Friday, August 5, 2011

No Friends at Work? Prepare to Die

This probably won't be of much concern to the vast bulk of Daily Downers readers since most of you don't have jobs.

For the minority of you who do go to work, it's a pretty safe bet that you and your coworkers share an intense, mutual contempt for one another. If this description fits you, it's time for you to get your affairs in order.

Over all, people who believed they had little or no emotional support in the workplace were 2.4 times more likely to die during the course of the study than the workers who developed stronger bonds with their peers in other cubicles.

To study how office politics influenced health, the researchers recruited 820 adults who visited a local health clinic in 1988 for routine checkups, then interviewed them about their jobs, asking detailed questions that delved into whether they found their supervisors and peers approachable, friendly and helpful to them.

[...]

By the time the study ended in 2008, 53 of the workers taking part had died; most of them had cast their work support networks in a negative light.

[...]

One thing [researchers] noticed was that the risk was only affected by a person’s relationship with his or her peers, and not that person’s supervisors. The way people viewed their relationships with their bosses had no impact on mortality.

[NYT]

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