@article{ref1,
title="Human and machine-induced social stress and cognitive performance",
journal="Ergonomics",
year="2020",
author="Sauer, Juergen and Jeanneret, Amélie and Smargiassi, Ondina and Thuillard, Simon",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="The article examines the effects of social stress on work performance in a laboratory study using a battery of performance tests. Social stress was induced by a combination of negative feedback and ostracism. Participants received negative performance feedback and were ostracised by two confederates of the experimenter. Using a one-way experimental design with three levels (machine-induced stress, human-induced stress, and no stress), 102 participants performed the following tasks: attention, divergent and convergent creativity. Participants also completed questionnaires measuring positive and negative affect, and state self-esteem. The manipulation check confirmed that social stress was successfully implemented. The results showed that social stress increased negative affect and reduced self-esteem. However, performance remained unaffected by social stress on any of the cognitive tasks, with no difference emerging between human-induced and machine-induced stress. The findings provide support for the 'blank-out'-mechanism, which assumes that humans can maintain performance levels even under difficult working conditions. Practitioner summary: Social stress in the form of negative performance feedback and social exclusion has a negative impact on the affect and self-esteem of humans. However, performance on subsequent tasks was not impaired.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0014-0139",
doi="10.1080/00140139.2020.1850883",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2020.1850883"
}