The “Managed” or Damaged Heart? Emotional Labor, Gender, and Posttraumatic Stressors Predict Workplace Event-Related Acute Changes in Cortisol, Oxytocin, and Heart Rate Variability

Abstract

Vital to the everyday operation of police services, police communicators (911 call-takers and dispatchers) are persistently subject to imminent challenges in the workplace; they must always be prepared to engage and deal with a wide variety of circumstances that provoke various intense emotions and physiological stress responses. Acute changes in cortisol, oxytocin, and heart rate variability are central to adaptive responses in stressful complex social interactions, but they might also be indicative of physiological dysregulation due to long-term psychosocial stress exposures. Thus, we examine acute stress-induced release of peripheral oxytocin and cortisol along with changes in heart rate variability, and how each relates to persistent workplace stressors and symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Findings indicate chronic forms of gendered workplace stress such as emotional labor, gender role stress and, posttraumatic stress each have differential associations with, and predict physiological responses to, acutely stressful events in the workplace. These associations suggest potential mechanisms through which communicators become more vulnerable to developing stress-related disorders such as posttraumatic stress injuries, especially after cumulative traumatic exposures in this context. The results also suggest potential pathways for the biological embedding of stressful gendered workplace experiences.

Understanding health outcomes following workplace aggression: A social exchange perspective

“…In this study we used retrospective self-reported data, thus we cannot exclude the possibility that our findings were influenced by monomethod bias (Mueller & Tschan, 2011) Birze et al, 2020;Regehr, 2018). The finding that the average seniority of employees in the department positively predicted PTSD and somatic symptoms, signals the possible influence of repeated exposure to WPA, also reported elsewhere (Lamothe et al, 2021;Pihl-Thingvad et al, 2019;Regehr, 2018).…”

“…diagnoses of illness) or physiological stress responses (e.g. changes in cortisol, oxytocin and heart rate; Birze et al., 2020; Regehr, 2018). The finding that the average seniority of employees in the department positively predicted PTSD and somatic symptoms, signals the possible influence of repeated exposure to WPA, also reported elsewhere (Lamothe et al., 2021; Pihl‐Thingvad et al., 2019; Regehr, 2018).…”

“…A growing body of studies suggests WPA bears detrimental, wide‐ranging and costly outcomes for (a) individuals, as in cases of fatalities or serious deterioration of mental and physical health; (b) organisations, for example, due to higher levels of staff burnout, turnover and sickness absence; and (c) society as a whole, both in terms of the manner in which services to the public may be detrimentally affected by those affected by WPA and the costs associated with workers’ compensation claims (Lanctôt & Guay, 2014; Nyberg et al., 2021; Salin, 2003). In this study, we focused on evaluating two possible health outcomes of WPA, developing symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTS) and somatic symptoms, which still require a more nuanced evidence‐based knowledge (Birze et al., 2020; Regehr, 2018).…”

The acceleration of emotional labor research: Navigating the past and steering toward the future

“…Results revealed that those who felt greater emotional dissonance (i.e., being mistreated by a customer when having positive display rules) experienced heightened blood pressure. More recently, a study of 911 call‐takers and dispatchers found that after controlling for trauma from events, deep acting reduced event‐based cortisol spikes, while surface acting was unrelated (Birze et al., 2020), contributing to the well‐being puzzle associated with deep acting.…”

Physiological and psychological components of paramedic wellbeing

“…This can be supported by Neufeld et al, (2016) who found that emergency personnel had reduced HRV as a result of reduced and disrupted sleep on workdays. Despite these findings, recent research identifies an association between increased HRV and chronic stress, suggesting decreases in the HF/LF ratio are based on acute stressors (Birze et al, 2020;Balzarroti et al, 2017). This therefore would therefore suggest emergency personnel are predisposed to increased HRV due to the chronic stress they face in the workplace (Donnelly et al, 2016;Langan-Fox et al, 2011).…”