BEHAVIOURAL SELF-REGULATION AND EMPLOYEES’ HEALTH

Abstract

"The main goal of this study was to examine the relationship between the type of behavioural self-regulation and psychophysical health of employees in the Republic of Serbia. Following the Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2002), Hodgins and Knee (2002) proposed that human beings possess an inherited organismic core self, which develops in a social context that fosters or precludes the fulfilment of any or all three basic psychological needs: relatedness, competence, and autonomy. The quality of social support during child’s development are theorized to yield three broad types of ego-systems depending on how many needs are fulfilled. These three ego-systems include the integrated self (int-s), the ego-invested self (e-i-s), and the impersonal self (imp-s), differing in the level of autonomy and integration in behavioural self-regulation. Previous studies indicate that level of needs satisfaction and integration of self is related to a better health and health protective behaviour (e.g., Ntoumanis et al., 2021; Ng et al., 2012; Hodgins et al., 1996). The psychophysical health was considered here as the absence of health disorder symptoms within five domains: physical health, depression reactions, fatigue, fear and anxiety, and social functioning. The data were gathered from an at-hand sample of 331 employees, with different work tenure (13 years in average), gender (65% were women), and with the average age of 39. Two questionnaires were applied to gather data on self-regulation of everyday behaviour and data on five dimensions of health. The ego-functioning questionnaire (EFQ; Majstorovi?, 2007, ?(int,e-i,imp) = .75; .75; .88) is a 30-items tool administered to estimate the dominant type of self-regulation, while psychophysical health scale (SPFZ-1; Majstorovi?, 2011; ? = .91) with 23 items asks employees to self-evaluate the frequency of health disorder symptoms. Based on scores greater than mean value on one EFQ subscale and below mean value on the remaining two, the sample size was reduced to 128 participants and three groups with one dominant type of self-regulation were formed. Univariate ANOVA revealed that employees with a dominant impersonal self-regulation, compared to integrated and ego-invested regulation, report significantly more frequent symptoms on all health domains. Work tenure, gender, and age of employees do not moderate this relationship. It was concluded that these results corroborate an organismic hypothesis of self with better health expected within more authentic and more integrated ego-system. Implications of SDT based health interventions in work setting are discussed."