Drammatic breaks: Break recovery experiences as mediators between job demands and affect in the afternoon and evening

Abstract

The present study focused on within-workday recovery, which has received less scholarly attention than has recovery outside work. We examined six break recovery experiences (detachment, relaxation, autonomy, mastery, meaning and affiliation) as possible mediators between daily emotional job demands, positive and negative affect both in the afternoon and in the evening. We conducted a one-work week diary study (N = 107) among Finnish schoolteachers with three daily measurements per workday.Most participants (88%) were women, and the average age was 50 years. The data were analysed with multilevel path modelling. Regarding daily afternoon affect, both low break detachment and low break meaning mediated the relationship between high daily emotional demands and low afternoon positive affect and high afternoon negative affect. Regarding daily evening affect, only low break meaning mediated the relationship between high daily emotional demands and low evening positive affect. In addition, afternoon positive and negative affect did mediate the relationships between break detachment and meaning and positive and negative evening affect. Our findings offer new insights into the interplay of daily job demands, break recovery experiences and affective well-being. Despite detachment, meaning, which has received limited research attention as a recovery experience, seems to play an important role in within-workday recovery. Our study also suggests that successful break recovery can benefit employees' affective well-being in the evening.

Difficulties detaching psychologically from work among German teachers: prevalence, risk factors and health outcomes within a cross-sectional and national representative employee survey

“…Although time for long lunch breaks might be limited for teachers at school, school principals might encourage their teachers scheduling short rest breaks, which have been shown to reduce feelings of stress and fatigue and to strengthen social support and task performance [ 54 , 55 ]. Detachment during rest breaks might also lead to lower negative affect and higher positive affect in the afternoon [ 56 ]. However, not only individual level interventions might be crucial for teachers’ psychological detachment: Work conditions within the educational system should promote recovery and detaching from work.…”

Psychological Detachment as a Mediator Between Successive Days' Job Stress and Negative Affect of Teachers

“…The absence of psychological detachment is harmful concerning teachers' job stress (Gluschkoff et al, 2016) but there remains a lack of research concerning the mediating role of psychological detachment among teachers (see Türktorun et al, 2020). Hence, the current study tested the mediational model in which teachers' higher job stress would hinder their psychological detachment from work (see Sonnentag and Kruel, 2006;Sonnentag and Fritz, 2015) and hindered psychological detachment would result in more negative affect (see Virtanen et al, 2021) and job stress (see Gluschkoff et al, 2016) on the subsequent day. Thus, we were interested in whether psychological detachment would mediate the effect of previous days' job stress on subsequent day's negative affect and job stress.…”

“…Looking at the effect of teachers' psychological detachment, Virtanen et al (2021) found that teachers' higher daily detachment predicts their lower afternoon negative affect. A study by Fritz et al (2010) further showed that teachers' psychological detachment during the weekend is linked to higher levels of certain positive emotions measured both directly after the weekend and later at the end of the following week at work.…”

“…Finally, in the study by Aronsson et al (2003), non-recuperated teachers showed more symptoms of burnout and stress-related health issues than other groups. Therefore, we hypothesize (H2) that teachers' low psychological detachment during off-job time leads to higher amounts of both negative affect (see Fritz et al, 2010;Virtanen et al, 2021) and job stress (see Aronsson et al, 2003;Cropley et al, 2015;Gluschkoff et al, 2016) during the subsequent day.…”

“…Earlier research has further indicated that higher job stress experienced by teachers is connected to their negative affect (Hamama et al, 2013;Poon et al, 2019). However, previous research has also shown that teachers' psychological detachment is helpful regarding their affect (Fritz et al, 2010;Virtanen et al, 2021) but job stressors hamper it (Sonnentag and Kruel, 2006). The absence of psychological detachment is harmful concerning teachers' job stress (Gluschkoff et al, 2016) but there remains a lack of research concerning the mediating role of psychological detachment among teachers (see Türktorun et al, 2020).…”