Excess responsibilities, work against the clock, precarious conditions … although there are many causes that make us stressed in our professional lives, a new study published in the journalOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processeswarns that, although sometimes we think, the fault is not always the boss. According to their results, health problems associated with stress at work are largely determined by our genetics.
The researchers, belonging to an international team led by the University of Notre Dame (USA), studied the cases of almost600 sets of identical twins, some of whom had been raised separately and others together. The participants had to fill out surveys that evaluated the degree of satisfaction with work, stress and health problems associated with their work circumstances.
The results revealed that, while the environment in which the twins had been raised was not revealing,the genetic component explained stress-related factors up to four times better. “Let’s imagine two people: James and Sandy, who work for the same company,” explains Timothy Judge, one of the authors of the work. “James manifests more stress than Sandy. Does this mean that James’ job is objectively more stressful than Sandy’s? Not necessarily. Our study suggests that there is a strong hereditary component to stress response and management, and that it has less stress. to do with the characteristics of the environment than with the genetic code of the individual “.
Of course, it should be remembered that genetics is not everything. “We’re not saying we can’t do anything to avoid high-stress situations at work,” says Judge. But, under the same conditions of great stress, some people are more genetically prepared than others to manage it and prevent it from ending up affecting their health.
