Co-rumination Partially Mediates the Relationship between Social Support and Emotional Exhaustion among Graduate Students

Graduate students regularly report high levels of stress and burnout. Many of those same students utilize social support networks, which can act as stress buffers. This study evaluated excessive negative talk about issues (co-rumination) and its effects on that social-support to burnout (emotional exhaustion) relationship and predicted that co-rumination would act as a suppressor variable. Graduate student volunteers (N = 213) reported their levels of social support, co-rumination, and emotional exhaustion. Data indicated that co-rumination did mediate the social support-to-emotional exhaustion relationship on two dimensions. This project purports that, while social support is important, the content of socially-supportive interactions may also be important when attempting to intervene in stressful situations, especially when those interactions involve co-ruminative messages

The Relationships between Co-Rumination, Social Support, Stress, and Burnout among Working Adults

Workers regularly report high levels of stress and burnout because of their daily interactions at work. Workers also tend to seek social support as a mechanism to reduce stress and burnout. Social support buffers the negative effects of stress on health-related outcomes and is inversely associated with both burnout and perceived stress. However, recent research has revealed that not all social support is beneficial. Co-rumination, or excessive negative problem talk about an issue, has been linked to increasing levels of stress and burnout. Working adults (N = 447) completed a survey exploring the relationships between social support, co-rumination, stress, and burnout. Two mediation models predicted that co-rumination would suppress the relationships between social support and both burnout and perceived stress. Data supported both partial mediation hypotheses. This study concludes that some social support can be less-than-beneficial, if the content of the supportive transaction focuses on excessive and negative problem talk

The Impact of an Enacted Social Support Training Intervention on Worklife Interaction and Stress in a Sample of Working Adults

The present investigation explores utilizes an enacted social support intervention among a group of working adults. Reductions in psychological and physiological stress were hypothesized to occur following the experimental intervention. Participants (N = 46) were all full time staff members at a large university and were randomly assigned to treatment or wait-list control groups. Treatment group members attended two 90 minute enacted social support meetings over the course of four weeks. Psychological (perceived stress and worklife conflict) and physiological (salivary cortisol) data were collected at both pretest and posttest periods. Results did not support the research hypotheses; however, a research question exploring the buffering effect of enacted support was answered in the affirmative. Enacted social support moderated the relationship between psychological and physiological stress at the pretest. The discussion presents a detailed assessment of theoretical and practical applications as well as suggestions for utilizing field social support interventions

Some Things are Better Left Not Unsaid: An Exploratory Study of the Communicatively-Restricted Organizational Stressor

In organizations, individuals seek the support of others to manage their day-to-day stress. Researchers within a social support paradigm have found that individuals who have communicative outlets to discuss their stressors are healthier psychologically and physiologically. To the extent that those outlets are restricted, individuals may suffer the deleterious effects of stress. Therefore, this manuscript conceptualizes and explores one such stressor, the Communicatively-Restricted Organizational Stressor (CROS). Based on a sample of 405 organizational members, we identified the existence and explicated the nature of this stressor. Results were generally inconclusive. Discussion focused on significant findings and the need for better operationalization of this stressor. Implications and future directions explored the potential utility of this line of research

“I Just Can’t Clean the Bathroom as Well as You Can!”: Communicating Domestic Labor Task Equity-resistance and Equity-restoring Strategies among Married Individuals

Women generally perform the majority of domestic labor despite changes in demographics and household income allocations, contributing to relational conflict and prompting the use of communication strategies to reallocate tasks. This study examines the strategies individuals use to reduce personal or increase partner domestic labor performance. Married individuals (N = 228) responded to a questionnaire assessing perception of hours spent on household tasks, global equity, relationship length, and equity-restoring and equity-resistance strategies specific to domestic labor. Data indicate that perception of time spent on household tasks is related to equity-restoring and equity-resistance strategies. Global assessment of relational underbenefitedness or overbenefitedness was not associated with equity-restoring and equity-resisting strategies when characterized as a continuous variable; however, significant results occurred when equity was characterized categorically, highlighting the importance of methodological choices in equity research. Marriage length was negatively associated in a curvilinear function with the use of equity-restoring and equity-resistance strategies.Citation: Riforgiate, S. E., & Boren, J. P. (2015). Communicating domestic labor task resistance and equity restoring strategies among married individuals. Journal of Family Communication, 15, 309-329. doi:10.1080/15267431.2015.107642

Examining the Relationships among Peer Resentment Messages Overheard, State Guilt, and Employees\u27 Perceived Ability to Use Work/Family Policies

This study sought to determine if frequency of peer resentment messages overheard in organizational settings was associated with employees\u27 perceived ability to use work/family policies. Job burnout and state guilt were also included as potential predictors. In this sample of workers (N = 474), resentment messages, internalized guilt, and burnout were significantly and negatively associated with the likelihood of using work/family policies, accounting for 22% of the variance. An interaction effect was also discovered for burnout and resentment on perceived ability to use work/family policies. This study highlights the importance of understanding the messages embedded within an organization\u27s culture and those messages\u27 impacts on individual decisions to make use of leave policies

An Exploratory Study of Communicatively-Restricted Organizational Stress (CROS) II: Associations with Organizational Stress and Elevated Cholesterol

This study expands on prior research on Communicatively-Restricted Organizational Stress (CROS), which includes those stressors that individuals do not have a socially-supportive outlet inside or outside of their organizations. First, by using a sample of 405 organizational members, we explore the prevalence of the CROS by identifying the existence of the nature of this concept. After that, we explore the way that the CROS acts on an individual both physiologically and psychologically by evaluating its associations with organizational-level variables (stress, support, and commitment) along with markers of stress (LDL and Total Cholesterol). Results were generally inconclusive. Discussion focused on significant findings and the need for better operationalization of this stressor. Implications and future directions explored the potential utility of this line of research

Communicatively Restricted Organizational Stress (CROS) I: Conceptualization and Overview

In this article, we conceptualized a new organizational variable, Communicatively Restricted Organizational Stress (CROS). CROS is a perceived inability to communicate about a particular stressor and functions to exacerbate negative outcomes related to the appraisal of that stressor. To aid in our conceptualization, we reviewed extant literature on organizational stress and social support. We also collected open-ended data from a national sample of 354 workers. The responses to these questions lead us to specific themes about the nature and function of CROS. Finally, we propose a conceptual conditional process model with two primary propositions: (a) An organizational member who reports high levels of CROS will experience negative outcomes, regardless of reported level of social support and (b) an organizational member who reports high levels of CROS will experience negative outcomes, regardless of the severity of the stressor

A Decade of Research Exploring Biology and Communication

The study of communication has come a long way since Aristotle\u27s conceptualization of persuasion in Rhetoric from the 4th century B.C. Today, scholars conceptualize communication in much more comprehensive ways than did those Greek Aristotelian philosophers. Still, much of the discipline of communication focuses on the way that messages have an impact on individuals or societies. Since the late 1970s a small group of communication scholars, greatly influenced by their peers in other social-science disciplines (i.e., psychology) began to direct their attention to the way that communication influences and is influenced by processes in the human body. During the early 1990s, a group of researchers proposed a set of meta-theoretic axioms leading to the goal that specific theories could be generated related to the ways that the human body influences communicative messages and behaviors. These researchers called this set of propositions a communibiological paradigm. In this article, we present the following review of recent and relevant literature on the biological dimensions of human communication

Social Exchange Orientation and Conflict Communication in Romantic Relationships

Prior research has not conclusively established how individuals\u27 social exchange orientation (EO) affects their communication in, and satisfaction with, romantic elationships. Surveying 466 individuals in romantic relationships, we found that concern about being underbenefitted was more strongly correlated with conflict behaviors than concern about overbenefittedness, and that conflict communication influenced the relationship between exchange orientation and relationship satisfaction. We discuss the need for further research to discover how EO may influence communication patterns as relationships develop