Stronger Together: How Social Interactions With Colleagues Promote Prison Officers' Well-Being Through Social Identity

Prison officers encounter numerous contextual and relational stressors that threaten their well-being and the effectiveness of prisons. Drawing on the belongingness hypothesis and social cure theory, this study investigates the role of colleague interactions and social identification in the well-being of 1080 correctional officers. A mediation model assessed the links between the quantity and quality of social interactions and well-being outcomes (psychological distress, burnout and job satisfaction) through the mediating effect of social identification. Additionally, a moderated mediation model examined how the interplay between contact quantity and quality influenced this process. Path analysis revealed that contact quantity and quality were positively associated with higher social identification, which fully mediated their positive association with well-being. Furthermore, contact quantity and quality significantly interacted to strengthen their indirect association with well-being, with contact quantity being effective in unlocking the benefits of social identification only for high-quality contacts. The study contributes to the psychosocial literature by describing how group social connectedness and identity can act as protective factors for well-being in uniquely stressful work contexts such as prisons. The findings emphasise the importance of fostering social connectedness among colleagues in order to promote prison officers' well-being and, ultimately, the overall effectiveness of prisons.