health symptoms. The indirect effects through appraisal were moderated by levels of exposure to potentially traumatic stimuli. Trait PsyCap covaried more strongly with cognitive appraisals, and had stronger indirect effects through appraisal on health, among soldiers in units with higher levels of potentially traumatic exposures. We discuss implications for research on resilience to trauma in the workplace and for helping workers cope with potentially traumatic exposures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of fairness, leadership, and coping on strain, burnout, and turnover in organizational change.

Procedural justice, supervisory style, and personal coping measures were obtained from 103 workers from two units of a nationwide engineering firm during and six months after a time-limited, company-wide computer system change. The two units employed significantly differing procedural justice approaches. Lower procedural justice was predictive of higher burnout, strain, and turnover. The patterns of relationship were somewhat different for burnout and strain, implying that these two affective responses to change might be viewed as distinct from one another. Higher strain was predictive of turnover above and beyond contributions of procedural justice, supervision, and coping, but burnout was not. Implications for application and further research are discussed based on the research findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping effectiveness and coping diversity under traumatic stress.

The effectiveness of different strategies of coping and the impact of coping diversity were tested under traumatic stress conditions. Participants were 632 U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq (mean age = 27.7, 98 male). Results indicate that four of nine functional coping strategies (including some emotion-focused coping) as defined by the COPE scale were inversely related to psychological symptom, whereas five of six dysfunctional strategies were positively related. Overall, in comparison to the norm group, soldiers showed a depressed level of functional coping strategies. Hierarchical regression, used to control for demographics and coping strategy intercorrelations, indicated that positive reinterpretation, emotional social support, and humor were most strongly related to lower psychological symptoms, whereas venting emotions, denial, mental disengagement, behavioral disengagement, and alcohol and drug use were related to higher levels of psychological symptoms. Two indices of coping diversity were tested. The index more strongly related to higher psychological adjustment was the sum of deviations from the mean of specific coping strategies combined with the alignment of functional and dysfunctional strategy clusters. Implications for research and application were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)