What is it about?
Past research showed that decreased heart rate variability (an index of the ability to regulate emotional arousal attuned to environmental demands) is linked to higher levels of exhaustion (the core symptom of job burnout). But does this apply to all workers? Our study shows how this association varies depending on workers' neuroticism, a personality trait characterized by emotional instability and proneness to psychological distress.
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Why is it important?
Our results pointed to high-neuroticism workers with low heart rate variability as the group more at-risk of developing exhaustion-related symptoms. These findings help identify workers who most need support or interventions (such as higher social support at work, stress management training or mindfulness) to prevent the onset of exhaustion-related symptoms.
Perspectives
We believe that this article may be of interest to the scientific community as well as practitioners and society as a whole, because it takes a step toward a deeper understanding of the complex phenomenon of exhaustion. By looking at the interplay between underlying psychological and physiological mechanisms, our study aims to find factors to intervene on in order to counteract this adverse working condition increasingly prevalent in modern society.
Lorenzo Filosa
Universita degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Association of vagally mediated heart rate variability at work with exhaustion: The importance of trait neuroticism., International Journal of Stress Management, July 2024, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/str0000335.
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