Survivor mission: Do those who survive have a drive to thrive at work?

Abstract

Are helping professionals who have experienced the same types of struggles as their clients more engaged at work? In the current investigation, we examine this question in samples of police detectives (with and without a history of violent victimization) and mental health workers (with and without a history of mental illness). Our results indicate that police detectives who have experienced violent victimization and mental health professionals who have experienced the same mental illness as their clients do indeed exhibit greater work engagement than their colleagues who lack these parallel life experiences. The link between a professional’s firsthand experience of his/her client’s hardships and work engagement appears to be partially explained by higher levels of grit among police detectives and by a greater sense of life-narrative continuity among mental health professionals.

Keywords:

• work engagement
• altruism born of suffering
• survivor mission
• empathy
• grit

Acknowledgments

We thank Adam Grant, Martin Seligman, Geoffrey Goodwin, Eli Tsukayama, Ann-Marie Roepke, Marie Forgeard, and Ari Lustig for their helpful feedback. This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (5-K01-AG033182-02).

Notes

1. Personal correspondence with Dr Thomas Reischl, an associate research scientist and evaluation director at the Prevention Research Center of Michigan, confirmed that this would not compromise the reliability or validity of the respondent’s answers.

2. Because the main study variables did not vary by gender or site, these factors were not included as covariates in the models. However, to be conservative, we tested whether controlling for gender and site (as well as age) attenuated the estimated associations among the key variables; it did not.

3. Because the main study variables did not vary by gender or site, these factors were not included as covariates in the models. However, to be conservative, we tested whether controlling for gender and site (as well as age) attenuated the estimated associations among the key variables; it did not.