**5. Discussion and Conclusions**

Cognitive Demands are an integral part of work environments nowadays. However, these demands have received little attention on how they relate to employee well-being. Based on the integrated model of psychosocial work characteristics and consequences of strain [28], we assumed that cognitive demands might be both positively and negatively related to the employees' attitudes and health. Furthermore, based on P–E fit theories, we expected that the perception of whether cognitive demands are stressful or not would largely depend on socio-demographic and work-related characteristics.

The theoretical assumptions were largely supported and the main result of our study is that cognitive demands play an important role in the workers' well-being. Our analyses suggest that all cognitive demands considered are associated with a higher probability of feeling fatigued. However, with respect to self-rated overall health status and job satisfaction, the results are ambiguous, depending on the specific cognitive demand considered. On the one hand, improving work is positively related to good health and job satisfaction, while doing unlearned things is negatively associated with these outcomes. Therefore, the results indicate that cognitive demands might be related to both resource and demand—depending on the specific type of cognitive demand. These findings emphasize the

immanent assumption of Glaser et al.'s [28] model that a fine-grained distinction of job demands is needed to analyze the associations between working conditions and the employees' attitudes and health. Furthermore, the results strengthen the theoretical challenge–hindrance framework. Cognitive demands trigger strain, but they can also have a satisfying effect. That is because cognitive demands often involve task variation or learning, which likely improves the employees' personal development and might thus be health-enhancing in the long run [19]. However, how the cognitive demands are designed seems to be crucial, and whether or not these demands co-occur with other job demands and if employees assess cognitive demands as stressful. While facing new tasks and improving work are to some extent positively related to well-being, doing unlearned things is consistently negatively related to employee well-being. In addition, perception of stress in relation to facing new tasks or to doing unlearned things at work is significantly associated with a higher probability of feeling fatigued, but also with a lower probability of being satisfied with the job. This result strengthens the importance of the challenge and hindrance appraisal as an explanatory mechanism for the relationship between cognitive demands and well-being. The challenge appraisal thus reflects the perception of situations enabling personal development. In contrast, the hindrance appraisal is related to individual frustration due to the prevention of the fulfilment of self-relevant goals [13,38,40]. The interaction analyses further reveal that autonomy might mitigate the negative association between doing unlearned things and well-being to some extent. In line with previous studies and theories, this finding further emphasizes the role of autonomy as an important resource to buffer stressors at work [34,56]. Overall, our findings support the idea that specific working conditions might be related to both demand and resource and that more research based on integrated models of different working conditions, including cognitive demands, are needed.

Moreover, our analyses on the determinants of cognitive demands reveal that different groups of employees face cognitive demands at work to varying degrees. A vast majority reported facing new tasks at work, while doing unlearned things during work was less common. This might partly be attributable to the relatively negative wording of this question (see Table 1). Moreover, the three variables are also different from a theoretical perspective; performing new tasks and improving procedures at work also refer to task variation, which might be interpreted as a resource, not only as a stressor. The analyses also indicate that the extent to which individuals perceive cognitive demands as stressful varies across different groups of employees. High-educated employees most frequently report facing cognitive demands as compared to low-educated employees. As expected, this suggests that knowledge-intensive occupations in particular are exposed to cognitive demands. In contrast, the probability of perceiving cognitive demands at work as stressful is significantly higher for low-educated individuals. This is in accordance with the assumptions derived from the P–E fit theories. Cognitive demands are an integral part of the work of high-educated employees and thus probably also a significant part of the satisfaction of needs. It can also be assumed that highly educated individuals are more likely to actively ask for new tasks to reach job satisfaction of needs. In addition, high-educated employees often dispose of more resources at work, such as a higher level of autonomy, as compared to low-educated employees [57]. Our findings emphasize that the match of individual needs and requirements in the workplace is crucial. Future research should focus on this in more depth in order to investigate the impact of different cognitive demands with regard to content and varying degrees of difficulty on the attitudes and health of different employment groups.
