סמינר כפול: בהתנהגות ארגונית

עינת יאור אוניברסיטת תל אביב

Should you let your mind wander? INTRODUCING A NOVEL FRAMEWORK AND PROPOSING WORK TASK PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES

Mind-wandering, a common state in which one's thoughts drift away from a task toward self-generated thoughts, affects numerous outcomes. Surprisingly, research on mind-wandering in organizational contexts is lacking, and the effects of mind-wandering on work-task performance are currently unknown. To extend mind-wandering theory and research into organization science, an integrative and comprehensive theoretical framework is needed. Thus, we develop the “Mind-Wandering Map”, a typology of mind-wandering comprising three levels of classification: mind-wandering quantity; meta-cognitive aspects of mind-wandering; and mind-wandering contents. We demonstrate one important application of our framework by developing specific propositions regarding the effects of various mind-wandering characteristics on immediate task performance in common work tasks: vigilance tasks, verbal-information-processing tasks, and creative problem-solving tasks. We contribute to mind-wandering and organizational research in numerous ways: By integrating findings from research on mind-wandering and on external related constructs, we embed the concept of mind-wandering in a robust theoretical foundation. We offer a

novel overarching framework that provides researchers with a fine-grained approach to studying the prevalence, antecedents and outcomes of mind-wandering

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Should we be stressed about stress? Stress mindset and judgment of others’ strain

We know a lot about stress and its resulting strain (i.e., negative outcomes such as burnout or impaired health), but not about how we perceive others' strain and what are the outcomes of such strain perceptions. We integrated the social projection and stress mindset literatures, to investigate, for the first time, the effect of holding a stress-is-enhancing, versus stress-is-debilitating; mindset on social judgments of a target's strain, and, consequently, on the target's perceived promotability and the intention to voluntarily help the target. We argued that projecting the perceiver’s stress-mindset on a target, may result in an egocentrically biased judgment of the target’s strain. We conducted four experimental and correlational studies, among 976 fully employed Americans and Israelis, using a novel stress mindset manipulation. We both predicted and found evidence that, independent of the effects of mood or optimism, individuals holding a stress-is-enhancing versus stress-is-debilitating mindset were less likely to judge a target experiencing a heavy workload, as suffering from burnout, somatic symptoms, and presenteeism (i.e., reduced productivity at work due to health problems). We also revealed important downstream outcomes: whereas these low strain judgments, in turn, lead to a higher estimate of the target's promotability, they also lead to a lower likelihood of helping him. Taken together, the current findings establish a causal link between stress-mindsets and judgments of others’ strain, thereby extending the novel notion of stress-mindset beyond intra-personal outcomes to inter-personal effects. Results provide a foundation for future work addressing the accuracy of judgment of others’ stress experience.