Reframing Anxiety as Excitement in Job Seekers: A Within-Person Field Experiment

Abstract

While job seeker’s anxiety may be adaptive (e.g., Gabriel et al., 2021), it may also undermine individual’s weekly experiences of self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1997), inhibiting job search behaviors. Prior scholarship (Brooks, 2014) finds that individuals who reappraise anxiety as excitement improve their performance outcomes and mitigate the negative effects of anxiety. Drawing from the social cognitive theory of self-regulatory behavior (Bandura, 1997; 2001) and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2001), I conducted a weekly emotion reappraisal intervention reframing job seeker’s job search anxiety as job search excitement. Results of the field experiment indicated that the intervention was positively related to feelings of excitement about the forthcoming week of job seeking. Further, these feelings of excitement were positively related to both creative job search and networking self-efficacy. At the end of the week, job seekers who had done the intervention and experienced excitement and creative and networking self-efficacy related to their job search reported engaging in focused job search effort as well as effort towards finding their dream job. As such, this intervention provides a promising avenue for improving weekly job search experiences.