Job crafting promotes internal recovery state, especially in jobs that demand self-control: a daily diary design

Background Research on how employees recover from work has focused primarily on recovery during non-work hours (external recovery) rather than recovery during work hours (internal recovery). Using the conservation of resources theory as a conceptual framework, we tested whether job crafting promotes an internal recovery state, and examined the processes that explain this association. Methods Using the daily diary method, 120 full-time employees provided information before and after work for 5 days by rating job crafting, ego depletion, self-control demands at work, fatigue and vigor. Results The results of multilevel modeling showed that after controlling for employees’ fatigue and vigor before work, daily job crafting predicted significantly better internal recovery (greater vigor and lower fatigue at the end of workday), and this association was mediated by lower ego depletion. The links between job crafting and internal recovery were stronger for employees with high self-control demands at work. Conclusions This study extends recovery research by examining internal recovery as well as job crafting as its antecedent. Further, the present study suggests that managers may consider encouraging and offering job crafting interventions for employees to achieve internal recovery state.

Emotional experiences in digitally mediated and in-person interactions: An experience-sampling study

As the ubiquity of digitally mediated communication grows, so does the number of questions about the costs and benefits of replacing in-person interactions with digital ones. In the present study, we used a daily diary design to examine how people’s emotional experiences vary across in-person, video-, phone-, and text-mediated interactions in day-to-day life. We hypothesized that individuals would report less positive affect and more negative affect after less life-like interactions (where in-person is defined as the most life-like and text-mediated as the least life- like). In line with this hypothesis, the analysis of 527 unique interactions reveals that people feel lonelier, sadder, less connected, less supported, and less happy following digitally mediated compared to in-person interactions. Additional analyses show that the links between communication mode and momentary experiences are independent of properties of individual interactions such as interaction length and overall quality of the interaction. These findings provide initial evidence that there may be inherent properties of common digital communication tools that make connection more challenging and point to important directions for future research.

Job Crafting Promotes Internal Recovery State, Especially in Jobs that Demand Self-control: A Daily Diary Design

Background: There is an increasing body of research on how employees recover from work, but most of this research has focused on recovery during non-work hours (external recovery) rather than recovery during the work hours (internal recovery). Using the conservation of resources theory as a conceptual framework, we tested whether job crafting promotes internal recovery state, and examined the processes that explain this association.Methods: Using the daily diary method, 120 participants provided information twice a day for five days by rating job crafting, ego depletion, self-control demands at work, fatigue and vigor.Results: The analysis of results showed that after controlling for fatigue and vigor before employees started a day’s work, job crafting predicted significantly better internal recovery, and this association was mediated by lower ego depletion. These associations were moderated by how much self-control was required by the job, with the links between job crafting, lower ego depletion and internal recovery being stronger for employees with high demands to exercise self-control.Conclusions: This study provides insights to how employees with high self-control demands recover from work via job crafting.

Pornography use and romantic relationships: A dyadic daily diary study

Pornography use is now considered a normative sexual activity, including for partnered individuals. Although there are documented positive and negative effects of pornography use on romantic relationships, studies to date suffer from key limitations, narrowing their clinical relevance. Most rely on vague recall measurement that may inadequately capture actual pornography use, and all are exclusively based on mixed-sex couples. This study used a 35-day dyadic daily diary design to examine the associations between an individual’s daily pornography use and their own and their partner’s relationship satisfaction, partnered sexual desire, and probability of partnered sexual activity in mixed-sex and same-sex couples ( N = 217 couples). For women, regardless of partner’s sex, using pornography was associated with their own and their partner’s higher sexual desire and with higher odds of partnered sexual activity. For men, regardless of partner’s sex, using pornography was associated with their partner’s lower sexual desire; for men coupled with women, with lower odds of partnered sexual activity, and for men coupled with men, with higher odds of partnered sexual activity. For all participants, pornography use was unrelated to relationship satisfaction. The current study demonstrated that an individual’s pornography use is associated with same-day couple’s sexual dynamics, with different associations according to users’ and their partners’ sex.

Workdays are not created equal: Job satisfaction and job stressors across the workweek

Are your workdays created equal? Common wisdom suggests that employees experience Mondays differently from Fridays. However, few studies distinguish among workdays, inherently assuming that the employee experience is uniform across the workweek. In the current study, we examined the trajectories of employees’ experiences of job satisfaction and job stressors across the workweek. We proposed two competing theoretical perspectives that result in opposite predictions as to whether job dissatisfaction and perceived job stressors will be higher (“Monday blues”) or lower (“rested and recharged”) at the beginning of the workweek rather than later in the week. Employing a daily diary design with 139 employees (681 matched daily observations) working the traditional workweek, we found that employees reported experiencing lower levels of job satisfaction and perceived more job stressors (i.e., incivility and organizational constraints) at the beginning of the workweek as opposed to later in the week. Additionally, the relationship between perceived incivility and job satisfaction was stronger at the beginning of the workweek. Our findings were consistent with the “Monday blues” perspective and suggest that workdays are not created equal.

Do Worry and Brooding Predict Health Behaviors? A Daily Diary Investigation

Background Meta-analyses have reported associations between perseverative cognition (both worry and brooding) and increased engagement in health-risk behaviors, poorer sleep, and poorer physiological health outcomes. Method Using a daily diary design, this study investigated the within- and between-person relationships between state and trait perseverative cognition and health behaviors (eating behavior, physical activity, alcohol consumption, and sleep) both cross-sectionally and prospectively. Participants (n = 273, 93% students, Mage = 20.2, SD = 4.11, 93% female) completed morning and evening diaries across 7 consecutive days. Results Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that, cross-sectionally, higher levels of state worry were associated with more time spent sitting and higher levels of state brooding predicted less daily walking. Conclusion Worry and brooding may represent useful intervention targets for improving inactivity and walking levels, respectively.

Daily Subjective Age in Emerging Adults: “Now We’re Stressed Out”

During the emerging adulthood years, individuals explore their identities and often report feeling in-between adolescence and adulthood. These characteristics may correspond to greater variability in how old individuals feel. This study examined the daily variability in emerging adults’ subjective ages, as well as its association with daily stressors and the psychological dimensions of identity exploration and feeling in-between. Using a 9-day daily diary design, the study measured 106 emerging adults’ (18–22 years old) daily stressors, daily subjective ages, and endorsement of the Inventory of the Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood. Findings indicated that over half of the variability in emerging adults’ subjective ages occurred within person, and daily stressors could predict this variability. Furthermore, those high in identity exploration and feeling in-between were most likely to respond to daily stressors by feeling older. Results suggest that psychological identification with emerging adulthood amplifies responses to daily stressors and predicts feeling subjectively older.

Daily Diary Designs in Lifespan Developmental Psychology

Daily diary designs allow researchers to examine processes that change together on a daily basis, often in a naturalistic setting. By studying within-person covariation between daily processes, one can more precisely establish the short-term effects and temporal ordering of concrete daily experiences. Additionally, the daily diary design reduces retrospective recall bias because participants are asked to recall events that occurred over the previous 24-hour period as opposed to a week or even a year. Therefore, a more accurate picture of individuals’ daily lives can be captured with this design. When conclusions are drawn between people about the relationship between the predictors and outcomes, the covariation that occurs within people through time is lost. In a within-person design, conclusions can be made about the simultaneous effects of within-person covariation as well as between-person differences. This is especially important when many interindividual differences (e.g., traits) may exist in within-person relationships (e.g., states). Daily diary research can take many forms. Diary research can be conducted with printed paper questionnaires, divided into daily booklets where participants mail back each daily booklet at the end of the day or entire study period. Previous studies have called participants on the telephone to respond to interview questions each day for a series of consecutive days, allowing for quantitative as well as qualitative data collection. Online surveys that can be completed on a computer or mobile device allow the researcher to know the specific day and time that the survey was completed while minimizing direct involvement with the collection of each daily survey. There are many opportunities for lifespan developmental researchers to adopt daily diary designs across a variety of implementation platforms to address questions of important daily processes. The benefits and drawbacks of each method along with suggestions for future work are discussed, noting issues of particular importance for aging and lifespan development.