Summary: After intense, prolonged stress, people’s sense of normalcy can rebound within weeks, new research finds.
Source: University of Maryland
The coronavirus pandemic introduced widespread uncertainty and new daily pressures—from sudden shifts to working at home to managing children’s remote learning. Despite that upheaval, many people managed to regain a feeling of normalcy more quickly than expected.
Research forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology shows that people’s psychological sense of “normal” can return rapidly, even while stressors continue. The study, titled “Getting Back to the ‘New Normal’: Autonomy Restoration During a Global Pandemic,” tracked employees’ reactions in the earliest days of COVID-19 disruptions and found that recovery processes can begin almost immediately.
“Our psychological immune system is so effective that even though we have an ongoing, persisting stressor, we start to fix ourselves almost immediately,” says Trevor Foulk, a management professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and one of the study’s authors. Foulk and his colleagues from the University of Southern California, Singapore Management University and the University of Florida examined how quickly people rebounded after major disruptions to daily life.
The researchers monitored 122 employees multiple times a day for two weeks, starting on March 16, 2020—just after many U.S. cities issued stay-at-home orders and school closures and only days after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. That timing allowed the team to capture reactions during the crisis’s very early phase.
The study concentrated on two aspects of normalcy: feelings of powerlessness and feelings of authenticity—whether people felt like their usual selves. On the first day, as the crisis intensified, employees reported strong feelings of powerlessness and a diminished sense of authenticity. Yet the turnaround was rapid.
“But, over the course of even just those two weeks, normalcy started to return,” Foulk notes. “People felt less powerless and more authentic—even while their subjective stress levels were rising.”
This finding matters because previous research generally assumed that recovery begins only after a stressor ends and that restoration of normalcy can take months or years. The new results indicate that people can establish a revised, workable sense of normal even while a disruptive event is ongoing.
Foulk explains that employees were actively adjusting to new routines and constraints, restoring a degree of autonomy and self-direction that supports feeling “normal” again. “The pace at which people felt normal again is remarkable, and highlights how resilient we can be in the face of unprecedented challenges,” he says.
The research also found that people higher in neuroticism—those who tend to experience greater anxiety, nervousness, self-consciousness or vulnerability—showed more intense initial reactions but rebounded faster than less neurotic colleagues. The authors suggest that individuals who are more prone to emotional ups and downs may be better tuned to notice stress early and quickly engage coping strategies that restore their sense of control and authenticity.
Overall, the study’s evidence points to a robust and surprisingly quick psychological recovery process. Even as objective stressors and worries increased, many employees adapted and re-established a sense of normalcy in a short span of time.
“Contrary to much of the doom-and-gloom coverage, our work offers a ray of hope,” Foulk says. “Our psychological immune system starts working a lot faster than we think, and we can begin to feel ‘normal’ even while the crisis continues.”
About this psychology research article
Source:
University of Maryland
Media Contacts:
Greg Muraski – University of Maryland
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.
Original Research: The study will appear in Journal of Applied Psychology.