Deck 9: Managing Stress and Work Life Balance

Question 1

Whether people experience stress depends on how they perceive potential opportunities and threats and how they perceive their capabilities to deal with them.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Stress results from opportunities or threats that people perceive as important, in spite of being able to handle them effectively.

Answer 2

False
Stress is the experience of opportunities or threats that people perceive as being important and perceive as being something they might not be able to deal with effectively.

Question 3

According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), all organizations should have a "zero-tolerance policy" toward workplace violence.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Employees who are high on the Big Five personality dimension of extroversion are less likely to experience stress when meeting new people on a day-to-day basis.

Question 5

Driving to work in heavy traffic is guaranteed to be a source of stress.

Question 6

When exposed to the same sources of stress, individual employees will experience the consequences of stress in largely the same way.

Question 7

Employees with "Type A" personalities always experience high stress levels.

Question 8

High blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and heart attacks may result from excessive levels of prolonged stress.

Question 9

Many things can be stressful for an employee, even events that the employee does not perceive as important or significant.

Question 10

Individual differences play an insignificant role in determining how members of an organization perceive potentially stressful situations.

Question 11

Both opportunities and threats can be sources of stress.

Question 12

Employees who lack the abilities needed to perform their jobs can experience stress.

Question 13

Stressful feelings and emotions are often the psychological consequences of stress.

Question 14

Opportunities such as learning new skills or getting a new job can be stressful for employees who lack self-efficacy.

Question 15

There is a simple cause-and-effect relationship between stress and its physiological consequences.

Question 16

Employees starting new jobs often feel stressed and nervous, but the stress diminishes over time as they gain experience.

Question 17

Employees who are high on the Big Five personality dimension of neuroticism are likely to think that ambiguity and change on the job are potential threats.

Question 18

Stress can occur if the person experiencing an opportunity or a threat is unsure whether he or she can effectively deal with it.

Question 19

Employees who are high on self-esteem are less likely to experience stress from challenging work assignments.

Question 20

Because they are open to new experiences, entrepreneurial types do not experience the stress of starting their own companies and being innovative.

Question 21

One way to summarize the relationship between stress and performance is in terms of a letter "U" that has been inverted. Up to a certain point, increases in stress enhance performance. Beyond that point, further increases in stress impair performance.

Question 22

Employees in helping vocations, such as nursing or social work, tend to be less likely to experience burnout.

Question 23

Job underload (not having enough work to do) can be the source of job-related stress.

Question 24

Mergers and acquisitions are often an organizational source of stress, particularly for employees in the acquired firm.

Question 25

Given increasing globalization, cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts that cause stress in cross-cultural teams.

Question 26

Strained interpersonal relations, absenteeism, and turnover are all potential behavioral consequences of stress.

Question 27

Major life events such as the death of a loved one, divorce, serious illness, or getting arrested, involve emotional or physical "threats" and are negative.

Question 28

Role ambiguity occurs when one behavior or task a person is expected to perform interferes with the performance of another expected behavior or task.

Question 29

The point at which increases in levels of stress result in decreases in performance is the same for everyone.

Question 30

Unemployment can be stressful for an employee and his family.

Question 31

The stress that most students experience as exams approach is positive because it propels them to study.

Question 32

Most employees experience some degree of role ambiguity at one time or another because organizations frequently change job responsibilities to adapt to changing conditions in the competitive environment.

Question 33

Relatively minor life events such as getting a speeding ticket or going on a vacation can be stressful.

Question 34

The potential consequences of stress on job performance can be positive or negative.

Question 35

Layoffs can be stressful for members of an organization who are survivors of the layoff.

Question 36

In the workplace, overload is the condition of having too many tasks to perform.

Question 37

Potential stressors rarely arise at the work-group and organizational levels.

Question 38

Stress can be caused by one's personal life, responsibilities, membership in work groups or organizations, work-life balance, and environmental uncertainty.

Question 39

Role conflict occurs when expected behaviors or tasks are at odds with each other.

Question 40

Uncomfortable working conditions can be caused by excessive noise, extreme temperatures, and poorly designed office equipment.

Question 41

Role negotiation can be used to reduce role conflict, role ambiguity, overload, and underload.

Question 42

Students who attempt to convince a professor to change homework assignments in order to reduce the pressure on the class are attempting role negotiation.

Question 43

Organizational support is the extent to which an organization cares about the well-being of its members, listens to their complaints, tries to help them when they have problems, and treats them fairly.

Question 44

Many organizations use flexible work schedules to help their employees cope with conflicts between work and personal life.

Question 45

Problem-focused coping relates to the steps people take to deal directly with and act on the source of stress.

Question 46

Some problem-focused coping strategies for organizations are job redesign and rotation, reduction of uncertainty, job security, job sharing, and telecommuting.

Question 47

Exercise is an effective means of problem-focused coping.

Question 48

Research suggests that individuals use emotion-focused and problem-focused coping.

Question 49

Redesigning jobs is seldom an option to reduce negative stress.

Question 50

Problem-focused coping is directly tailored to the stressor being experienced.

Question 51

Improving communication throughout an organization is an effective way to reduce uncertainty in the workplace.

Question 52

Job sharing involves two or more employees who are responsible for a single job and agree on how to divide job-related tasks and working hours.

Question 53

Emotion-focused coping involves the steps people take to deal with and control their stressful feelings and emotions.

Question 54

Organizations use employee assistance programs (EAPs) to provide their members with professional help to deal with stressors.

Question 55

Time management is a strategy for coping with overload.

Question 56

Employees are not affected by stressors that stem from uncertainty in the wider environment, such as terrorism, pollution, and corporate scandals.

Question 57

Yoga is growing in popularity as a means to alleviate stress and increase people's ability to concentrate.

Question 58

Social support and clinical counseling are examples of nonfunctional ways of dealing with stress.

Question 59

Job rotation involves assigning employees to different jobs on a regular basis.

Question 60

Getting help from a mentor is an individual-based, emotion-focused coping strategy.

Question 61

Psychological consequences of stress include all of the following EXCEPT ________.

A) burnout
B) heart palpitations
C) negative attitudes
D) stressful feelings and emotions

Question 62

Joe has been asked by his boss to work on a $2 million dollar project. This job will entail travel and a good deal of paperwork. How is Joes MOST LIKELY to feel?

A) Excited, this is a great opportunity for Joe to work on.
B) Anxious, a good deal of work and travel is involved in this project.
C) Stressed, he might not be able to handle the work obligations required on this project.
D) There is not enough information to determine how he will likely feel.

Question 63

A sales manager who earns commission on all sales from the company is inwardly happy whenever a salesman complains that he is feeling stressed, as long as the stress level is not overly high. Which of the following MOST logically explains why the sales manager is inwardly happy?

A) The sales manager does not like his salesmen.
B) The sales manager does not understand stress.
C) The sales manager knows that light stress can motivate people.
D) The sales manager is glad that he is not the only one feeling stressed.

Question 64

All of the following are key signs of burnout EXCEPT ________.

A) depersonalization
B) feelings of low personal accomplishment
C) emotional exhaustion
D) role ambiguity

Question 65

The major factors of stress that affect everyone are threat, opportunity, importance, and ________.

A) emotion
B) expansiveness
C) behavior
D) uncertainty

Question 66

Providing personal days and sabbaticals can help reduce stressful feelings and emotions by allowing employees to put their work-related stress aside for a day or two or for a more extended period.

Question 67

A manager notices there is a great amount of stress in the workplace. He wants to reduce the stress felt by his employees. What would be his BEST option to reduce stress?

A) He should hire only type B personalities.
B) He should offer training opportunities to increase the employees' abilities.
C) He should ensure his employees have an internal locus of control.
D) He should get rid of all threats and opportunities in workplace.

Question 68

If an organization wanted to minimize the danger of workplace violence it would be LEAST LIKELY to ________.

A) ensure that employees are aware of the workplace violence policy
B) provide employees with cell phones
C) install security systems in the workplace
D) offer a harsh warning for the first offense of violence

Question 69

Megan Price is learning how to operate a new computer system as part of her job. The new system requires extensive data input, which is a problem for Megan, who does not know how to type. The introduction of the computer system will MOST LIKELY produce stress for Megan because she ________.

A) has the traits of an extravert
B) scores high on openness to experience
C) ranks low on negative affectivity
D) lacks the abilities needed

Question 70

Laura has been given the chance to work as a reporter in a major city. She has worked at several other smaller newspapers as a reporter and has no doubts that she can handle this new opportunity and do a wonderful job. She accepts the new position only because it is a higher-paying job. She isn't very excited about it because she secretly wants to be a novelist. How much stress is Laura MOST LIKELY to experience when starting this new job?

A) Laura has no stress as she begins her new job.
B) Laura has little stress as she begins her new job.
C) Laura has a significant amount of stress as she begins her new job.
D) Laura's stress will be so great that she must quit her new job.

Question 71

Which of the following is MOST LIKELY to affect stress within an individual?

A) marital status
B) education
C) socio-economic status
D) personality

Question 72

Thom Thomas was trained to be an air traffic controller for two years and has posted exceptional scores on every practice test and exercise he has taken. However, he has never worked in an actual control tower. On his first day in the control tower of a major airport, Thom MOST LIKELY experienced stress because he ________.

A) is neurotic
B) lacks the abilities needed
C) is low on negative affectivity
D) does not have experience

Question 73

Employees who are high on ________ are the MOST LIKELY to view changes at work as potential threats and doubt their abilities to deal with them.

A) neuroticism
B) extraversion
C) locus of control
D) self-esteem

Question 74

Which of the following is LEAST LIKELY to be a consequence of stress?

A) an inability to fall asleep
B) a feeling of a lack of control
C) an increase in performance
D) a decrease in absenteeism

Question 75

The graph of the relationship between stress and job performance can be characterized as ________.

A) a U shape
B) downward sloping
C) upward sloping
D) an inverted U

Question 76

A company is in tumult. People are getting laid off left and right. One thing after another continues to hit the company and no attempt to fix the dour situation has worked. George ranks high on neuroticism. Elaine is a type A personality who occasionally gets very pushy with her co-workers. Vincent has an internal locus of control and Barbara ranks high on extraversion. Who is MOST LIKELY to feel the least amount of stress?

A) George
B) Elaine
C) Vincent
D) Barbara

Question 77

________ is the experience of opportunities or threats that people perceive as important and question their abilities to handle effectively.

A) Stress
B) Anticipation
C) Excitement
D) Expectancy

Question 78

What BEST describes the relationship between stress and job performance?

A) There is no relationship between stress and job performance.
B) Stress always leads to a lower level of job performance.
C) Stress always leads to an increased level of job performance.
D) Stress can lead to a lower level or increased level of job performance.

Question 79

It is only appropriate to define something as a stress if it ________.

A) is a clear and present danger
B) could harm a person
C) produces a physiological reaction, such as sweating
D) is a source of negative self-efficacy

Question 80

When looking at individuals and stress, organizations must realize that individuals ________.

A) respond essentially the same to potential stressors
B) respond differently to potential stressors
C) recognize the same trivial potential sources of stress
D) perceive their abilities the same