Job Tension and Emotional Sensitivity to COVID-19 Public Messaging and Risk Perception

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Occupational Health Psychology
• Social Marketing

Background:

• Government social marketing campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic employed suppression and mitigation strategies.
• Effective public health messaging requires rapid behavior change to lower virus transmission rates.
• A potential side effect of successful campaigns is increased on-the-job stress when employees return to work amidst ongoing virus threats.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the relationship between sensitivity to pandemic public health messaging and on-the-job stress.
• To investigate how pandemic messaging influences employee emotions and work tension.
• To examine the impact of pandemic background noise on the workforce.

Main Methods:

• Survey of 1154 office employees in Shanghai, People's Republic of China, post-quarantine.
• Canonical correlation analysis was employed to analyze the data.
• Four predictor variables (reference group, self-regulation, media, risk) and two criterion variables (negative emotions, job tension) were assessed.

Main Results:

• Employees exhibit differential sensitivity to pandemic-related social marketing messages.
• Heightened sensitivity to social-level virus risks correlated with increased negative emotions and work tension.
• Greater openness to reference group influence also predicted higher levels of negative emotions and job tension.

Conclusions:

• Pandemic public health messaging can inadvertently contribute to occupational stress.
• Individual differences in risk perception and social influence moderate the psychological impact of public health campaigns.
• Organizations should consider the psychological toll of public health messaging on employees returning to work.