Abstract
BackgroundSocial relationships are crucial for well-being and health, and considerable research has established social stressors as a risk for well-being and health. However, researchers have used many different constructs, and it is unclear if these are actually different or reflect a single overarching construct. Distinct patterns of associations with health/well-being would indicate separate constructs, similar patterns would indicate a common core construct, and remaining differences could be attributed to situational characteristics such as frequency or intensity. The current meta-analysis therefore investigated to what extent different social stressors show distinct (versus similar) patterns of associations with well-being and health.MethodsWe meta-analysed 557 studies and investigated correlations between social stressors and outcomes in terms of health and well-being (e.g. burnout), attitudes (e.g. job satisfaction), and behaviour (e.g. counterproductive work behaviour). Moderator analyses were performed to determine if there were differences in associations depending on the nature of the stressor, the outcome, or both. To be included, studies had to be published in peer-reviewed journals in English or German; participants had to be employed at least 50% of a full-time equivalent (FTE).ResultsThe overall relation between social stressors and health/well-being was of medium size (r = −.30, p < .001). Type of social stressor and outcome category acted as moderators, with moderating effects being larger for outcomes than for stressors. The strongest effects emerged for job satisfaction, burnout, commitment, and counterproductive work behaviour. Type of stressor yielded a significant moderation, but differences in effect sizes for different stressors were rather small overall. Rather small effects were obtained for physical violence and sexual mistreatment, which is likely due to a restricted range because of rare occurrence and/or underreporting of such intense stressors.ConclusionsWe propose integrating diverse social stressor constructs under the term “relational devaluation” and considering situational factors such as intensity or frequency to account for the remaining variance. Practical implications underscore the importance for supervisors to recognize relational devaluation in its many different forms and to avoid or minimize it as far as possible in order to prevent negative health-related outcomes for employees.
Highlights
Social relationships are crucial for well-being and health, and considerable research has established social stressors as a risk for well-being and health
Because we found that all investigated social stressor concepts show an impact, it might be appropriate for organisations to use more general measurement instruments to screen for relational devaluation
We could support earlier research by showing an overall moderate effect of social stressors on wellbeing and health and by demonstrating that social stressors overall have an effect, with both the type of social stressors as well as outcomes accounting for a significant amount of variance but with more heterogeneity on the outcome level
Summary
Social relationships are crucial for well-being and health, and considerable research has established social stressors as a risk for well-being and health. In line with stress-as-offense-to-self theory [4], it can be argued that these different concepts have an important characteristic in common: They represent a threat to the self in terms of two strongly associated aspects of self-esteem, that is, social self-esteem (one’s perception of how one is evaluated by significant others) and personal self-esteem (one’s self-evaluation). This threat arises from feeling devalued (Leary & Allen [5] refer to “relational devaluation”), which violates the basic human need to belong ([6]; see the need for relatedness in self-determination theory [7]). It follows that a threat to the self may be induced by savaging occupational roles; such threats can be regarded as “identity-relevant stressors” [11]
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