Social Influence and Stress: Extending COR Theory from a Network Perspective

We study how stress emerges and changes in an organizational setting. Traditional conservation of resources (COR) theory explains stress levels among participants in terms of whether the focal individual has sufficient resources to cope with environmental stressors. We posit that a key -- but neglected -- factor in one’s resource conservation is the distribution of stress in the overall network in which one is embedded. To investigate this social resource, we conducted a 6-month longitudinal study of 321 early- to mid-career adults in a professional masters program as they encountered the stresses of end-of-course deadlines and exams. We follow the participants’ networks as they change over this 6-month period, as well as the stress levels of the participants in the study at these stressful time points. We find that the stress levels of one’s own social contacts contribute to the experience of stress in this setting, and that one’s susceptibility to social influence depends on certain personality traits. Interestingly, we find that the extent to which social influence is critical to the participants’ stress levels depends heavily on the variance (or lack of consensus) in stress levels among those social contacts; this social effect is significantly amplified under conditions of relative consensus.