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Finding Meaning at Work: The Role of Inspiring and Funny YouTube Videos on Work-Related Well-Being

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Abstract

Watching online videos on social media is a common activity in today’s digital age, but its’ impact on employee well-being at work has not been investigated yet. The current study tried to fill this gap by investigating the role hedonic and eudaimonic online videos play on employee’s stress levels and well-being at work. An online experiment with 200 full time employees in the US was conducted exploring the role of inspiring affect and positive affect on three distinct well-being outcomes: subjective well-being, psychological well-being and social well-being at the workplace. A path model suggests unique effects for inspiring videos on indicators of subjective (vitality), psychological (meaning at work) and social (relatedness at work) well-being. In addition, appreciating the good things in life mediated the relationship between inspiring affect and meaning and relatedness at work. Furthermore, employees generally felt less stressed after watching any type of online video (including a non-entertaining control video), but felt the highest energy surge after watching an elevating video. Implications about the role of online videos for employees’ well-being are discussed.

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Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Videos that potentially could elicit awe were included in the pretest. However, the results indicated that none of the videos elicited strong feelings of awe, nor did they differ from the other emotions, which is why we don’t refer to this measure further in the pre-test description.

  2. Please note that we will discuss this conceptual overlap between gratitude and elevation in the discussion because we believe that it has important theoretical implications.

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Funding

Funding was provided by The John Templeton Foundation (Grant No. 55826).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Communication, Chapman University, 1 University Dr., Orange, CA, 92866, USA

    Sophie H. Janicke-Bowles

  2. Department of Media Communication Studies, University of Mannheim, Rheinvorlandstr. 5, 68159, Mannheim, Germany

    Diana Rieger

  3. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA

    Winston Connor III

Authors
  1. Sophie H. Janicke-Bowles
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  2. Diana Rieger
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  3. Winston Connor III
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Correspondence to Sophie H. Janicke-Bowles.

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Janicke-Bowles, S.H., Rieger, D. & Connor, W. Finding Meaning at Work: The Role of Inspiring and Funny YouTube Videos on Work-Related Well-Being. J Happiness Stud 20, 619–640 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-9959-1

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