PSC, Effort-Reward Imbalance and Cognitive Decline; A Road Safety Experiment

Abstract

To date little research has investigated the effects of work stress on cognitive performance or the spillover from work to domains such as driving performance. In this experiment 79 employees, randomly selected from the community, completed a change detection task that related to driver safety. Work stress factors investigated were self-reported effort-reward imbalance (ERI) and Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC). While work stress factors were not directly related to cognitive ability on the task, both ERI and PSC moderated the expected positive relationship between age and cognitive decline. As ERI increased the positive relationship between age and time to detect change became stronger. This result was corroborated with PSC; as PSC levels decreased the strength of the positive age to cognitive decline relationship also became stronger. Results imply that low levels of management concern for worker psychological health and failure to reciprocate high work effort with high rewards may exacerbate cognitive decline with age, with implications for workplace performance and spillover to other domains such as driving safety.