Abstract
The present study examined the incidence of chronic stress in business executives (109 subjects: 75 male and 34 female) and its relationship with cortisol levels, cognitive performance, and autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity after an acute mental stressor. Blood samples were collected from the subjects to measure cortisol concentration. After the sample collection, the subjects completed the Lipp Inventory of Stress Symptoms for Adults and the Stroop Color-Word Test to evaluate stress and cognitive performance levels, respectively. Saliva samples were collected prior to, immediately after, and five minutes after the test. The results revealed that 90.1% of the stressed subjects experienced stress phases that are considered chronic stress. At rest, the subjects with chronic stress showed higher cortisol levels, and no gender differences were observed. No differences were found between the stressed and non-stressed subjects regarding salivary amylase activity prior to test. Chronic stress also impaired performance on the Stroop test, which revealed higher rates of error and longer reaction times in the incongruent stimulus task independently of gender. For the congruent stimulus task of the Stroop test, the stressed males presented a higher rate of errors than the non-stressed males and a longer reaction time than the stressed females. After the acute mental stressor, the non-stressed male group showed an increase in salivary alpha-amylase activity, which returned to the initial values five minutes after the test; this ANS reactivity was not observed in the chronically stressed male subjects. The ANS responses of the non-stressed vs stressed female groups were not different prior to or after the Stroop test. This study is the first to demonstrate a blunted reactivity of the ANS when male subjects with chronic psychological stress were subjected to an acute mental stressor, and this change could contribute to impairments in cognitive performance.
Highlights
The incidence of chronic stress in business executives, managers and chief executive officers (CEOs) is prevalent and demands various coping strategies for handling tension, anxiety, depression and even hostility [1,2,3,4]
The analyses of perceived stress indicated that 46.8% of the subjects, 34 male and 17 female, experienced significant symptoms associated with any of the phases of stress (Table 2) and that 90.1% of them, 31 male and 15 female, were in the resistance and pre-exhaustion phases, which are characterized as chronic stress (Table 3)
We investigated the response of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to an acute stressor and the cognitive performance of these subjects compared with that of a non-stressed group
Summary
The incidence of chronic stress in business executives, managers and chief executive officers (CEOs) is prevalent and demands various coping strategies for handling tension, anxiety, depression and even hostility [1,2,3,4] This condition can lead to several mental and physical health issues reduce employee effectiveness and affect organizational performance [5, 6]. The adaptive stress response involves vagal withdrawal, which leads to an increase in heart rate, and indicates preparedness to respond to the stressor [7] If this response is insufficient, the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are activated [8,9,10,11]. The recurrent and uncontrolled activation of the HPA axis and the ANS (as found in chronic stress) can lead to the development of a series of pathological conditions ranging from insomnia and hypertension to fatigue and heart disease [14, 27,28,29]
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