Emotional flexibility and general self-efficacy: A pilot training intervention study with knowledge workers

Jacqueline Brassey; Arjen van Witteloostuijn; Csaba Huszka; Tobias Silberzahn; Nick van Dam

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0237821

Emotional flexibility and general self-efficacy: A pilot training intervention study with knowledge workers

PLoS One. 2020 Oct 14;15(10):e0237821. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237821. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Jacqueline Brassey^{1

2

3}, Arjen van Witteloostuijn^{1

4}, Csaba Huszka³, Tobias Silberzahn⁵, Nick van Dam^{2

6}

Affiliations

¹ Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
² IE University, Segovia, Spain.
³ Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
⁴ Antwerp Management School / University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
⁵ McKinsey & Company, Berlin, Germany.
⁶ Nyenrode Business University, Breukelen, The Netherlands.

Abstract

Emotional flexibility advancement has been found to be highly effective in clinical settings to treat, for example, depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. Developing these skills in the working context has also shown very encouraging results in public sector settings. Also, a few studies have revealed effectiveness in a private sector setting, but no studies have yet looked at the effectiveness of developing these skills amongst high-paced, high-demanding, and highly-educated knowledge workers. In this pilot training intervention study, we report evidence that emotional flexibility can be developed in this context. We conducted an experiment with treatment and control groups, with only the treatment group receiving an emotional flexibility training. Emotional flexibility improved significantly for the treatment group, whereas the improvements were minimal or negative for the control group. Furthermore, we reveal that General self-efficacy improved amongst treatment group participants (and not for control group participants), and that this is associated with emotional flexibility. Finally, we show that the improvements were higher for participants starting from a lower baseline.

MeSH terms

Adult
Education
Emotional Adjustment*
Emotional Intelligence
Female
Humans
Job Satisfaction
Male
Mental Health
Netherlands
Occupational Health
Occupational Stress / psychology
Pilot Projects
Psychometrics
Self Efficacy*
Workplace / psychology*
Young Adult

Grants and funding

This paper’s study was conducted as part of the International Master in Affective Neuroscience of Maastricht University and the University of Florence. The 1st author was a student of this program at the time whilst working 80% at McKinsey & Company. She received permission to conduct the study, with help of a colleague from the German office. The study was executed during the 1st author’s time outside of her time at McKinsey. There was no funding, pay or other commercial interest from the participating McKinsey organization. The 4th author, a McKinsey colleague, invited the 1st author’s participation in the study. He holds a PhD from King’s College in Immunology, is personally interested in this topic, and invests personally and professionally in improving the well-being of colleagues. This study is in no way related to work with clients of the organization. The organization where the research was performed prefers not to be mentioned in the study and hence is anonymized in the paper.