Getting back to the "new normal": Autonomy restoration during a global pandemic

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Organizational Behavior
• Occupational Health

Background:

• Traditional recovery theories posit that psychological recovery begins after stressors cease.
• Autonomy restoration theory suggests immediate recovery can occur even during ongoing stressful events.
• The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique, ongoing global stressor impacting employee well-being.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the immediate psychological recovery process of full-time employees during the initial 2-week phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• To test the applicability of autonomy restoration theory in the context of an ongoing, severe stressor.
• To examine the temporal trajectories of powerlessness and authenticity as indicators of autonomy recovery.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a unique experience-sampling dataset collected from full-time employees over a 2-week period (March 16-27, 2020) at the pandemic's onset.
• Employed growth curve modeling to analyze temporal changes in powerlessness and authenticity.
• Compared findings with a pre-pandemic experience-sampling study (September 9-20, 2019) to establish a baseline.

Main Results:

• Employees showed decreasing powerlessness and increasing authenticity during the initial 2 weeks of the pandemic, indicating immediate autonomy restoration.
• These recovery patterns emerged despite no improvement in subjective stress levels.
• Individuals higher in neuroticism exhibited steeper recovery trajectories for both powerlessness and authenticity.
• The observed recovery patterns were absent in the pre-pandemic control data.

Conclusions:

• Psychological recovery, specifically autonomy restoration, can commence immediately during a significant, ongoing stressful experience like the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Autonomy restoration theory provides a valuable framework for understanding immediate coping mechanisms during crises.
• Findings offer novel insights into employee well-being and resilience during unprecedented global events.