Featured Speakers

Effective coping with stress is essential to life satisfaction and quality of life. Yet, coping is not taught so we are left on our own to learn what works and what doesn’t work when we encounter stressful situations. At the same time, the study of coping has presented a formidable challenge to psychology. In general, coping has been regarded as reactive, a strategy to be used once a stressor has been experienced. Often when encountering stressors, the coping strategies people use are focused on regulating their emotional reactions to a stressor rather than focusing on the stressor itself. This may be because many stressors people encounter are diffuse and uncontrollable.  An alternative way of conceptualizing coping has been put forward, namely proactive coping, that is something one can do before stress occurs. Proactive coping incorporates planning and building resistance factors to ward off future crises. It involves goal setting, having efficacious beliefs, and it is associated with resources, including social support, for self improvement. Since it is associated with self-efficacy and vigor, demands are perceived as a challenge rather than a threat. Proactive coping predicts positive outcomes important to the promotion of health and well-being. It incorporates a confirmatory and positive approach to dealing with stressors and is often associated with life satisfaction and well-being. In this talk, research will be presented that illustrates the relationship between proactive coping, positive affect and outcomes. Theoretically, through a social cognitive perspective, the study of coping is broadened to include self-efficacy principles, planning, and utilization of social support in the prediction of outcomes.

Esther Greenglass is professor of psychology at York University in Canada. She has published widely in the areas of positive psychology, health psychology, women, gender roles, work-family conflict, coping, burnout, and stress. Her recent research has focused on the psychological study of the effects of the Great Recession (2007-8), psychological consequences of COVID-19, as well as psychological factors and watching the Russian-Ukraine war.  She is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP). She is past president of the Division of Health Psychology of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) and she is the Canadian representative to STAR, the Stress, Trauma, Anxiety, and Resilience Society. Her over 200 scholarly works include books, invited encyclopedic and book chapters, as well as articles in refereed scientific journals. She is widely cited for her work on stress and coping. She has given keynotes and invited talks in over 19 countries.  She has co-authored The Proactive Coping Inventory (PCI), which has been translated into more than 21 languages and is being used internationally to assess coping both in the lab as well as in real life stressful situations.

Many organizational theories and public policies are predicated on outdated ideas about what constitutes “normal” work: 9 to 5 days, 40-hour work weeks, and lifetime employment for a single company. With the rising popularity of Uber and the “gig economy”, there is an increasing understanding of the wide variation in work, workers, and workplaces. However, there is more to contingent and temporary work than Uber. Professor Catherine Connelly’s presentation will examine the experiences of a wide variety of contingent workers in Canada: temporary foreign workers, musicians, and medical residents. She will examine how these workers are mistreated as well as why this mistreatment endures.

Dr. Catherine Connelly is a professor and Business Research Chair of organizational behaviour at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University. Her research focuses on the attitudes, behaviours, and experiences of workers with non-traditional work arrangements (e.g., temporary foreign workers, gig workers) the effects of leadership styles on leader well-being, the experiences of workers with disabilities, and knowledge hiding in organizations. She is the author of Enduring Work  and her other research has been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Management, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the Journal of Management Information Systems, Academy of Management Discoveries, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Review, and several other journals and books. She is a former associate editor for Human Relations and currently serves on the board of that journal as well as on the boards of the Academy of Management Discoveries, European Management Journal, Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Review, and the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Read more about Dr. Connelly and Connelly Research lab here: https://connellyresearch.com/