Deck 7: Psychosocial Hazards

Question 1

What type of moderator can aggravate an individual's response to a stressor?

A)buffer
B)risk factor
C)personality
D)negative affectivity

Answer 1

risk factor

Question 2

According to the textbook, what is the main reason why organizations in the Mental Health Commission's case study project wanted to focus on improving mental health in the workplace?

A)because of financial concerns
B)because of a moral obligation
C)to meet a legal requirement
D)to reduce workplace accidents

Answer 2

because of a moral obligation

Question 3

What two personality characteristics are particularly relevant to stress?

A)type A and B behaviour
B)type A and competitive behaviour
C)type A behaviour pattern and negative affectivity
D)negative affectivity and competitive behaviour

Answer 3

type A behaviour pattern and negative affectivity

Question 4

What are the four components that researchers and practitioners of occupational health psychology focus on to reduce work-related psychosocial disorders?

A)organizational change, information, psychological health services, and surveillance
B)organizational change, information, psychological health services, and violence in the workplace
C)information, stress moderators, surveillance, and violence in the workplace
D)stress moderators, negative affectivity, depression at work, and information

Question 5

Based on the factors identified in the NIOSH model of workplace stressors, whose job has the most potential to be stressful?

A)lower paid musician
B)lower paid daycare worker
C)highly paid executive
D)highly paid assembly line worker

Question 6

A study completed by Morneau-Shepell suggest that what fraction of Canadian workers are more stressed now than they were five years ago?

A)a quarter
B)a third
C)a half
D)three-quarters

Question 7

Which of the following is NOT a category conceptualized by the NIOSH model?

A)workload and work pace
B)work scheduling
C)job content and control
D)job design

Question 8

Ergun works from a home office as a salesperson for a large drug company. How can his sales manager determine whether working from home is a psychosocial hazard for Ergun?

A)monitor his inventory of drug samples
B)monitor his nervous mannerisms
C)monitor his email response time
D)monitor his sales activity and results

Question 9

Which of the following is most likely to be an outcome of family-to-work conflict?

A)taking work home
B)long lunch breaks
C)excessive overtime
D)telecommuting

Question 10

Which of the following is an example of a primary stress intervention?

A)talking with friends
B)using relaxation techniques
C)providing flexible working conditions
D)providing employee assistance programs

Question 11

What is an example of an individual tertiary stress intervention?

A)yoga classes
B)sick days and leave options
C)talking with friends and coworkers
D)seeing a psychotherapist

Question 12

What is experienced by an employee who feels that his salary is too low given his amount of responsibility and the long hours he works?

A)distributive injustice
B)procedural injustice
C)interactional injustice
D)distributive inequity

Question 13

Technology-related stressors include all of the following factors EXCEPT

A)malfunctions.
B)isolation.
C)privacy.
D)ergonomics.

Question 14

If an employer announces a layoff of 25% of employees, job insecurity would be what type of stressor?

A)acute
B)chronic
C)daily
D)catastrophic

Question 15

The psychosocial model of health used to discuss stress highlights which of the following factors?

A)social environment and psychological factors
B)organizational culture and physiological factors
C)social environment and physical factors
D)organizational culture and psychological factors

Question 16

What model would explain why Celeste is unaffected by a network outage, whereas Celine is screaming loudly at the office's network administrator?

A)socio-technical model
B)transactional model
C)NIOSH stressor model
D)general adaptation syndrome model

Question 17

What is an example of an organizational secondary stress intervention?

A)offering PTSD counselling
B)offering an on-site fitness centre
C)helping sick days and leave options
D)providing flexible working conditions

Question 18

Why have primary stress interventions not been widely implemented in Canada?

A)union resistance
B)employee resistance
C)supervisor resistance
D)senior manager resistance

Question 19

Mateo is a medical resident who works long hours in a high-stress environment. He can't cut back on his hours or the stressors, so to stay healthy and avoid strain he hits the gym several days a week. This is best described as which of the following?

A)primary intervention
B)secondary intervention
C)tertiary intervention
D)appraisal-based coping

Question 20

What are the four categories of strain reactions?

A)organizational, physical, mental, and cognitive
B)behavioural, cognitive, organizational, and physical
C)psychological, physical, cognitive, and mental
D)psychological, physical, behavioural, and organizational

Question 21

Imagine you are currently the human resource director for a small to medium-sized organization. You are aware that perceived injustice in workplaces is a stressor and you would like to minimize the extent to which your employees are exposed to this type of work stress. Give some examples of how you might maximize employee-perceived distributive, procedural, and interactional fairness. What outcomes would signal that employees are beginning to feel that the workplace is unfair?

Question 22

Asthma is correlated to stress.

Question 23

A moderator is a variable that increases the negative effects of stress.

Question 24

Providing a coworker with positive feedback about a task they performed is an example of tangible support.

Question 25

The life of a highly paid professional athlete would seem to be all positive, but evidence shows that many elite athletes are exposed to a range of workplace stressors that are both similar to and different from those experienced by those in more "typical" occupations. Many athletes experience depression and other mental health issues both during and after their playing career.
If the team provides laptops with Skype for communicating with family and friends while the team is on the road, what type of stress intervention would this be and what type of work-family conflict could it help to reduce?

A)individual primary intervention; work-to-family conflict
B)individual secondary intervention; family-to-work conflict
C)organizational primary intervention; family-to-work conflict
D)organizational secondary intervention; work-to-family conflict

Question 26

The Pfizer company bans emails between 6pm and 6am and on weekends to help manage the stress related to technology.

Question 27

How can an employer or human resource manager manage mental health illness in the workplace?

Question 28

General adaption syndrome describes the body's way of reducing stress as it continues to adapt to stressors

Question 29

Talking with friends and coworkers is an example of a secondary stress intervention.

Question 30

The life of a highly paid professional athlete would seem to be all positive, but evidence shows that many elite athletes are exposed to a range of workplace stressors that are both similar to and different from those experienced by those in more "typical" occupations. Many athletes experience depression and other mental health issues both during and after their playing career.
If there are 20 Canadian players on a National Hockey League team (the rest are Americans and Europeans), according to Canadian statistics how many are likely to experience or be dealing with a mental health problem?

A)2
B)4
C)6
D)8

Question 31

The life of a highly paid professional athlete would seem to be all positive, but evidence shows that many elite athletes are exposed to a range of workplace stressors that are both similar to and different from those experienced by those in more "typical" occupations. Many athletes experience depression and other mental health issues both during and after their playing career.
Which of the following is a social moderator that could buffer athletes from experiencing negative effects of stress due to recent losses to other teams?

A)money
B)positive affectivity
C)drugs and alcohol
D)locker room jokes

Question 32

The life of a highly paid professional athlete would seem to be all positive, but evidence shows that many elite athletes are exposed to a range of workplace stressors that are both similar to and different from those experienced by those in more "typical" occupations. Many athletes experience depression and other mental health issues both during and after their playing career.


Playing time is something that athletes on sports teams monitor very closely and being "benched"-not allowed to play their regular shifts-can be very humiliating. However, if the coach does not bench an underperformer, what type of injustice might the rest of the team experience?

A)interactional injustice
B)interpersonal injustice
C)distributive injustice
D)procedural injustice

Question 33

Explain three reasons organization address the issues of mental health at work.

Question 34

Ruby Lee is always late to meetings, and her typical excuse is "I just tried to get one more thing done." Javier Suarez is always on time and drums his fingers on the table while he waits for Ruby. Ruby and Javier are both Type A personalities.

Question 35

Bridget is hard-driving, competitive, and is often impatient and irritable when dealing with time-sensitive work tasks; she has been categorized as having a type A personality. According to the research, Bridget's personality is a stress moderator.

Question 36

Describe the four strategies researchers and practitioners of occupational health psychology rely on to help reduce work-related psychological disorders.

Question 37

Identify and explain 5 of the 13 organizational factors that affect psychological health identified by CSA-Z1003-13.

Question 38

Offering on-site fitness centres is an example of a tertiary stress intervention.

Question 39

The life of a highly paid professional athlete would seem to be all positive, but evidence shows that many elite athletes are exposed to a range of workplace stressors that are both similar to and different from those experienced by those in more "typical" occupations. Many athletes experience depression and other mental health issues both during and after their playing career.
Every athlete on a professional sports team is hired on a contract basis, with no guarantee of permanent employment. What type of stressor is contract negotiation?

A)acute
B)daily
C)chronic
D)catastrophic

Question 40

Cyberbullying (tweets, comments on Facebook) is a form of interactional injustice.

Question 41

If an organization is concerned about work-family conflict, what aspects of work-family conflict should it identify and address to fully understand the issue?