A Call for Preventing Interpersonal Stressors at Work

Abstract

In 2019, we put out the call for submissions to a special issue of Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) on preventing interpersonal stressors. At that time, we could not imagine that in 2020, a global pandemic (coronavirus disease [COVID-19]) would suddenly shut down our workplaces and result in a loss of face-toface interpersonal interactions. We extended deadlines for this special issue, given that lockdowns resulted in a loss of workplace social interactions. As we start to return to the office, our interactions with people are both the benefit (for support and connection) and bane (for mistreatment and abuse) of our work lives (Bolino & Grant, 2016; Grandey & Diamond, 2010; McCord et al., 2018). In fact, interpersonal stressors are more problematic for health than almost any other form of stress (Almeida, 2005) and may be instigated during work interactions with supervisors, coworkers, and customers (Grandey et al., 2007). Both high-intensity (i.e., aggression) and lowintensity (i.e., incivility) stressors distract employees from tasks and evoke negative affect, contributing to employee withdrawal and counterproductive behavior (Bowling&Beehr, 2006; Hershcovis&Barling, 2010; Porath&Erez, 2007; Yang et al., 2014). We know thatworkplace conditions (i.e., contact with the public, high workload, injustice) and employee characteristics (i.e., negative affectivity) are associated with experiencing interpersonal mistreatment (Hershcovis et al., 2007; LeBlanc & Kelloway, 2002; Li et al., 2019), which results in retaliating toward others (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Foulk et al., 2016)