Here’s Why Email Puts You in a Nasty Mood

Your alarm goes off, you roll over, grab your phone, and flicker your eyes open. You squint in the glow of the blue and it begins: You’re scrolling through notifications, emails, texts. It’s already been shown that emailing after business hours can be psychologically damaging, but new research published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology confirms what you probably know in your gut to be true: workers who are expected to be available even when they aren’t at work experience an elevated stress response. Psychologists from the University of Hamburg asked 132 people from 13 workplaces to complete a daily survey over a period of eight days—four on which they were expected to be available for work, four on which they were not. They were all surveyed, and half the participants also provided saliva samples that were measured for cortisol. (Cortisol is the hormone released in response to stressful situations.) The results showed that during times when a person was expected to be reachable, people had elevated cortisol levels and reported being stressed. While that might be expected, what is interesting is that when a person is not required to be physically available at the office, there’s still a significant uptick in cortisol. The culprit? A combination of your smartphone and a culture that increasingly blurs the lines between work and leisure. In today’s workforce, “job contacts and work availability outside regular business ho...
Source: TIME: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized cortisol Email human behavior Mental Health/Psychology mood neuroscience Smartphones Stress technology Workplace & Careers Source Type: news