Toxic stress and burnout: John Henryism and social dominance in the laboratory and STEM workforce

Abstract

Persons Excluded from science because of Ethnicity and Race (PEERs) face chronic exposure to interpersonal stressors, such as social discrimination, throughout their scientific careers, leading to a long-term decline in physical and mental health. Many PEERs exhibit John Henryism, a coping mechanism to prolonged stress where an individual expends higher levels of effort and energy at the cost of their physical and mental health. In this article, we discuss how social dominance may increase John Henryism within the STEM community; the causes, effects, and costs of John Henryism; and highlight solutions to combat these social adversity stressors within the academic institution.

Moving diversity, equity, and inclusion from opinion to evidence

“…One of the best ways to understand this is by measuring stress levels in the work environment. Stress can be especially high among PEER students and faculty, 9 making metrics and surveys that anonymously ask about stress in various job facets important. For example, the Stress in General scale measures stress by considering job happiness, intentions to continue with the institution, blood-pressure, and job aptitude.…”

“…For PEERs, the long-term stress resulting both from work and discrimination can lead to racial battle fatigue or John Henryism, a psychological construct for coping with stress, with negative physiological effects. 9 Therefore, beyond just measuring stress in the work environment, it is also important for institutions to measure general mental health incidents and their association with gender and race to understand overall stress levels of students and employees. These results can then be used to reduce stress and promote equity among faculty and students, which helps to avoid conditions such as John Henryism.…”

John Henryism, psychological labor, and control-value theory: Race, ethnicity, and situational coping for student success

“…These activity conditions were created for an adjacent study, not specifically for this study. An example of a similar research design is Parrisius et al (2021), where statistical differences between activities were outside the scope of the study and relationships among variables were the focus. Following the task, participants completed the JHAC-12 and RoE.…”

An effective workshop on “How to be an Effective Mentor for Underrepresented STEM Trainees”

“…A trainee's motivation governs the direction of the trainee's behavior in any mentoring environment, such as their effort, grit, and attitude. Minority trainees not only face external barriers during their educational and career journey, such as toxic mentorship and institutional inequities, but also experience internal challenges, such as John Henryism (Rolle et al 2021). Furthermore, URM also face barriers including imposter fear, also known as imposter syndrome which is discussed in the workshop as a stigmatizing word that places the issue on the individual as opposed to the environment (Hinton Jr et al 2020b;Rolle et al 2021).…”