Trait Anxiety in the Workplace: A Job Demands-Resources Perspective
Abstract
There is a widely held assumption that anxiety is always bad for job performance,
when, in reality, the research findings on anxiety and performance are complex,
varied, and inconsistent. Anxiety is extremely common and recently on the rise in
the general population, and it can be related to important workplace outcomes such
as job performance and well-being. Using the theoretical backdrops of the job
demands-resources model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007, 2018) and the theory of
workplace anxiety (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018), this study proposed a model
examining the mechanisms through which trait anxiety could lead to lower and
higher typical job performance and lower employee well-being. Findings were
mixed. The indirect effect of trait anxiety on typical job performance through
emotional exhaustion was not significant. Trait anxiety was negatively related to
employee well-being through emotional exhaustion. While Behavioral drive, a
recently-developed motivational construct that measures effort, was positively
related to typical job performance, opposite of what was hypothesized, trait anxiety
was negatively indirectly related to typical job performance through behavioral
drive, However, the effect disappeared when using other-rated rather than self-rated
typical performance data. Additionally, behavioral drive buffered the negative
relationship between trait anxiety and self-rated typical job performance. This study
contributes to the growing conversation about anxiety in the workplace and
answers the call for a more humanistic approach to I/O psychology