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Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age

Stress is related to goals being thwarted. Arguably, protecting one’s self, both in terms of personal self-esteem and in terms of social self-esteem, is among the most prominent goals people pursue. Although this line of thought is hardly disputed, it does not play the prominent role in occupational...

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Autores principales: Semmer, Norbert K., Tschan, Franziska, Jacobshagen, Nicola, Beehr, Terry A., Elfering, Achim, Kälin, Wolfgang, Meier, Laurenz L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7328775/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32647746
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41542-019-00041-5
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author Semmer, Norbert K.
Tschan, Franziska
Jacobshagen, Nicola
Beehr, Terry A.
Elfering, Achim
Kälin, Wolfgang
Meier, Laurenz L.
author_facet Semmer, Norbert K.
Tschan, Franziska
Jacobshagen, Nicola
Beehr, Terry A.
Elfering, Achim
Kälin, Wolfgang
Meier, Laurenz L.
author_sort Semmer, Norbert K.
collection PubMed
description Stress is related to goals being thwarted. Arguably, protecting one’s self, both in terms of personal self-esteem and in terms of social self-esteem, is among the most prominent goals people pursue. Although this line of thought is hardly disputed, it does not play the prominent role in occupational health psychology that we think it deserves. Stress-as-Offense-to-Self theory focuses on threats and boosts to the self as important aspects of stressful, and resourceful, experiences at work. Within this framework we have developed the new concepts of illegitimate tasks and illegitimate stressors; we have investigated appreciation as a construct in its own right, rather than as part of larger constructs such as social support; and we propose that the threshold for noticing implications for the self in one’s surroundings typically is low, implying that even subtle negative cues are likely to be appraised as offending, as exemplified by the concept of subtly offending feedback. Updating the first publication of the SOS concept, the current paper presents its theoretical rationale as well as research conducted so far. Research has covered a variety of phenomena, but the emphasis has been (a) on illegitimate tasks, which now can be considered as an established stressor, and (b) on appreciation, showing its importance in general and as a core element of social support. Furthermore, we discuss implications for further research as well as practical implications of an approach that is organized around threats and boosts to the self, thus complementing approaches that are organized around specific conditions or behaviors.
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spelling pubmed-73287752020-07-07 Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age Semmer, Norbert K. Tschan, Franziska Jacobshagen, Nicola Beehr, Terry A. Elfering, Achim Kälin, Wolfgang Meier, Laurenz L. Occup Health Sci Review Article Stress is related to goals being thwarted. Arguably, protecting one’s self, both in terms of personal self-esteem and in terms of social self-esteem, is among the most prominent goals people pursue. Although this line of thought is hardly disputed, it does not play the prominent role in occupational health psychology that we think it deserves. Stress-as-Offense-to-Self theory focuses on threats and boosts to the self as important aspects of stressful, and resourceful, experiences at work. Within this framework we have developed the new concepts of illegitimate tasks and illegitimate stressors; we have investigated appreciation as a construct in its own right, rather than as part of larger constructs such as social support; and we propose that the threshold for noticing implications for the self in one’s surroundings typically is low, implying that even subtle negative cues are likely to be appraised as offending, as exemplified by the concept of subtly offending feedback. Updating the first publication of the SOS concept, the current paper presents its theoretical rationale as well as research conducted so far. Research has covered a variety of phenomena, but the emphasis has been (a) on illegitimate tasks, which now can be considered as an established stressor, and (b) on appreciation, showing its importance in general and as a core element of social support. Furthermore, we discuss implications for further research as well as practical implications of an approach that is organized around threats and boosts to the self, thus complementing approaches that are organized around specific conditions or behaviors. Springer International Publishing 2019-07-01 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC7328775/ /pubmed/32647746 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41542-019-00041-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2019, corrected publication 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Review Article
Semmer, Norbert K.
Tschan, Franziska
Jacobshagen, Nicola
Beehr, Terry A.
Elfering, Achim
Kälin, Wolfgang
Meier, Laurenz L.
Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age
title Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age
title_full Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age
title_fullStr Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age
title_full_unstemmed Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age
title_short Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age
title_sort stress as offense to self: a promising approach comes of age
topic Review Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7328775/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32647746
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41542-019-00041-5
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