Relations Between Exercise and Employee Responses to Work Stressors: A Summary of Two Studies

Abstract

A popular method of enhancing employee health and reducing stress management has been physical activity or exercise. Unfortunately, little research has examined the effects of exercise on employee responses to the work environment. This is also true of other stress management treatments such as relation training, cognitive behavior modification, and other forms of behavior change. Psychological disorders were related to both life and work stressors only among law enforcement officers who did not perform regular physical activity of an aerobic nature. The validity of psychological strain measures is evidenced by the fact that they have been used extensively in the work stress literature, and have been shown to be related to a variety of work-related stressors, and intercorrelate well. The focus of the regression analysis is the prediction of both anxiety and frustration from optimism and exercise activities. In both cases, the objective is to find out whether exercise had any predictive power after the effects of optimism were controlled.