Coping behaviors as intervening mechanisms in the inverted-U stress-performance relationship.

Relationships among stress, coping behaviors, and performance were examined for 93 owner-manager s of small businesses damaged by hurricane floods. It was hypothesized that (a) perceived stress and performance display an inverted-U relationship, and (b) emotional coping mechanisms increase under higher stress. Subjects were interviewed regarding their handling of critical incidents under stress and completed the Subjective Stress Scale. Type of recovery effort following the flood was recorded, organizational performance was rated on a 5-point scale, and final loss data were acquired. Perceived stress and organization performance displayed a curvilinear, nearly inverted-U relationship. Actual financial loss (or stress level) did not account for performance differences. Problem-solving coping behaviors revealed an inverted-U relationship with perceived stress, while emotional coping behaviors displayed a positive linear relationship. Implications for improving performance under stress are discussed. Previous studies of psychological stress indicate that there is an optimum amount of stress in terms of its effects on performance. Stress that is higher or lower than this amount results in steadily decreasing performance. Performance under stress, then, follows an inverted-U-shaped function. This type of relationship between stress and performance, called the Yerkes-Dodson law, has been demonstrated in a number of laboratory studies under different types of experimental conditions. However there appears to be no research demonstrating a similar relationship between stress and performance in a field organizational setting. Several explanations have been advanced for this inverted-U-shaped relationship with emphasis placed on the amount of motivation generated by the stressing agent. For example, Vroom (1964), in reviewing a number of studies that demonstrate this type of relationship between stress and performance, pro