Occupational stress causes significant problems for business and industry. The loss to companies in the U.S. totals $150 billion a year. Of the 140 million Americans in the labor force, 36 percent to 52 percent report moderate to high levels of stress at work. Psychological and behavioral outcomes from prolonged or intense stress include lower levels of self-esteem, job satisfaction, and motivation, as well as increased depression, anxiety, and burnout. Although stress management programs have become popular in the workplace over the last two decades, these efforts have done little to reduce occupational stress. Recent evidence suggests shifting the paradigm from stress management to emotion management. Emotion management provides a strong theoretical and practical base for direct intervention in worksites. In addition, the Emotion Intelligence (EI) research offers four constructs (i.e., self awareness, social awareness, self management and relationship management) that directly relate to the appraisal and coping constructs of the revised Lazarus (2006) model of stress, coping and emotion. This project will develop an intervention program based on behavior change theory (i.e., social cognitive theory, and theory of reasoned action) that will modify Dysfunctional Emotional Responses (DERs) through change in the four EI constructs. The proposed individual-level research project will shift the focus from the traditional lifestyle stress and coping strategies to an approach which makes emotional self- management a key element of the stress and coping process. An 8-session interactive multimedia (IMM) training program will be produced to teach emotion management and interpersonal skills to help workers minimize the impact of occupational stress. The project will integrate proven adult education and e-Learning instructional design strategies with behavioral change theory to help employees: (a) develop a problem- solving approach when encountering stressful situations, (b) learn to identify moods, negative thinking, out of control behaviors, and dysfunctional emotional responses which interfere with working relationships and job performance, and (c) develop skills to manage their emotional reactions, both externally and internally. The proposed intervention will be a web-based skill training program consisting of: (a) IMM presentation of content; (b) video-based testimonial examples illustrating the consequences of dysfunctional emotional responses; (c) behavioral modeling using authentic video scenarios depicting how to apply the training; and (d) mastery learning practice applications of the training principles. A certificate will be received upon completion. In Phase I, a prototype program containing 3 of the total of 8 modules will be designed, built and evaluated. In Phase II, the full-scope training program will be developed and evaluated in a large-scale randomized trial. ? ? ?
