Stress-Induced Strategy Shifts Toward Intuitive Cognition: A Cognitive Continuum Framework Approach

Abstract

The demands for more efficient production processes in manufacturing industries are changing the nature of the jobs workers perform and of the schedules they work. For example, automation is creating jobs that require the execution of complex decision-making skills as well as work schedules that call for round-the-clock industrial operations necessary to meet the capital investment demands concomitant with implementing workplace technology. Using the automated workplace as a context in which to develop some new ideas concerning the nature and influence of the automated workplace on performance, this article (a) briefly summarizes a portion of the occupa- tional stress literature, using the cognitive continuum theory as potential framework in which to evaluate and measure the effects of various stressors on the performance of complex decision tasks, (b) identifies continuous work and task uncertainty as two common workplace stressors that may affect decision-making task performance, and (c) presents empirical evidence that serves to highlight the strategy shifts toward an intuitive form of cognitive that occur in response to stress manipulations.