Antecedents and outcomes of daily anticipated stress and stress forecasting errors

Abstract

Stressors can have negative effects on well‐being, but little is known about how an individual's inability to precisely forecast upcoming stress could be a risk factor for well‐being. Antecedents and outcomes of two stress forecasting variables, anticipated stress level and underestimation errors in stress forecasting (operationalized by the residual change scores obtained by regressing the evening experienced stress on the morning anticipated stress), were investigated. In a daily diary study of 110 undergraduate students over a workweek, poor sleep quality and negative affect reported in the morning predicted a higher anticipated stress of the upcoming day. Poor sleep quality was found to be related to less underestimation errors (i.e., more overestimation). Mispredicting the daily stress level was found to predict greater health complaints and negative affect by the end of the day. Those high on trait resilience were found to make fewer underestimation errors on average. Worse emotional outcomes were associated with underestimation errors during stress forecasting than with overestimation errors. This study demonstrates that examining an individual's experience in forecasting upcoming stressors is an important area for future research in determining points of intervention to promote adaptive management of daily demands.

How would you respond to stereotype pressure? The effects of perceived occupational stigma on social workers’ proactive behavior in China

“…Our study indicates that threat appraisal of perceived occupational stigma leaves social workers less willing to express proactive behavior in serving people, while challenge appraisal of perceived occupational stigma promotes proactive behaviors, which is consistent with many previous studies (Bliese et al. , 2017; Wang et al. , 2021).…”

“…To reduce the possibility that those stressors may result in negatively appraised (i.e. threat appraisal), managers should create more supportive conditions, such as fostering an organizational culture where leaders value employees, providing appropriate recognition for employees’ work and providing appraisal training (Wang et al. , 2021).…”

“…Such a perspective may be more applicable to a complex workplace scene and low scores in the challenge appraisal dimension do not always mean high scores on the threat scale (Wang et al, 2022). Several previous studies have demonstrated the simultaneous mediating role of both threat and challenge appraisal in the relationship between different variables in the workplace, such as job insecurity on proactive behavior (Yao et al, 2021), high-performance work systems on thriving at work (Wang et al, 2021) and performance pressure on work engagement (Kundi and Badar, 2022). Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed: H1.…”

“…Threat appraisals motivate dysfunctional behavior and challenge appraisals motivate functional behavior (Bliese et al. , 2017; Wang et al. , 2021).…”

“…When a stressor is viewed as a challenge, an internal focus is directed toward the potential opportunities presented by the circumstance, whereas, when viewed as a threat, an internal focus is directed toward the potential harm or strain connected to resolving the problem. Threat appraisals motivate dysfunctional behavior and challenge appraisals motivate functional behavior (Bliese et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2021).…”