What role do workplace stressors play in our everyday lives?

Interpersonal relationships can cause man problems for example, a relationship between someone in management and a person in a much lower position could lead to role conflict, therefore causing more stress within the workplace leading to problems in other areas of their lives.

Describe 3 different experiments on workplace stressors and evaluate each one.

In order to conduct an experiment on a very significant workplace stressor, which was noise levels, Glass et al (1969) arranged for participants to complete various cognitive tasks, such as number work and letter searches, while listening to noisy tapes. After this, the participants had to complete 4 puzzles. 2 of them were insoluble. Frustration was measured throughout, using galvanic skin response (GSR). Participants did adapt to the noise, as shown by the fact that their GSR levels and number of errors were considerably reduced by the end of the first set of tasks. However, if the noise was intermittent, participants made errors and shoed less task persistence.

Glass et al (1969) tried a further variation where some participants were given a button to control the noise. These participants showed greater task persistence than those who thought they had no control. Perceived control avoids a sense of helplessness and anxiety, which would increase stress and frustration.

The criticisms of this study are that in these psychological experiments, they involved American male undergraduates, a population sample that is not typical of the rest of the population. Also, Glass's research involved female students different but still potentially biased.

Secondly in 1997, Marmot et al created a study based on the study of workplace stressors. They aimed to investigate the association between workplace stress and stress related illness in male and female civil servants. This particular investigation focused on the negative correlation between job control and stress related illness.

A sample of 10,308 civil servants were investigated in a longitudinal study of over 3 years, research included questionnaires and observation. An aspect of workplace stress and job control was measured through a report survey and by independent assessments of the work environment. This was done by personnel managers; job control was assessed on 2 occasions, three years apart. Records of stress related illness, were also kept in order to carry out a correlational analysis which tested the association between job control and stress related illness.

It was found that participants with low job control were 4 times more likely to die of a heart attack than those with high job control, they were also more likely to suffer from strokes, cancer and gastrointestinal disorders, which are all stress related disorders. The findings were consistent on both occasions that job control was measured. After other factors such as employment grade, negative attitude to employment, social support and job demands were taken into account the association was still significant. From an indication of the number of stress related illnesses, the findings show that low job control is associated with high stress, there is an inverse social gradient in stress-related illness among British civil servants, meaning that the variables are negatively correlated as the illness increase, job control decreases.

The self-report method used in this experiment is vulnerable to investigator effects and participant reactivity bias. The questions that are used may give the participant clues as to the aim of the research. Creating an expectancy effect. Also the participants may be influenced to behave in certain ways, this is caused by demand characteristics. Participants are usually co-operative and try to 'help' the researcher by conforming to the demand characteristics. Then, the participants may guess that an association between job control and stress related illness is what the researchers are looking and therefore may report low job control if suffering from illness and vice versa. In addition, the observations made by the managers could be biased by an expectancy effect.

There are also weaknesses of the correlational method, because there is no control over job control as a variable, this makes the interpretations difficult as causes and effects cannot be inferred. Conclusions are limited because only an association can be inferred. This lack of control also means that other factors may be involved in the association, which were not taken into account in the research. Individual differences such as personality, coping skills of life events are examples of these and they are also implicated in stress related illness, so there is no clear-cut association between job control and illness. In contact with 'lack of control' studies, other research has been found that increased responsibility is linked to higher stress. Brady's (1958) study of ulcers in executive monkeys links to workplace stress as it features a common workplace stressor, which is responsibility/control.

Brady conducted research where monkeys were strapped in a chair and given electric shocks unless the monkey pressed a level every 20 seconds. Many of them died and post-mortems showed that they had stomach ulcers. The aim was to find out whether the ulcers were due to physical restraint and electric shocks (physiological stress) or to psychological stress.

For the procedures, Brady used a yoked control technique, the executive monkey received the shocks but had control over the lever, and a yoked control was also restrained but had no control over the shocks and received the shocks whenever the first monkey failed to press the level regularly.

After 23 days the executive monkey died due to a perforated ulcer. The control monkey had no ulcers or any gastrointestinal abnormalities. This happened when using the 6 hours on, 6 hours off variation in the schedule. None of the other timings produced ulcers. An investigation of stomach secretions conveyed that stomach acidity increase during rest periods when in the 6 on, 6 off schedule and such acidity was related to the development of the ulcers.

These findings shows that the ulcers were due to psychological stress and they also suggest that it is being in control that creates this psychological stress. This is why people important jobs with lots of responsibility suffer from more stress.

It may not be reasonable to draw conclusions about human behaviour. However, research with humans has supported Brady's findings. For example Margolis and Kroes (1974) found that firemen with more responsibility, were seven times more likely to develop gastric ulcers than shop workers who had less responsibility.

This study was done as a laboratory experiment and maybe considered unethical, as it involved hurting animals, however it is argued that it would have been worse to acts out the experiments on humans, and also, that usefulness and benefits of this study, outweigh the costs, and excuses the effect on participants. Lastly subsequent research of ulcers found that bacterium (helicobacter pylon) not stress, is a major cause of ulcers. This research was done by Marshall et all in 1985 and contradicts Brady's findings.

Craig Southern