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If you're worried your bad workplace is making you a worse person, you may be right. Researchers from the University of Illinois recently introduced a new model examining how chronic workplace stress can fundamentally change people's personalities — and predictably, it isn't for the better.
According to the researchers, previous studies on workplace behaviour largely operated on the premise that personalities are fixed. Hire someone kind, they'll make the workplace kinder. Hire a jerk, they'll bring jerk energy to the role. It's all fairly logical.
However, in a new paper published in Journal of Management, organisational researchers Jarvis Smallfield and Donald H. Kluemper consider that workplace stress can actually alter people's personalities in both the short and long term. This impact is examined through the Big Five model of personality traits: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extroversion.
"Among these, the most notable that is prone to change is neuroticism, though the other traits may change as well," Smallfield told Mashable via email. "Neuroticism is related to issues such as employee burnout and clinical depression and may downwardly spiral."
Basically, if you're stressed you may become more neurotic, which makes you more sensitive to stress, which makes you even more neurotic. It's a giant ouroboros of agony and anxiety that ends with you hating your job.
"Without intervention..., this spiral could reach a level of dysfunction akin to clinical depression," write Smallfield and Kluemper.
It doesn't take long for this horrible chicken and egg problem to manifest, either.
"Based on our review of the existing literature, we propose that trait-based personality change can occur in as little as four weeks," said Smallfield. That's shorter than the average probationary period.
Good stress vs. bad stress
Fortunately, not all workplace stressors have such a damaging impact. Smallfield notes there is an important distinction between challenge and threat stress appraisals, the latter being the one to watch out for.
"Challenge stress appraisal is when you believe that you can overcome a stressor and overcoming that stressor will get you something you want," Smallfield explained to Mashable, giving the example of a difficult deadline that will help you earn a promotion if you hit it.
It's these threat stress appraisals that cause people to spiral into the sinkhole of neurosis. Which, fair. If you're consistently, hopelessly stressed with no relief or reward, it's bound to take a toll.
"When that situation persists over time, it can impact your neurological systems, eventually changing how they function and causing you to be naturally less emotionally stable," said Smallfield.
"The potential for stress to change one’s personality is particularly relevant during the pandemic"
"[W]e believe that the potential for stress to change one’s personality is particularly relevant during the pandemic and the negative effects are particularly salient for marginalized groups due to those groups experiencing more workplace stress."
Chronic workplace stress may also have an even wider and longer lasting impact than you might think. According to epigenetic research — the study of how gene expression can be influenced by your environment — stress can change how our DNA is expressed. As such, resultant behavioural changes may potentially be passed down to later generations, creating a terrible domino effect.
"So, even though this is somewhat speculative, we think it’s worth considering how far reaching the potential consequences of our work environments can be," said Smallfield.
Protecting your personality
Of course, much of the responsibility for combating the detrimental impact of workplace stress falls to workplaces. Smallfield noted that companies should "provide us with the tools we need to be successful and then make sure to recognize those successes," as well as make sure our bosses aren't straight-up abusive.
However, if you don't want to trust the entirety of your psychological wellbeing to The Man, you can also protect yourself by viewing problems as surmountable obstacles that are rewarding to overcome — challenging stressors rather than threatening ones. This may not always be possible, or a realistic appraisal of the situation, but changing our perception where we can will help.
"In addition, we can usually make small changes to our jobs to better fit our strengths or match our goals," Smallfield told Mashable. "Sometimes those changes are so small, we can make them ourselves. Sometimes we can sit down with our supervisors to make more formal changes…. Start making changes in your job now so that you can see it a little bit more like a rewarding challenge and a little bit less like a hopeless barrier or toxic environment."
"Work is naturally full of stressors, and there’s really no way to avoid that, nor would we want to," said Smallfield. "We need those challenges to thrive. The problem comes in when the stresses stop being healthy challenges and become overwhelming, out of our control, or without purpose."
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