Title: Can't Stop Thinking About Work? Neither Can These Researchers
ODU psychology Ph.D. student researches thoughts people have about their jobs after work, during the weekend, or while on vacation.
Just because the work shift has ended and employees have clocked out for the day, that does not mean thoughts of work stop. Industrial-organizational psychology Ph.D. student William Jimenez and his coauthors, ODU Assistant Professor of Psychology Violet Xu and, former ODU professor Xiaoxiao Hu (Associate Professor of Management at West Virginia University) conducted a meta-analysis of over 150 primary studies (totaling over 50,000 participants) of off-job work-related thoughts.
"How to Let Go at the End of the Workday," "How to Forget About Work When You're Not Working," "How to Stop Thinking About Work at 3am" — these Harvard Business Review headlines suggest that work is frequently on our minds even after we "clock out" for the day.
Jimenez and team found that negative thoughts — especially those accompanied by negative emotions, such as annoyance and worry — are strongly associated with health complaints and employee burnout. In contrast, positive thoughts are more strongly related to work engagement and job satisfaction. Off-job problem-solving pondering (tackling work-related problems) and psychological detachment (mentally distancing oneself from work) were also associated with worker well-being — albeit to a lesser degree than positive and negative thoughts.
"Our study provides a more nuanced understanding of off-job work-related thoughts," said Jimenez. "Although previous research demonstrated that psychologically detaching from work can help people recuperate and unwind from their jobs, thinking about work while 'off the clock' isn't always a bad thing."
The researchers also found that positive and negative thoughts are unrelated to each other, and that negative, but not positive, thoughts are related to psychological detachment.
"This means that these two types of thoughts are distinct processes rather than opposite ends of the same continuum," Hu elaborated. "For example, someone who frequently has negative work-related thoughts doesn't necessarily have fewer positive work-related thoughts."
Jimenez recalled the impetus for the meta-analysis: "A few years ago, I put together an annotated bibliography on positive-work-reflection interventions for a project Dr. Hu and I were working on. Fast forward to 2020 and I became interested in learning how to conduct meta-analyses. I remembered my previous literature search and excitedly reached out to resident ODU I-O psychology meta-analysis expert Dr. Xu. The rest is history!"
"Researchers have been developing interventions to promote positive thoughts and psychological detachment as well as to reduce negative thoughts," Xu commented. "Since we found such strong links between off-job work-related thoughts and employee outcomes, our meta-analysis underscores the importance of targeting these thoughts."
But the onus to address off-job work-related thoughts is on employers too, Jimenez added. "One of our paper's anonymous reviewers eloquently stated, 'Work experiences project an off-work shadow.' I hope employers heed our findings and recognize the sustained impact they have on their workers — even after the workday ends. Before contacting workers off the clock, I'd recommend managers consider whether it can wait until working hours."
The paper is forthcoming in the Journal of Business and Psychology. The authors have uploaded a postprint of their manuscript to the journal's Open Science Framework collection.