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We predicted that chronic pain patients have a more negative stress mindset and a lower level of social identification than people without chronic pain and that this, in turn, influences well-being through less adaptive coping. 1240 participants (465 chronic pain patients; 775 people in the control group) completed a cross-sectional online-survey. Chronic pain patients had a more negative stress mindset and a lower level of social identification than people without chronic pain. However, a positive stress mindset was linked to better well-being and fewer depressive symptoms, through the use of the adaptive coping behaviors positive reframing and active coping. A higher level of social identification did not impact well-being or depression through the use of instrumental and emotional support coping, but through the more frequent use of positive reframing and active coping. For chronic pain therapy, we propose including modules that foster social identification and a positive stress mindset.
Drawing on the role of teachers for peer ecologies, we investigated whether students favored ethnically homogenous over ethnically diverse relationships, depending on classroom diversity and perceived teacher care. We specifically studied students’ intra- and interethnic relationships in classrooms with different ethnic compositions, accounting for homogeneous subgroups forming on the basis of ethnicity and gender diversity (i.e., ethnic-demographic faultlines). Based on multilevel social network analyses of dyadic networks between 1299 early adolescents in 70 German fourth grade classrooms, the results indicated strong ethnic homophily, particularly driven by German students who favored ethnically homogenous dyads over mixed dyads. As anticipated, the results showed that there was more in-group bias if perceived teacher care was low rather than high. Moreover, stronger faultlines were associated with stronger in-group bias; however, this relation was moderated by teacher care: If students perceived high teacher care, they showed a higher preference for mixed-ethnic dyads, even in classrooms with strong faultlines. These findings highlight the central role of teachers as agents of positive diversity management and the need to consider contextual classroom factors other than ethnic diversity when investigating intergroup relations in schools.
The social identity approach to stress proposes that the beneficial effects of social identification develop through individual and group processes, but few studies have addressed both levels simultaneously. Using a multilevel person–environment fit framework, we investigate the group-level relationship between team identification (TI) and exhaustion, the individual-level relationship for people within a group, and the cross-level moderation effect to test whether individual-level exhaustion depends on the level of (in)congruence in TI between individuals and their group as a whole. We test our hypotheses in a sample of 525 employees from 82 teams. Multilevel polynomial regression analysis revealed a negative linear relationship between individual-level identification and exhaustion. Surprisingly, the relation between group-level identification and exhaustion was curvilinear, indicating that group-level identification was more beneficial at low and high levels compared with medium levels. As predicted, the cross-level moderation of the individual-level relationship by group-level identification was also significant, showing that as individuals became more incongruent in a positive direction (i.e., they identified more strongly than the average team member), they reported less exhaustion, but only if the group-level identification was average or high. These results emphasize the benefits of analyzing TI in a multilevel framework, with both theoretical and practical implications.
Although researchers and practitioners increasingly focus on health promotion in organizations, research has been mainly fragmented and fails to integrate different organizational levels in terms of their effects on employee health. Drawing on organizational climate and social identity research, we present a cascading model of organizational health climate and demonstrate how and when leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate are linked to employee well‐being. We tested our model in two multisource studies (NStudy 1 = 65 leaders and 291 employees; NStudy 2 = 401 leader–employee dyads). Results showed that leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate were positively related to their health mindsets (i.e., their health awareness). These in turn were positively associated with their health‐promoting leadership behavior, which ultimately went along with better employee well‐being. Additionally, in Study 1, the relationship between perceived organizational health climate and leaders' health mindsets was moderated by their organizational identification. High leader identification strengthened the relationship between perceived organizational health climate and leaders' health mindsets. These findings have important implications for theory and practice as they show how the dynamics of an organizational health climate can unfold in organizations and how it is related to employee well‐being via the novel concept of health‐promoting leadership.
An increasing number of individuals work in jobs with little standardization and repetition, that is, with high levels of job non‐routinization. At the same time, demands for creativity are high, which raises the question of how employees can use job non‐routinization to develop creativity. Acknowledging the importance of social processes for creativity, we propose that transformational leaders raise feelings of organizational identification in followers and that this form of identification then helps individuals to develop creativity in jobs with little routinization. This is because organizational members evaluate and promote those ideas as more creative, which are in line with a shared understanding of creativity within the organization. To investigate these relationships, we calculated a mediated moderation model with 173 leader–follower dyads from China. Results confirm our hypotheses that transformational leadership moderates the relationship between job non‐routinization on employee creativity through organizational identification. We conclude that raising feelings of social identity is a key task for leaders today, especially when working in uncertain and fast developing environments with little repetition and the constant need to develop creative ideas.
Self-compassion has been theorized to have three components, each with a positive pole and a negative pole: self-kindness versus self-judgment, common humanity versus isolation, and mindfulness versus over-identification. Neff (Self Identity 2:85–101, 2003a) proposes that they mutually influence each other, however, this proposition has not been tested yet. We conducted a pilot study to see if improvements from training one component spilled over to the other two—and whether these trainings had an impact on well-being. 80 participants completed 8 weeks of self-compassionate writing exercises to enhance either self-kindness, common humanity, or mindfulness. Trait self-compassion was assessed using the six-factor model of the self-compassion scale. To address issues of alpha-error-inflation, the false discovery rate was fixed at 5%, and critical p values were adjusted accordingly. Participants in the mindfulness condition reported increased total self-compassion (p = .009), which was accompanied by increased self-kindness (p = .027) and lower isolation (p = .045). Participants in the common humanity condition reported improved total self-compassion (p = .018), lower over-identification (p = .045), and higher life-satisfaction (p = .049). The training in self-kindness failed to improve self-kindness or any other factor. These findings provide initial evidence that the components of self-compassion mutually enhance each other. They also emphasize the importance of mindfulness within the conceptualization of self-compassion.
The relationship between exhaustion and work engagement has received considerable attention during the past decades. Although the theoretical proposition exists that work engagement may increase exhaustion over time, previous research has been mixed. Drawing on the transactional stress model and applying latent growth modeling, we aim to provide a more comprehensive picture of the work engagement–exhaustion relationship over time. In two longitudinal studies, with four measurement points each, we found consistent evidence that a higher initial work engagement related to increased exhaustion over time. Consistent with our hypotheses, a higher initial work engagement also related to less initial exhaustion, and increases in work engagement related to decreases in exhaustion over time. However, contrary to our expectations, a higher initial exhaustion related to elevated work engagement over time. In conclusion, our findings suggest that engaged employees are less exhausted but face a higher risk of exhaustion over time. At the same time, exhausted employees are less engaged, but they have the potential to become more so over time. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings will be discussed in this paper.
Social identification has been shown to be a protective resource for mental health. In this study, the relationships between social identification and emotional, as well as cognitive symptoms of test anxiety are investigated. Participants were university students diagnosed with test anxiety (N = 108). They completed questionnaires regarding a range of psychopathologic stress symptoms, and their social identification with fellow students and with their study program. Results reveal negative relations between social identification and almost all investigated emotional and cognitive symptoms of test anxiety. Based on this study, interventions could be developed that strengthen the social identity of university students.
We propose that resilience effectively helps people cope with stress, thus predominantly reducing the negative. However, we argue that individuals’ social identification has the potential to contribute to their well-being, thus fostering the positive. A two-wave survey study of 180 students shows that resilience is more strongly (negatively) associated with ill-health (i.e. stress and depression), whereas social identification is more strongly (positively) related to well-being (i.e. satisfaction and work engagement). We believe that it is necessary to see these two routes to improving people’s health as complementary, both in future research and for therapy and interventions.