The importance of supervisor emotion recognition for praise and recognition for employees with psychological strain

ABSTRACT

Background: The present study examined the role of praise and recognition from one’s supervisor in mitigating the extent to which employees with psychological strain intend to engage in stress-related behavioral intentions. Design: Two studies, each using a cross-sectional design, are presented. Method: Both studies utilized self-report data from local government employees (n = 313 Study 1; n = 244 Study 2). Results: In Study 1, moderated regressions with bootstrapping showed a strong positive association between psychological strain and stress-related behavioral intentions for employees with low levels of supervisor praise and recognition. In contrast, this relationship was less marked at high levels of supervisor praise and recognition. Study 2 replicated these findings and further demonstrated that praise and recognition, when given by a supervisor perceived to be high in emotion recognition skills, was the optimal combination. Of particular interest was the finding that high and low combinations of these two supervisor attributes did not compensate for each other and were just as detrimental as supervisors perceived to be low in both. Conclusions: Overall, results suggest that the effectiveness of appreciative behavior from supervisors depends on their emotion recognition skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological strain
• praise and recognition
• emotion recognition
• occupational stress
• supervisors

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Adele J. Bergin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4374-888X

Nerina L. Jimmieson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4901-7949

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP0775049) in collaboration with Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT110100083), both awarded to the second author. The funders had no involvement in any parts of the research.