Social Cognition Work and Depression
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya
MA Program in Organizational Behavior & Development
“My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it” - Abraham Lincoln. From history and in the present, we have been taught to work but not necessarily to enjoy it. Job dissatisfaction, burnout, and depression are ordinary situations that happen more often than not. “I always give 100 percent at work: 10 percent on Monday, 23 on Tuesday, 40 on Wednesday, 22 on Thursday and 5 percent on Friday.” People learn to manage their jobs, get through the day, and eventually through the week. Most people in today’s economy are happy just to have a job, any job. Due to this, most people will stay at a job even when unsatisfied. But work-related factors like long hours, poor relationship with superiors, and lack of control over daily tasks, are factors that can get worse when the supervisors are pinching pennies, and can contribute to depression as well. The blues just do not come out of the blue. There is no one trigger for depression like mown grass can induce hay fever, like the old Southern saying goes. But one of the many triggers is stress in the work environment. Depression, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is feelings of sadness, emptiness, or irritability; starts gradually and builds, the person begins to have a loss of interest, lack of energy, overwhelming feeling by life, difficulty concentrating, and an increase in sleep and weight. Depression is the most common mental disorder, but it is treatable. The problem is that many people do not realize that they have become depressed. In the past, there has been no systematic research linking job dissatisfaction as a major source of depression. In this paper, we argue that employees who stay in jobs where they are unhappy and dissatisfied will become depressed. We begin by looking at depression through mental disorders. Research by Wang, Smailes, Sareen, Schmitz, Fick, and
MA Program in Organizational Behavior & Development
“My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it” - Abraham Lincoln. From history and in the present, we have been taught to work but not necessarily to enjoy it. Job dissatisfaction, burnout, and depression are ordinary situations that happen more often than not. “I always give 100 percent at work: 10 percent on Monday, 23 on Tuesday, 40 on Wednesday, 22 on Thursday and 5 percent on Friday.” People learn to manage their jobs, get through the day, and eventually through the week. Most people in today’s economy are happy just to have a job, any job. Due to this, most people will stay at a job even when unsatisfied. But work-related factors like long hours, poor relationship with superiors, and lack of control over daily tasks, are factors that can get worse when the supervisors are pinching pennies, and can contribute to depression as well. The blues just do not come out of the blue. There is no one trigger for depression like mown grass can induce hay fever, like the old Southern saying goes. But one of the many triggers is stress in the work environment. Depression, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is feelings of sadness, emptiness, or irritability; starts gradually and builds, the person begins to have a loss of interest, lack of energy, overwhelming feeling by life, difficulty concentrating, and an increase in sleep and weight. Depression is the most common mental disorder, but it is treatable. The problem is that many people do not realize that they have become depressed. In the past, there has been no systematic research linking job dissatisfaction as a major source of depression. In this paper, we argue that employees who stay in jobs where they are unhappy and dissatisfied will become depressed. We begin by looking at depression through mental disorders. Research by Wang, Smailes, Sareen, Schmitz, Fick, and
References: Brief, A.P., & Weiss, H.M. (2002). Organizational Behavior: Affect in the Workplace. Annual Review Psychology, 53, 279-307. Hutri, M., & Lindeman, M. (2002). The Role of Stress and Negative Emotions in an Occupational Crisis Judge, T.A., & Larsen, R.J. (2001). Dispositional Affect and Job Satisfaction: A Review and Theoretical Extension Keenan, A., & Newton, T.J. (1984). Frustration in Organizations: Relationships to role stress, climate, and psychological strain Thurau, T.H., Pugh, S.D., & Groth, M. (2011). Willing and Able to Fake Emotions: A Closer Examination of the Link Between Emotional Dissonance and Employee Well-Being Wang, J., Smailes, E., Sareen, J., Schmitz, N., Fick, G., & Patten, S. (2012). Three job-related stress models and depression: a population-based study