Individual differences in response to low discretion jobs

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Abstract
Studies of the psychiatric symptoms associated with certain jobs are now frequent. Some individuals are more vulnerable to such effects than others. Certain recent investigations have suggested that this vulnerability is related to the number of minor cognitive failures that the person reports in everyday life. It is also possible however that these failures are themselves related to the challenges the person is experiencing. Some investigations of the 1970s, on the symptom levels in particular jobs, included a measure of cognitive failure; that is, self-reports of attention and memory failures in everyday life. The results on that point have not been published previously. This paper reanalyses those data, and concludes, first, that there was no evidence of cognitive failures being higher or lower in certain jobs. Second, the correlations between cognitive failure and anxiety were markedly higher in repetitive work allowing little control to the individual. Within the limits of the study, the correlation was not particularly high in groups with pacing or low levels of leisure satisfaction. It seems likely therefore that cognitive failure is a sign primarily of vulnerability to psychiatric symptoms in jobs of low discretion.