Authors
Sophie Hennekam, Jamie Ladge, Yuliya Shymko
Publication date
2020/10
Journal
Journal of Applied Psychology
Volume
105
Issue
10
Pages
1088
Publisher
American Psychological Association
Description
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has raised the visibility of health care workers to the level of public heroes. We study this phenomenon by exploring how nonphysician health care workers, who traditionally believed they were invisible and undervalued, perceive their newfound elevated status during the pandemic. Drawing from a qualitative study of 164 health care workers, we find that participants interpreted the sudden visibility and social valorization of their work as temporary and treated it with skepticism, incredulity, and as devoid of genuinely transformative power. We seek to contribute to the recent call to develop novel approaches to understanding the contours of the paradoxical nature of invisibility in the workplace by offering insights into what makes “invisible” workers accept or reject publicly driven elevation in their sudden social valorization.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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