Will workers in an inherently high-stress environment perform better if their bosses seek to defuse that stress? Or if their bosses play up and emphasize the stress? The answer probably depends on specific contexts of the workforce and the boss. But for some evidence and a speculative answer in one context, Oded Stark offers “Stress in the air: A conjecture” (Economics and Human Biology, December 2024). From the abstract:
The 1949 study The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath, Volume II, by Stouffer et al. presents detailed accounts of the attitudes of American fighter pilots toward the stress experienced by them and of the policies and practices of the American Air Force command in addressing this stress during WWII. The 2022 study “Killer incentives” by Ager et al. documents an aspect and a repercussion of the stress of German fighter pilots and can be used to identify the response to that stress by the German Air Force command during WWII. Drawing on these two studies, in this paper I construct fighter pilot stress profiles in the two air forces. The picture that emerges is that there is a stark difference between the approaches of the two commands. This diversity leads me to conjecture that the American Air Force command explicitly sought to forestall and curtail fighter pilots’ stress, whereas the German Air Force command implicitly cultivated and engineered fighter pilots’ stress.
Stark points out that the American Air Force command was very aware of the stress experienced by fighter pilots, and how performance tended to diminish with additional missions. They and tried to address the stress in various ways. One approach was to set a limit: “The limit to the tour of duty of fighter pilots was 300 hours of combat flying, which was typically achieved in six or seven months of active combat duty.” This limit was pre-announced and socially sanctioned. In addition, Stark quotes Stauffer about ongoing evaluation of fighter pilots: “All fighter pilots were systematically examined throughout the entire period that they were on operational duty; as soon as any … anxiety reaction to combat flying was detected, the man was immediately removed from combat duty as a fighter pilot”–although those removed from combat duty could be reassigned to less risky flights. Finally, American flight crews were rewarded in terms of total missions the completed, and medals were typically awarded after the tour of duty was complete, not on whether a particular mission had been especially risky.
The German Air Command during World War II took a different approach. It encouraged rivalry between fighter pilots, and gave decorations and promotions based in part on whether a mission was especially risky. Stark adds: “As noted many times in the Stouffer et al. study, the American army was well aware of and sympathetic to the problem of psychiatric combat breakdown (by 1943 providing treatment for psychiatric casualties, either at forward stations near the front or in dedicated hospitals closer to the rear), whereas the German army was generally hostile to the idea of psychiatric breakdown and those who were considered guilty of malingering or cowardice were not treated well.”
One can easily hypothesize reasons why organizations might take different approaches to stress management. In certain contexts (financial markets?), some kinds of risk-taking might be especially remunerative. In wartime, perhaps an aggressor has reason to encourage risk-taking, while the party fighting back (and expecting a surge of wartime production to arrive) will want to deal with stress differently. Even before the war started, the culture that generated US fighter pilots in World War II might have been quite different from the culture that generated German fighter pilots.
Thus, Stark’s point is not that there is one best approach that organizations should follow for motivating workers in stressful environments. But it can be useful to think explicitly about whether a given work environment seeks to be stress-reducing or stress-increasing–and what tradeoffs can arise.
Source link
