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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1466463

"Rat Race" or "Lying Flat"? The Influence of Performance Pressure on Employees' Work Behavior

Provisionally accepted
QIANYI LIAO QIANYI LIAO JINSONG ZAHNG JINSONG ZAHNG *FANGFANG LI FANGFANG LI SHIYUAN YANG SHIYUAN YANG Zhen Li Zhen Li LONGHUA YUE LONGHUA YUE CUNFANG DOU CUNFANG DOU
  • Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Performance pressure refers to employees' subjective perception of the necessity to achieve expected goals, accompanied by a sense of urgency and tension. Faced with performance pressure, what coping strategy will employees adopt: the "rat race" or "lying flat"? Grounded in the transactional theory of stress and the affective event theory, this study developed a moderated dual-mediation model to investigate the impact of performance pressure on employees' work behavior. Using data collected through a two-stage survey of 356 employees, the findings reveal that performance pressure can simultaneously stimulate challenge appraisal, fostering proactive work behavior, and induce workplace anxiety, resulting in work withdrawal. Furthermore, learning goal orientation moderates these relationships, strengthening the link between performance pressure and challenge appraisal while weakening the connection between performance pressure and workplace anxiety. These results provide valuable insights into the mechanisms by which performance pressure influences employee behavior, offering organizations practical guidance to manage its effects effectively and mitigate associated risks

    Keywords: performance pressure, Challenge appraisal, Workplace anxiety, Proactive work behavior, Work withdrawal behavior

    Received: 18 Jul 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 LIAO, ZAHNG, LI, YANG, Li, YUE and DOU. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: JINSONG ZAHNG, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.