The role of authenticity and cognitive distortions in reducing workplace stress

Millions of employees working in universities experience occupational stress. Common stressors include working long hours and lack of supervisor support. Adverse consequences of workplace stress at the institutional level include higher levels of burnout and turnover rates. At the individual level, stressed employees experience lower job satisfaction and more health problems. There are many stress management interventions available to employees at different corporations in an attempt to reduce workplace stress, many of which are based on cognitive-behavioral therapy; this encourages individuals to challenge and change their maladaptive thoughts about stress. Researchers suggest that these programs appear to be effective. However, more recently, newer interventions have been implemented, such as mindfulness-based stress management programs. These programs aim to reduce stress by changing the relationship the individual has with stress rather than changing the thoughts themselves. These programs appear to be successful as well. The current study attempted to compare a brief, one-session, cognitive- behavioral intervention to a mindfulness based intervention to determine if one lowers stress more effectively than the other. Additionally, the current study was intended to examine if the cognitive-behavioral intervention significantly reduced cognitive distortions and if the mindfulness intervention significantly increased authenticity. It was hypothesized that the cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness interventions would be equally effective at reducing stress. Because the study was underpowered, no inferential statistics could be used; instead the data is summarized with descriptive statistics. The intended methodology is reviewed in light of how it would add to the literature on short-term stress management interventions