The moderating effects of culture-driven individual differences in the stress-strain relationships: comparison between Switzerland and South Africa

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the moderating effects of culture-driven individual differences in the relationship between work conditions and work-related health outcomes in Switzerland and South Africa: Swiss natives (n = 397) and Swiss foreigners (n = 224), White South Africans (n = 432) and non-White South Africans (n = 434). We used the horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism scale to measure culture-driven individual differences, the Job Content Questionnaire to measure psychological job demands, and the General Health Questionnaire and the General Work Stress Scale to measure work-related health outcomes. Results suggest that high vertical individualism had a general buffering effect in the stress–strain relationship among the South African White group. Low vertical collectivism played a similar role among the South African non-White group and the Swiss foreigners group, while high horizontal collectivism had a detrimental effect in stressful work conditions in both South African groups. Finally, horizontal individualism had no moderating effect. Generally, our study suggests that to investigate the moderating role of culture-driven individual differences according to the ethnic group of belonging is promising, given that the same individual characteristic does not necessarily interact in the same way in the stress–strain relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• JDC model of work stress
• stress-strain-relationships
• individualsm and collectivism
• culture-driven individual differences
• work-related health outcomes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Christina Györkös completed her PhD in psychology at the University of Lausanne, and her MA in work and organizational psychology at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. After obtaining her BA in psychology at Concordia University in Canada, she worked at PMI-Montreal in project management. For the last two years, she gave lectures in personality psychology at the University of Lausanne and conducted research on `storytelling' in job interviews at the University of Neuchâtel. Her research interests focus on well-being, work stress effects on health according to various cultural and professional groups, individual differences, and psychometrics.

Jean-Philippe Antonietti is a chemical engineer (EPFL). He worked several years at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Research on Cancer. In 1988, he studied psychology at the University of Lausanne, where he obtained a master’s degree and a PhD. His major research interests include the statistical analysis of single subject data, dyadic data analysis, and bayesian statistics. He currently teaches statistics at the University of Lausanne (Faculty of Social and Political Sciences).

Koorosh Massoudi is a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Lausanne. His research mainly focuses on stress and well-being at work, sociocultural integration, and longitudinal study of professional trajectories. He is also active as a career counselor and consultant for public and private organizations, aiming at the implementation of empirical results in order to improve the psychosocial conditions at the work place.

Jurgen Becker is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Western Cape and lectures psychometrics, research design, and strategy. He has published in the areas of assessment centers, test construction, and psychometrics. His current research activities focus on computer adaptive testing and Item Response Theory.

Gideon P. de Bruin received his MA (counseling psychology) and DLitt et Phil (psychology) degrees from the Rand Afrikaans University. He is a Professor of Industrial Psychology at Stellenbosch University. His research focuses on cross-cultural psychological assessment, with a particular emphasis on personality, career development, and work-related stress. His teaching focuses on psychometrics and research methods in industrial psychology. He has published on the topics of psychological test construction, career development, and cross-cultural personality assessment.

Jérôme Rossier studied psychology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He obtained a PhD in psychology at the University of Lausanne. After work experiences at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; at the National Institute of Health, United-States; and at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, he is currently full professor of vocational and counseling psychology at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Lausanne. He is also editor of the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance and member of several editorial boards of scientific journals. His teaching areas and research interests include counseling, personality, psychological assessment, and cross-cultural psychology. He published a great number of articles and book chapters mainly about cross-cultural, personality, and vocational counseling issues.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially financed through a grant of the Swiss South African Joint Research Program, organized by the State Secretariat for Education Research and Innovation of the Swiss Confederation and by the South African Department of Science and Technology, to Gideon P. de Bruin, Jerome Rossier, and Koorosh Massoudi [grant number 11].