The Impact Of Work Interruption On Well-being:the Mediating Role Of Emotion And The Moderating Role Of Mindfulness

Employees have to stop their work temporarily when others suddenly interrupt them,which is a frequent happened phenomenon in the workplace.Much research proved that this kind of interruption would hinder employees from completing their work on schedule and would negatively affect employees’ performance.Increased work load adds to employees’ physical and psychological burden.Meanwhile,employees would have more negative emotion,such as irritation,which results in psychosomatic disease.Existing research used to focus on the influence of work interruption on organizational level.Nevertheless,the research of the impact of work interruption on individual level is rare.In this thesis,we first divide work interruption into three sources: work interruption from work,work interruption from family,and work interruption from other sources.Then,to explore the concrete mechanism of the effect of work interruption on individual well-being,we build models respectively to carry out analysis.A large number of studies demonstrated that positive emotion promotes wellbeing while negative emotion inhibits well-being.Therefore,we assume that work interruption impact well-being through the mediation of emotion.People with different mindfulness traits show diverse emotional reaction to work interruption.Also,their ways to deal with work interruption are different.We suggest that mindfulness traits could moderate the negative effect which is brought about by work interruption to wellbeing.To verify the hypotheses mentioned above,we use two types of method to conduct our study.Study 1 is a cross-sectional related study that uses on-line questionnaire survey to measure 360 employees’ work interruption,well-being,positive emotion,negative emotion and mindfulness trait.Participants’ average age is 29,including 232 female employees(64.4%).The results of study 1 show that at between-person level:(1)Work interruption from work and other sources both increase negative emotion,and decrease well-being via negative emotion.(2)Work interruption from other sources decreases positive emotion and decreases well-being through positive emotion as a mediating role.(3)Mindfulness trait moderates the relation between positive emotion and well-being.For employees with higher mindfulness traits,the negative effect of decreasing positive emotion on well-being is weaker.Study 2 is an intensive longitudinal study with 114 employees.Every employee participated in this study for continuing 30 working days.First,we collected participants’ demographic variables and mindfulness traits,as well as baselines of work interruption,positive emotion,negative emotion and well-being in registration questionnaire.Subsequently,we measured participants’ work interruption,positive emotion,negative emotion and well-being in daily questionnaire.The average age of participants is 28.72,and 72 of them are female(63.2%).The results of study 2 show that at within-person level:(1)Work interruption from work,family and other sources all increase negative emotion,and decrease well-being via negative emotion.(2)Work interruption from other sources decreases positive emotion and decreases well-being through positive emotion as a mediating role.(3)Mindfulness trait of between-person level moderates the relation between negative emotion and well-being.For employees with higher mindfulness traits,the negative effect of increasing negative emotion on well-being is weaker.In conclusion,work interruption would increase employees’ negative emotion while decrease their positive emotion,and impair employee’s well-being via emotion.High mindfulness trait could moderate the detrimental effect of increasing negative emotion or decreasing positive emotion caused by work interruption on well-being.Accordingly,mindfulness can be regarded as a protect mechanism for individual’s well-being.