The purpose of this dissertation was threefold: to identify the relationship between experience of stress and episodic memory encoding and retrieval, to examine the interpersonal factors of personality and psychopathology that impact how individuals cope with or mitigate workplace stress, and to pinpoint how interpersonal differences and memory processes impact the workplace outcomes of job satisfaction and motivation. The results suggest that the relationship between work stressors and memory processes does exist, that personality and psychopathology play a significant role in the relationship between stress and memory, and that the experience of negative memories moderates the relationship between work stress and motivation. These findings suggest that memories of workplace stress as well as an employee’s engagement in mental time travel are each important and should be included in both cognitive psychology research related to episodic memory and I/O research related to interpersonal differences, the experience of work stress, and job-related outcomes.
