UPDATED: April 5, 2011, 11:30 p.m.

Individuals may be more productive and less stressed while studying if they stop to refuel, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The study, included in a March 25 article on The Wall Street Journal’s website, found avoiding a problem in the short term by sleeping or doing leisure activities may reduce stress and help solve the conflict by restoring people’s individual resources, such as energy.

‘We have a finite amount of resources and energy,’ said Julie McCarthy, co-author of the study and associate professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto. ‘If we don’t allow ourselves time to recover, we’ll slowly, you know, keep getting more and more stressed out until we burn out.’

McCarthy and co-author Tracy Hecht, an associate professor of management at Concordia University, also observed that individuals who reached out to others for emotional support experienced more stress — another counterintuitive finding.

People have to train themselves to take regular breaks, even though that may be frowned upon in an industrious culture with Puritan roots, McCarthy said.

‘Avoidance-focused coping can be a good thing. Sometimes we have to mentally disengage from the task at hand,’ she said. ‘By taking breaks, you are going to be more effective. You have to capitalize on your brain power.’

The so-called go-getters, who adopt a problem-focused approach in resolving conflict, may develop an inability to disengage from roles that create stress, which can lead to obsessive behavior, McCarthy said.

Boundaries between the various roles an individual plays — such as the role of student, employee and significant other — could become blurred with a strict problem-solving approach. This might decrease life satisfaction and increase ‘inter-role conflict,’ meaning participation in one role might decrease the participation in another role, according to the study.

Dispositional tendencies, such as individual personality traits and temperaments, also affect inter-role facilitation, according to the study. So the same problem may seem like a threat to one person and a challenge to another.

Unless a person realizes that some goals can only be achieved through incremental steps, it’s likely the person will feel overpowered, McCarthy said.

‘I’ve had students coming into my office really overwhelmed and upset,’ she said. ‘Some problems are big — they take more than a day to solve.’

Whatever a person’s coping style, balance is key, McCarthy said. Though short-term avoidance may be beneficial, completely dodging a problem will likely compound anxiety in the long run.

Laura DePalma, a senior television, radio and film and English and textual studies major, said it’s sometimes difficult to juggle multiple roles.

‘I feel like it can be hard to manage sometimes, so I try to focus on one thing at a time and finish it before moving on,’ DePalma said.

Ultimately, whether a person’s coping method is avoidance, a problem-focused approach or an emotion-based one, the ideal option depends on the conflict and its circumstances. In all likelihood, a person doesn’t want to be too reliant on any single coping technique, McCarthy said.

‘It’s knowing when to use what strategy,’ she said, ‘and not to overdo.’ 

chlevin@syr.edu

Published on April 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm