Stress Appraisal and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies of Employees

Abstract

Stress has been an important indicator of psychological and physical health. Therefore, it is expected for all members of the organizations to develop necessary coping skills to manage stress. Earlier research asserts that human beings experience stress and cope with negative emotions at different levels. Most strategies can be classified as more or less adaptive. In this research, we investigated the relationship regarding stress appraisal, cognitive emotion regulation and demographic characteristics of Turkish employees. We used a non-experimental, within subjects design and analyzed data came from 642 participants (M_age=33.9, gender reported by 159 women and 429 men). We assessed stress appraisal by Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983). Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski, Kraaij, & Spinhoven, 2001) measured participants’ strategy preference and the amount of strategy used. Gender, industry, marital status and the year of experience in the current workplace emerged as important demographic factors. We observed significant correlations between perceived stress and emotion regulation strategies, except ‘rumination’ and ‘putting into perspective’. Coherent with earlier research, ‘refocus on planning’ was the most used strategy, while ‘catastrophizing’ and ‘other-blame’ were the least preferred. Additionally, our study supported more recent findings that the strategy of ‘acceptance’ was suggested to be less adaptive.