Michiel A J Kompier

Radboud University | RU · Behavioural Science Institute

Objective: This study aimed to systematically review the effectiveness of organizational-level interventions in improving the psychosocial work environment and workers' health and retention. Methods: We conducted an overview of systematic reviews on organizational-level interventions published between 2000 and 2020. We systematically searched ac...

Objective Demanding psychosocial work characteristics, such as high job demands, can have a detrimental impact on leisure–time physical activity (LTPA), with adverse consequences for employee health and well-being. However, the mechanisms and moderators of this crossover effect are still largely unknown. We therefore aimed to identify and test pote...

After cognitively demanding work, individuals tend to be less physically active. However, the psychological mechanisms underlying this effect have not been thoroughly tested. The aim of this article was to experimentally investigate the impact of cognitive work demands on subsequent physical activity behavior. Across two preregistered experiments,...

Research suggests that cognitive fatigue has a negative impact on physical activity participation. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect are yet unclear. Using an effort-based decision-making paradigm, we examined whether individuals weigh physical effort-costs more strongly when they are cognitively or physically fatigued. Twenty universi...

Most people experience the feeling of mental fatigue on a daily basis. Previous research shows that mental fatigue impacts information processing and decision making. However, the proximal causes of mental fatigue are not yet well understood. In this research, we test the opportunity cost model of mental fatigue, which proposes that people become m...

Nowadays, many people take short breaks with their smartphone at work. The decision whether to continue working or to take a smartphone break is a so-called labour versus leisure decision. Motivational models predict that people are more likely to switch from labour (work) to leisure (smartphone) the more fatigue or boredom they experience. In turn...

In this research, we attempt to understand a common real-life labor/leisure decision, i.e., to perform cognitive work or to interact with one’s smartphone. In an ecologically valid experiment, participants (N = 112) could freely switch back and forth between doing a 2-back task and interacting with their own smartphone. We manipulated the value of...

Work-related fatigue among employees is related to negative consequences. Therefore, it is valuable to evaluate interventions that potentially reduce fatigue and increase health and well-being among these employees. The present study investigated whether variations in the receipt of an exercise intervention for fatigued employees were related to in...

People have a strong tendency to attend to reward cues, even if these cues are irrelevant to their current goal or their current task. When reward cues are goal-irrelevant, their presence may impair cognitive performance. In this meta-analysis, we quantitatively examined the rapidly growing literature on the impact of reward-related distractors on...

In this research, we attempt to understand a common real-life labor/leisure decision, i.e., to perform cognitive work or to interact with one’s smartphone. In an ecologically valid experiment, participants (N = 112) could freely switch back and forth between a doing a 2-back task and interacting with their own smartphone. We manipulated the value o...

Research on off-site on-call work is scarce and insight into the characteristics and experience of off-site on-call work is limited. This study provides an overview of the characteristics of off-site on-call work and the way in which employees experience their off-site on-call duties. In addition, the relationship was investigated between character...

Onderzoek naar consignatiediensten is schaars en inzicht in de kenmerken en ervaring van consignatiediensten is beperkt. Dit onderzoek geeft een overzicht van de kenmerken van consignatiediensten en van de wijze waarop werknemers dergelijke diensten ervaren. Daarnaast is de relatie onderzocht tussen enerzijds consignatiekenmerken en -ervaringen en...

People have a strong tendency to attend to reward cues, even if these cues are irrelevant to their current goal or their current task. When reward cues are goal-irrelevant, their presence may impair cognitive performance. In this meta-analysis, we quantitatively examined the rapidly growing literature on the impact of reward-related distractors on...

Nowadays, many people take short breaks with their smartphone at work. The decision whetherto continue working or to take a smartphone break is a so-called labor vs leisure decision. Motivational models predict that people are more likely to switch from labor (work) to leisure (smartphone) the more fatigue or boredom they experience. In turn, fatig...

Despite an elevated recovery need, research indicates that athletes often exhibit relatively poor sleep. Timing and consolidation of sleep is driven by the circadian system, which requires periodic light-dark exposure for stable entrainment to the 24-hour day, but is often disturbed due to underexposure to light in the morning (e.g., low-level indo...

Most people experience the feeling of mental fatigue on a daily basis. Previous research shows that mental fatigue impacts information processing and decision making. However, the proximal causes of mental fatigue are not yet well understood. In this research, we test the opportunity cost model of mental fatigue, which proposes that people become m...

The smartphone can be used for two context-incongruent purposes (work-related use at home and private use at work). In order to better understand these two behaviors conceptually, we aimed to (1) identify subgroups of context-incongruent smartphone users and (2) identify differences in demographic, smartphone-related, and occupational health-relate...

Over a hundred prior studies show that reward-related distractors capture attention. It is less clear, however, whether and when reward-related distractors affect performance on tasks that require cognitive control. In this experiment, we examined whether reward-related distractors impair performance during a demanding arithmetic task. Participants...

Recent theories suggest that negative effects of fatigue on performance are determined by perception of effort and motivation rather than being directly caused by reaching physiological limits. In the current experiment, the influence of motivation on fatigue-induced decrements in soccer performance was experimentally investigated. Sixty amateur so...

Performance capacity in athletes depends on the ability to recover from past exercise. While evidence suggests that athletic performance decreases following (partial) sleep deprivation and increases following sleep extension, it is unclear to which extent natural variation in sleep impacts performance. Sleep quantity and, for the first time, sleep...

Sleep is crucial for recovery and skill acquisition in athletes. Paradoxically, athletes often encounter difficulties initiating and maintaining sleep, while having sufficient sleep opportunity. Blue (short-wavelength) light as emitted by electronic screens is considered a potential sleep thief, as it suppresses habitual melatonin secretion. The cu...

When people carry out cognitive tasks, they sometimes suffer from distractions, that is, drops in performance that occur close in time to task-irrelevant stimuli. In this research, we examine how the pursuit of rewards contributes to distractions. In two experiments, participants performed a math task (in which they could earn monetary rewards vs....

Exploratory analysis on participants’ response times both in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. (DOCX)

Exploratory analysis on participants’ need for money both in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. (DOCX)

In competitive soccer, match-induced fatigue is a common phenomenon that may negatively influence performance. Focusing on decision-making, the current study experimentally tested the impact of fatigue on players’ interception decisions and, in doing so, also took into account potential effects on physical capacity and motivation. Using a counterba...

Recently, experimental psychologists have been thinking a lot about how to do research in such a way that their findings can be replicated. As a result, it is becoming more and more common (a) to preregister one’s own hypotheses and analysis plan online and (b) to conduct direct replications of one’s own studies. In this Research Methods Case, we d...

The aim of this study was (i) to gain more insight into the relationship between being on-call and sleep, and (ii) to investigate the role of stress in this relationship. Data were collected by means of an experimental field study with a within subject design (two conditions, random order). Ninety-six students participated during two consecutive ni...

The current study investigates perceived effects of fatigue on different aspects of soccer performance and-in various ways - tested the potential role of task motivation in these effects. Soccer players (N=433)from the highest four divisions in the Netherlands completed a questionnaire. Results showed that players perceive fatigue to negatively aff...

Objective Burnout constitutes a health risk, and interventions are needed to reduce it. The aim of this study was to synthesize evidence regarding the relationship between physical activity and burnout by conducting a systematic review of longitudinal and intervention studies. Methods A literature search resulted in the identification of a final se...

Background: Fatigue as a result of prolonged activity may increase injury risk and decrease performance. Purpose: To provide insight in the development of fatigue experiences during soccer matches and the extent to which general performance capacity (i.e. overall physical fitness, psychological fitness, and recovery) contributes to these fatigue ex...

Objectives: Sleep is essential for recovery and performance in elite athletes. While it is generally assumed that exercise benefits sleep, high training load may jeopardize sleep and hence limit adequate recovery. To examine this, the current study assessed objective sleep quantity and sleep stage distributions in elite athletes and calculated the...

We examined how process factors were related to the development of various indicators of well‐being during the course of an exercise randomized controlled trial aimed at reducing fatigueamong university students. We investigated (a) whether actual exposure to the exercise sessionswas related to differences in students' trajectories of well‐being, (...

Objectives The present study evaluated the efficacy of an exercise intervention to reduce work-related fatigue (emotional exhaustion, overall fatigue, and need for recovery). The effects of exercise on self-efficacy, sleep, work ability, cognitive functioning and aerobic fitness (secondary outcomes) were also investigated. Methods Employees with...

Sleep is essential for recovery and performance in elite athletes. While actigraphy-based studies revealed suboptimal sleep in athletes, information on their subjective experience of sleep is scarce. Relatively unexplored is also the extent to which athletes’ sleep is adversely affected by environmental conditions and daytime behaviours, that is sl...

Employees have gained increased flexibility in organizing their work in time and space, that is boundaryless work. Managing the boundaries between work and personal life would seem to be crucial if one is to psychologically detach from work during leisure in order to unwind and get sufficient sleep. Drawing from a sample of Swedish professional wor...

Good reasons exist for combating stress at work. It is a burden for individual employees and their families and costly to companies and society. Moreover preventing stress at work is a sign of good corporate citizenship as it respects modern legislation that stimulates the provision of a good quality of working life. In order to recommend good inte...

New ways of working (NWW) is a type of work organization that is characterized by temporal and spatial flexibility, often combined with extensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and performance-based management. In a three-wave intervention study, we examined the effects of NWW on both the organization of work (changes in co...

Background: Many university students experience high levels of study-related fatigue. This high prevalence, and the negative impact of fatigue on health and academic performance, call for prevention and reduction of these symptoms. The primary aim of the current study was to investigate to what extent an exercise intervention is effective in reduc...

Application form Ethics Committee (in English). (DOCX)

(DOC)

Approval Ethics Committee (in Dutch). (PDF)

The purpose was to reexamine cognitive performance and cortisol levels of initial clinical burnout patients, non-clinical burnout individuals, and healthy controls. After 1.5-years of the initial measurement, clinical burnout patients showed a reduction of burnout symptoms and general physical and psychological complaints, but these were still elev...

There is an increasing amount of evidence that during mental fatigue, shifts in motivation drive performance rather than reductions in finite mental energy. So far, studies that investigated such an approach have mainly focused on cognitive indicators of task engagement that were measured during controlled tasks, offering limited to no alternative...

New ways of working (NWW) is a type of work organization that is characterized by temporal and spatial flexibility, often combined with extensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and performance-based management. In a three-wave intervention study, we examined the effects of NWW on both the organization of work (changes in co...

Background: The aim of the current study is to evaluate the efficacy of an exercise intervention to reduce work-related fatigue. Exercise is a potentially effective intervention strategy to reduce work-related fatigue, since it may enhance employees' ability to cope with work stress and it helps to detach from work. However, based on available res...

Objectives. This study examined the relationship between on-call duty exposure (active and total on-call hours a month, number of calls per duty) and employees’ experiences of being on-call (stress due to unpredictability, ability to relax during inactive on-call periods, restrictions during on-call duties, on-call work demands, and satisfaction wi...

This study examined: (a) whether athletes' (N 5 348) perceived autonomy support (i.e., showing interest in athletes' input and praising autonomous behavior) differs across contexts (training vs. competition) and sport types (individual vs. team sports), and (b) whether the relationships between autonomy support and effort, enjoyment, and anxiety ar...

Worktime control (WTC) has been suggested as a tool to reduce employees' work-home interference and fatigue and improve job motivation. The purpose of this study was twofold: (i) to examine the prevalence of employees' need for, access to, and use of WTC, as well as the incongruence between need for and access to WTC (ie, mismatch); and (ii) to exa...

Purpose. This longitudinal study examined ‘normal’, ‘reversed’, and ‘reciprocal’ relationships between (1) physical activity and work-related fatigue; and (2) physical activity and task demands. Furthermore, the effects of across-time change in meaningful physical activity groups on levels of employees’ work-related fatigue and task demands were st...

Mental fatigue is often characterized by reduced motivation for effortful activity and impaired task performance. We used subjective, behavioral (performance), and psychophysiological (P3, pupil diameter) measures during an n-back task to investigate the link between mental fatigue and task disengagement. After 2 h, we manipulated the rewards to ex...

This longitudinal study examined the associations between work stressors, perseverative cognition and subjective and objective sleep quality. We hypothesized work stressors to be associated with (i) poor nocturnal sleep quality and (ii) higher levels of perseverative cognition during a free evening. We further hypothesized (iii) perseverative cogni...

Traditional machine-paced work shows adverse effects on worker health and learning. It is hardly known whether technological pacing shows the same effects in computer work. Hypotheses on work stress and learning were formulated regarding the effects of technological pacing, in the context of computer work performed during at least half of the worki...

Relatively little is known about cognitive performance in burnout. The aim of the present study was to further our knowledge on this topic by examining, in one study, cognitive performance in both clinical and non-clinical burnout while focusing on three interrelated aspects of cognitive performance, namely, self-reported cognitive problems, cognit...

Objective: This experimental study examined whether listening to self-chosen music after stress exposure improves mood, decreases subjective arousal and rumination, and facilitates cardiovascular recovery. Method: Participants (N = 123) were exposed to a mental arithmetic task with harassment to induce stress. Afterward, participants were random...

According to recent insights, humans might not be aware of a substantial part of their cognitive stress representations while these still have prolonged physiological effects. ‘Unconscious stress’ can be measured by implicit affect (IA) tests. It was shown that IA predicts physiological stress responses, in fact better than explicit (‘conscious’) a...

Purpose: Many workers have been dismissed in the past few years, either becoming unemployed or finding re-employment. The current study examined whether dismissal and its follow-up for the employee (re-employment versus unemployment) could be predicted from workers' employment contract and age, and their health status, work ability, work performan...

This study investigated the effects of a compressed working week with high cognitive and emotional work demands within the population of Dutch Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) pilots. Work stressors were measured and levels of well-being were examined before, during and after a series of day and night shifts. Results revealed that (i) th...

Incidence rates of third party workplace violence in Europe have increased, but little is known about the causes thereof. It has been suggested that the growth of the service sector and the intensification of work could be responsible for the increase. This study aimed to identify trends in the prevalence of physical workplace violence across Europ...

Objectives The objective of this study was to review longitudinal and intervention studies examining the association between psychosocial work characteristics (eg, job demands, job control, and social support) and sleep quality. Our main research aims were to examine whether (i) psychosocial work characteristics are a predictor of sleep quality, a...

Work stress has become a major issue among European employees. The current practice of its prevention seems disappointing, as work stress prevention programmes are predominantly reactive and biased to the individual. The lack of organization-level intervention studies is a barrier to progress in reducing work-related stress. In addition to the “tru...

Objectives: Changes in employment contracts may impact the quality of working life, job insecurity, health and work-related attitudes. We examined the validity of two partly competing theoretical approaches. Based upon a segmentation approach, we expected no change in scores among stable trajectories, whereas upward trajectories were expected to b...

It was investigated (1) whether employee health and well‐being (H&W) improve during short vacations (4–5 days), (2) how long this improvement lasts after returning home and resuming work and (3) to what extent vacation activities and experiences explain health improvements during and after short vacations. Eighty workers reported their H&W 2 weeks...

: The healthy worker effect implies that healthy workers go "up" in employment status whereas less healthy workers go "down" into precarious temporary employment or unemployment. These hypotheses were tested during an economic recession, by predicting various upward and downward contract trajectories, based on workers' health status, work-related w...

Working hours play a crucial role in the life, health, and well-being of workers. Concerning irregular working hours, the recent Fifth European Working Conditions Survey (1) shows that night work is carried out by 19% and shift work by 17% of all workers in Europe. More than half of the total workforce works at least one day during the weekend and...

The aim of this review was to assess systematically the empirical evidence for associations between employee worktime control (WTC) and work-non-work balance, health/well-being, and job-related outcomes (eg, job satisfaction, job performance). A systematic search of empirical studies published between 1995-2011 resulted in 63 relevant papers from 5...

Current theorizing holds that organizations may be less motivated to offer good work circumstances to temporary workers because the latter do not constitute the core of the organization. This implies that their quality of working life and work satisfaction could be lower than that of permanent workers. Therefore, it is potentially important to exam...

Most vacations seem to have strong, but rather short-lived effects on health and well-being (H&W). However, the recovery-potential of relatively long vacations and the underlying processes have been disregarded. Therefore, our study focused on vacations longer than 14 days and on the psychological processes associated with such a long respite from...