Reject Stability
IN THE LATE 1970S a researcher from the University of Chicago, Salvatore Maddi, was studying the psychological motivations of 26,000 employees working at a local phone company. Soon after the study began, there were major disruptions to the business as deregulation of the US phone industry caused mass changes to resourcing and operations. Unsurprisingly, there were many employees who rejected the changes, experiencing feelings of victimisation and a yearning for the ‘good old days’. These employees struggled, resisting forces of change that were largely outside of their control. What was surprising to Maddi and his researchers was the flow-on effects of this resistance, most strikingly in the form of serious health conditions: heart attack, stroke, obesity, depression and substance abuse, as well as relationship breakdown, were common among the downtrodden. Maddi’s study…