The Relationships between Co-Rumination, Social Support, Stress, and Burnout among Working Adults
Abstract
Workers regularly report high levels of stress and burnout because of their daily interactions at work. They also tend to seek social support as a mechanism to reduce stress and burnout. Social support buffers the negative effects of stress on health-related outcomes and is inversely associated with burnout and perceived stress. However, recent research has revealed that not all social support is beneficial. Co-rumination, or excessive negative problem talk about an issue, has been linked to increasing levels of stress and burnout. Working adults ( N = 447) completed a survey exploring the relationships between social support, co-rumination, stress, and burnout. Two mediation models predicted that co-rumination would suppress the relationships between social support and both burnout and perceived stress. Data supported both partial mediation hypotheses. This study concludes that some social support can be less-than-beneficial, if the content of the supportive transaction focuses on excessive and negative problem talk.
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Organizational stress can manifest as employees perceive a perpetual need to prove their value to their organization, which can facilitate perfectionism, retention or promotion insecurity, and unstable social supports.
“Organizational stress can also manifest as employees perceive a perpetual need to prove their value to their organization, which can facilitate perfectionism [30], retention or promotion insecurity [31], and unstable social supports [32,33,34].”
From Canadian Public Safety Personnel and Occupational Stressors: How PSP Interpret Stressors on Duty (2020) · cites this paper as [33]
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- Authors
- Boren, J. P.
- Affiliations
- Santa Clara University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Boren, Justin P.
- ORCID
- Boren, Justin P.
- Venue
- Management Communication Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-11-20
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 3-25
- ISSN
- 0893-3189 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6798
- OpenAlex
- W2086509004
- Cited by
- 137
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 8.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Management Communication Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Scholar Commons (Santa Clara University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Stress and Burnout Research
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Occupational Therapy › Occupational Health and Burnout
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Emotional Labor in Professions
- Keywords
- co-rumination, social support, perceived stress, burnout, working adults, occupational stress, mediation
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