你真的陷入了工作的牢笼吗？

    当工作间开始感觉像是小牢房，情况就不太妙了。不幸的是，低迷的经济给仍然有幸保住饭碗的人带来的一个后果就是，我们会觉得自己陷入了工作的牢笼。

    数据显示，大众的行为还真像是陷入了牢笼。经济景气时，更多的人主动辞职、而不是被裁员。而在衰退时两者的关系就恰恰相反，表明此时员工不愿意、或者无法主动离职。即使根据劳工统计局（Bureau of Labor Statistics）本月发布的数据，当前主动离职的人又超过了被解雇者，两者的差距还是小于经济危机前。

    人们常常因为非常现实的外界原因而屈就于自己并不喜欢的工作，比如得付账单、还贷款、养家糊口，要得到足够便宜的医疗保险也得有工作。但很多人（也包括记者）的工作技能却只适用于那些变幻莫测的行业。

    马里兰大学（the University of Maryland）管理与组织学教授吉拉德•陈说：“客观地讲，现状并不乐观，我们仍然处在经济危机中。”然而，受困于工作的感觉却不见得符合实情。我们的大脑处理信息的方式有时会放大悲观情绪。

    陈教授指出，情势无法掌控时，人们往往就会觉得受困其中。反过来，“那些在各种经济形势下都能自我调适的人就能控制自身的感觉。“

    但某些因素也让我们难以释怀，觉得自己已经成为工作的奴隶。“通常是在工作中发生的变故，”德克萨斯基督教大学（Texas Christian University）尼利（Neely）商学院的管理学教授比尔•贝克尔说。“换了个很难伺候的老板，分派给你的新任务和你的技能不对路，又或者你觉得与公司文化很不合拍。”这些工作上的变故会带来困难，而员工又觉得自己无法抽身离开。

    我们的思维方式也会火上添油。贝克尔说：“我们都有自利偏见，在这些情况下自利偏见就是我们最大的敌人。”他继续解释什么是自利偏见：“万事大吉时，我们会归功于自己，‘有我这么能干的人，当然没问题’。而一旦情况不妙，我们就会认为是公司或者经济大环境的问题。”

    归咎于外界因素其实也有好处：它是一种保护机制。有证据表明，得忧郁症的人缺乏自利偏见，他们觉得所有的问题都是自己造成的。

    但这种思维的益处也是有限的。把责任从自身转嫁到外界会让人缺乏动力，难以改变自己的行为。如果是外部世界的问题，那你就会想，我为什么要改变呢？

    对未知的恐惧是另一种让我们受困的强大心理因素。贝克尔说：“就算不快乐，我们依然还是倾向于保持现状。”

    陈教授指出，现状是相对于过去而言的。人们总是会和过去对比。我们的大脑会画出一条趋势线：如果我们的工作开始很顺利，然后发生问题，我们就会处理这个信息，认为情况变糟了。我们也倾向于认为，不管情况变糟还是好转，这个趋势总会一直延续下去。

    进入这样一个负面漩涡的员工只会给公司带来危害。

    陈教授说，停下来重新审视局势是脱离苦海的一个办法。和六个月前比，工作也许感觉不妙，但和两年前比呢？

    When cubicles start to feel like prison bars, it's a problem. Unfortunately, a downside of the sluggish economy is that many of us lucky enough to have a job can feel like we are trapped in it.

    Some data suggests people are still acting trapped. In a good economy, more people quit their jobs than are laid off. But that relationship flipped during the recession, which could indicate that people were less willing or able to leave. While more people are leaving voluntarily now than not, according to a report published this month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that gap is closer than it was before the recession.

    Often, people stay at jobs they don't want because of very real external circumstances -- there are bills and loans to pay off, families to support, and your job can feel like the only means to get affordable healthcare. Many of us have skills (ahem, journalism) that are closely tied to industries in flux.

    "The reality is objectively worse than in other times; the economic crisis is real," says Gilad Chen, a professor of management and organization at the University of Maryland. Yet, feeling trapped might not match our actual situations. Our brains process information in ways that, sometimes, can amplify those feelings.

    People often feel trapped when it seems like circumstances are out of their control, says Chen. Conversely, "the people who adapt in these and other economic conditions are those who take ownership."

    But certain events make it tough to shake the notion that we are slaves to the office. "Usually that amounts to something that changes at work," says Bill Becker, a management professor at Texas Christian University's Neely business school. "You get a new boss, and they're just impossible to work for, you get some kind of new assignment and it doesn't fit, or you realize the culture is just so different." So the nature of the job changes for the worse, yet employees feel like they can't leave.

    Our brains don't help matters. "We have this self-serving bias, that I think is our worst enemy in these kinds of situations," says Becker. The self-serving bias goes like this, he explains: "When things go good, we attribute them to ourselves and say, 'Of course they're going well, I'm awesome.' When things go poorly, on the other hand, we are much more likely to blame it on the company or the economy."

    Blaming external forces actually serves a purpose: it's a protective mechanism. Some evidence suggests that people with depression have very low self-serving bias -- they think everything is their fault.

    But there is a limit to the benefits of this approach. Shifting responsibility from oneself to external forces can make it difficult to build up the drive it takes to change your act. If the outside world is the problem, the thinking goes, why should you change?

    Fear of the unknown is another powerful psychological factor that can trap us, Becker says. "Even if we're unhappy, there is always a bias to stay where we are."

    Yet where we are is relative to where we have been before, Chen says. People tend to compare their situations to their past. Our mind draws a trend line: if we were doing well at work, then something bad happens, we process that information to mean that things are getting worse. We also tend to think that if work is getting worse, or better, it will continue on that track.

    Employees who start that spiral on the negative side can become toxic to a company.

    One way to pull out of it is to stop and reexamine the data, says Chen. Maybe work feels worse compared to six months ago, but what about two years ago?