3 Traits That Might Help With Jobs Involving Trauma

Certain jobs put an extra burden on the mental health of people who do them because they frequently involve dealing with traumatic situations. Not everyone who does potentially traumatic jobs experiences negative mental health effects, though. So why are some people able to take on these jobs and still enjoy relatively good mental health? A…

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4 Factors That Link Stress to a Decline in Work Ability

Some amount of stress is often a part of work, but too much stress can start to interfere with people’s ability to get their work done. An important question is under what conditions stress begins to derail people’s work lives. Understanding that might help with knowing what strategies people can use to cope with stress…

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“Thank You” Can Change How People See You

If your parents told you to always say your thank yous when you were growing up, chances are they understood on some intuitive level that these two simple words carry a lot of power. Now there’s some science to back that idea up. A study published in Journal of General Psychology asked 136 participants to…

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The Importance of Disconnecting from Work

You might think that an ideal worker is one who’s always thinking about their job, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, taking your work home with you at night, whether literally or inside your head, might be a recipe for burnout. Along these lines, a new study suggests that people who…

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Would You Rather Be Replaced at Work by Another Human or a Robot?

That’s a bleak choice, and it’s exactly the choice researchers in Germany and the Netherlands gave people in a recent study on the psychology of job replacement. OK, the researchers didn’t actually remove people from their jobs for the sake of science. That would be taking it a little far. But they did ask people…

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Who Plans to Retire Early?

Given the option to retire, people will make different decisions about how long to keep working. In order to learn more about how people make retirement decisions, a recent study decided to focus on those who are most eager to close out their careers: adults over 50 who intend to retire before reaching the official…

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Courage Is Key for Entrepreneurs

You need a lot of things to start a business. A good idea, the skills to turn that idea into reality, and some cold, hard cash. Increasingly, psychologists who study entrepreneurship believe you need the right mindset too. They talk about having the “psychological capital” to succeed in a new venture. Psychological capital, or PsyCap…

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Gossip as a Workplace Coping Mechanism

We typically think of gossip as something frivolous. But “idle gossip” might not be so idle. Gossip can be a social bonding mechanism, and workplace gossip in particular might help people cope with the stresses of the job. In a recent study, researchers looked at how gossiping helps people deal with precarious employment situations. The…

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Can Job Interviews Uncover Narcissism?

Woe be to the employer who hires a promising applicant only to discover that they are an exceptional narcissist. The employer isn’t the only one to suffer, either. For example, if the newly hired narcissist turns out to be a doctor, that’s bad news for patients as well. This latter scenario was the inspiration for…

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