Blog post by Keaton Fletcher – summarizing Pindek et al. (2024)
July 2024
There is a popular understanding that not all stress is bad stress, and that certain levels of exposure to stressful circumstances can result in positive outcomes. In the science of the workplace, this distinction usually takes the form of challenge versus hindrance stressors. Challenge stressors are those that individuals are able to overcome and that provide an opportunity for increased resources (e.g., autonomy, responsibility, difficult projects). Hindrance stressors are those that provide no personal benefit and instead hinder goal progress (e.g., bureaucratic red tape, lack of workplace resources). The general understanding is that, in the moment, both of these stressors are stressful and require effort and attention to overcome, but that afterwards challenges leave us better off than we were before, whereas hindrances leave us drained. Yet, many of the studies exploring these relationships simply compare people on average or across long periods of time, leaving a consensus around these nuanced, short-term relationships elusive. To address this, Pindek and colleagues recently published a meta-analysis in the Journal of Business and Psychology (2024) reviewing the relationships between these two different types of perceived stressors and their outcomes at the daily level.
Using data from seventy-four published studies, Pindek and colleagues explored how challenge and hindrance stressors predicted strain (i.e., psychological, behavioral, and physical consequences of stressor exposure) and, ultimately, job performance at the daily level. Results suggest that on days when people experience higher levels of challenge stressors, they have higher overall job performance, and particularly organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs; e.g., doing tasks that help the company or other employees but are not necessarily part of the job description). However, this is not the case for days when they experience more hindrance stressors. On those days, people experience lower levels of overall job performance, and particularly lower task performance.
That said, these relationships are nuanced. On days when people experience challenge or hindrance stressors they report more strain, though this relationship is stronger for hindrance stressors. And on days when people experience higher levels of strain, they report poorer task performance and fewer OCBs. Thus, through this strain pathway, both challenge and hindrance stressors reduce task performance and OCBs. But, once the authors account for the impact of strain, results show that employees who experience more challenge stressors at work have improved task performance and engage in more helping behaviors. On the other hand, those who experience more hindrance stressors report worse job performance (and also more helping behaviors, though this effect was weak).
Together, these findings suggest that on days when people experience more hindrance stressors, they are likely to experience more strain and have worse task performance. On days when people experience more challenge stressors, they’re more likely to experience strain, but also to have higher task performance and OCBs. These results support the popular understanding that, at least for a short term of a few hours, not all types of stress are entirely bad, while also showing that all stressors are stressful.
Keeping these results in mind, organizations ought to reduce hindrance stressors (e.g., bureaucratic red tape, lack of workplace resources) when possible, not only because they cause strain, but they also reduce performance. On the other hand, organizations ought to work with employees to ensure that they have the resources necessary to address challenge stressors so the impacts on strain can be minimized while still experiencing the boosts to performance.
References
Dr. Keaton Fletcher is an Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Colorado State University. He is also the Assistant Director of the Mountains and Plains ERC Occupational Health Psychology program. He studies the social stressors of the work experience (e.g., leadership, team dynamics). He also cohosts an Occupational Health Psychology science translation podcast called Healthy Work.