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Eating versus sleeping: Lunchtime meals and naps relation to afternoon creativity at work
1Department of Psychology & Counseling, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey, USA.
Applied Psychology. Health and Well-Being
|February 14, 2023
Summary
High-quality lunchtime meals and naps boost employee creativity by restoring psychological resources. Meal quality significantly impacts creativity via work engagement and reduced cognitive depletion, more so than nap quality.
Area of Science:
- Organizational Psychology
- Workplace Well-being
- Creativity Studies
Background:
- Conservation of Resources theory posits that individuals strive to obtain and maintain resources.
- Psychological resources like work engagement and cognitive capacity are crucial for employee performance and innovation.
- Lunchtime recovery activities offer a potential avenue for resource replenishment during the workday.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the dual mechanisms through which lunchtime recovery activities (naps and meals) influence employee creativity.
- To examine the mediating roles of work engagement (affective process) and cognitive depletion (cognitive process) in this relationship.
- To differentiate the impact of nap quality versus meal quality on creativity.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a group-mean centering approach to analyze within-person effects.
- Collected data from 230 employees at South Korean construction sites using a two-wave daily questionnaire design.
- Finalized 1598 valid daily questionnaires after data cleaning.
Main Results:
- High-quality lunchtime naps and meals significantly predicted creativity.
- Both nap and meal quality positively influenced work engagement and reduced cognitive depletion.
- Indirect effects were generally supported, but the indirect effect of nap quality on creativity via work engagement was not significant.
Conclusions:
- Lunchtime recovery activities, particularly meal quality, are vital for enhancing employee creativity.
- Replenishing psychological resources through quality meals during lunch is more impactful on creativity than napping.
- Organizations should encourage high-quality meal breaks to foster a more creative workforce.
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