Occupational Stress and Anger: Mediating Effects of Resiliency in First Responders

First responders experience substantial stress due to the nature of their work (Carleton et al. 2017). Occupational stress (OS) results from a myriad of employment conditions (e.g., ambiguous work expectations, unreasonable workload; Osipow 1998). OS can lead to maladaptive anger, which negatively impacts personal well-being and work performance (Velichkovsky 2009). In contrast, resilience to demanding working conditions is associated with lower state and trait anger (Wilson et al. 2001); thus, resilience may serve a protective ‘buffer’ role against anger in the face of stress. Thus, we hypothesized that resiliency would mediate relations between dimensions of OS and anger. The current study included 201 first responders (male = 77.6%; M(age) = 43.73 years (SD = 10.97); police officers = 64.2%) who completed measures of OS (OSI-R; Osipow 1998), Anger (DSM-5 CC Anger; APA 2013), and Resiliency (CD-RISC; Connor and Davidson 2003). Results indicated that resiliency mediated relations between five components of OS and anger: Role Overload (p < .001); Insufficiency (p < .001); Role Boundary (p < .001); Role Ambiguity (p < .001); and Role Responsibility (p < .001). Results support the importance of resiliency-enhancing interventions to offset the experience of anger when confronted with occupational stress in first responders.