Vacation Effects on Behaviour, Cognition and Emotions of Compulsive and Non-compulsive Workers: Do Obsessive Workers Go 'Cold Turkey'?

Compulsive workers often face psychological and physical health disturbances because of working long hours and an obsessive preoccupation with work during off‐job time. Prolonged respite episodes may either relief these employees from their daily stressors to recover or trigger withdrawal symptoms....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Stress and health 2014-08, Vol.30 (3), p.232-243
Main Authors: de Bloom, Jessica, Radstaak, Mirjam, Geurts, Sabine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affect - physiology
Analysis of Variance
Cognition - physiology
Comparative analysis
Compulsive Behavior - psychology
Emotions - physiology
Employee attitude
Female
holiday
Holidays - psychology
Humans
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Occupational Diseases - psychology
Occupational psychology
rumination
stress
Stress, Psychological - etiology
Thinking - physiology
Vacations
work hours
Work Schedule Tolerance - psychology
workaholic
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Summary:Compulsive workers often face psychological and physical health disturbances because of working long hours and an obsessive preoccupation with work during off‐job time. Prolonged respite episodes may either relief these employees from their daily stressors to recover or trigger withdrawal symptoms. Our research question was as follows: How do (1) work hours, (2) rumination and (3) affective well‐being unfold for compulsive workers compared with non‐compulsive workers across long vacations? In a longitudinal field study, work hours, rumination and affective well‐being were assessed in 54 employees 2 weeks before, during and in the first, second and fourth week after a long summer vacation. Working compulsively was assessed 3 weeks before vacation. Work hours decreased during and increased after vacation. Levels of rumination dropped during vacation and remained below baseline until 2 weeks after vacation. Initial differences in rumination between obsessive and non‐obsessive workers disappeared during and directly after vacation. Affective well‐being rose during vacation and returned to baseline directly after vacation. Increases in affective well‐being during vacation as well as decreases after vacation were greater in obsessive workers than in non‐obsessive workers. Vacations seem to temporarily offset characteristic differences between obsessive and non‐obsessive workers, decrease rumination and improve affective well‐being. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISSN:1532-3005
1532-2998
DOI:10.1002/smi.2600