On January 23rd, 2021, a new study of “Being mindful at work: A moderated mediation model of the effects of challenge stressors on employee dedication and cynicism” was published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology Dr. Jiajin Tong, assistant professor of School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University.

Since stressors were categorized into challenge and hindrance stressors (Cavanaugh et al., 2000), a lot of research emerged in this area. Challenge stressors received special research concern due to its contradictory effects. Previous research relied on multiple perspectives (e.g., emotions, motivations, self-esteem) to explain how challenge stressors lead to contradictory consequences. The current research explored a new perspective by grasping the nature of resources and categorizing coping behaviors into “resource building” and “resource draining”. More interestingly, we found that mindful awareness helped to avoid resource draining coping behaviors. It may be due to the broad receptive attention and awareness in mindfulness, which effectively helps self-regulation and further help employees select adaptive coping behaviors. This research promotes mindfulness research at work and provides theoretical guidance and empirical evidence for employee mindfulness interventions.

Dr. Jiajin Tong and Dr. Jo K. Oh (School of Business, University of Connecticut) are co-first authors. Dr. Jiajin Tong is the corresponding author. We achieved great support and collaboration from Professor Russell E. Johnson (Michigan State University). This research received financial support from the Foundation of Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health.

Tong, J.#*, Oh, J. K.#, & Johnson, R. E. (2021). Being mindful at work: A moderated mediation model of the effects of challenge stressors on employee dedication and cynicism. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. DOI: 10.1080/1359432X.2021.1882423 (# co-first authors; * correspondence; Impact factor=3.968)