Browsing by Subject "ponnistelu–palkitsevuus -epäsuhta"

Previous results concerning the association between high blood pressure and work-related stress have been inconsistent, although both high blood pressure and work-related stress independently have adverse effects on health. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the personality trait conscientiousness reduces the adverse effects of work-related stress on blood pressure. Work-related stress was measured by Siegrist's Effort-Reward Imbalance model (ERI-model). The hypotheses were: 1) High effort-reward imbalance is associated with high systolic and high diastolic blood pressure and 2) Conscientiousness reduces the adverse effects of effort-reward imbalance on systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The study sample was from The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study and the data for the present study was collected in 2011 and 2012. The subjects (n = 998) were both women (n = 568) and men (n = 430) who worked full-time and did not take medication to reduce blood pressure. The mean age of the subjects was 43 years. Hierarchical linear regression was used for the statistical analyses. Effort-reward imbalance was not directly associated with blood pressure. However, conscientiousness did moderate the association between effort-reward imbalance and systolic blood pressure. Individuals high in conscientiousness had lower systolic blood pressure than individuals low in conscientiousness when effort-reward imbalance was high. Conscientiousness also moderated the association between effort and systolic and diastolic blood pressure, although the effect on the diastolic blood pressure was only moderately significant (p = .051). Conscientiousness did not moderate the association between reward and blood pressure, but higher reward was independently associated with lower diastolic blood pressure. Conscientiousness seems to reduce the adverse effect of both effort-reward imbalance and effort on systolic blood pressure. The results from the present study suggest that personality traits can affect the associations between work-related stress and blood pressure.