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What Causes What
SMOKE? CONDITIONAL

Job strain → Cortisol

Higher Job strain moves Cortisol only in some conditions. Read the mechanism.

Hair cortisol ran higher with effort-reward imbalance among 81 high-workload workers, and morning saliva ran 21.7 percent higher in 48 high-strain teachers, but Karasek job strain tracked a lower diurnal cortisol area in 254 matched MESA adults. Nobody assigned the job.

Observational · Low · N=254

The association disappears when you account for other factors, like socioeconomic status or healthy-user bias.

Mechanism

The authors treat chronic work load as an HPA input. Hair integrates weeks of cortisol. Saliva catches the working day. Steptoe scored 105 teachers on demand-control a year earlier. At 8:00 to 8:30 on a workday, free cortisol was 21.7 percent higher in the high-strain group after age and negative affect. Later samples and the evening were not higher. The morning bump was larger in teachers who also scored high on anger-out. van der Meij compared 81 high-workload workers with 91 on a normal load. Hair cortisol tracked self-report only in the high-load group, and only on effort-reward imbalance: higher when effort was high, reward low, and overcommitment high. Demand, control, and workplace support did not show that link. Herr followed 40 factory men for a year. Cross-sectional effort-reward and hair cortisol did not line up. Change in effort-reward did line up with change in hair cortisol (beta 0.414). Rudolph modeled 18 saliva samples over three days in employed MESA adults. After propensity matching, 254 people remained. Job strain, high demand and low control, sat with lower salivary levels and a total area about one-tenth that of the low-strain matches (ratio 0.10, 95 percent CI 0.01 to 0.98). The awakening response did not differ.

Caveats

The stamp is smoke because nobody randomized the job. A new observational edge publishes as spurious and low. Paper count does not raise it. van der Meij's demand-control-support test was null. The hair signal is effort-reward in the high-workload cell, not in the normal-workload cell. Steptoe's sample is teachers. Strain was scored a year before the saliva day. One working day. Anger-out is an interaction, not a main effect you can cite alone. Herr is 40 men. The authors themselves found no cross-sectional link. Rudolph's adults are middle-aged to older, racially and occupationally mixed. The matched high-strain cell is 58 people. The area ratio interval runs from 0.01 to 0.98. Hair and saliva are different clocks. A blunted day curve in older workers is not the same finding as a higher morning sample in teachers or a higher hair value in high-load staff. This page is a work-stress questionnaire versus cortisol. It is not employment versus unemployment. It is not a yoga class for burnout, and it is not a scanner speech task in people already burned out. This is not medical advice and not a recommendation to change a job, a shift, or a hormone.

Effect

qualitative. van der Meij: ERI higher HCC in high-workload n=81; JDCS null. Steptoe +21.7% morning saliva. Herr ΔERI↔ΔHCC β=0.414 n=40. Rudolph MESA AUC ratio 0.10. Signs disagree. Design does not identify.

Nodes

Socioeconomic statusJob strainBiology & endocrinologyCortisol

Named confounders

Cite this page

What Causes What. “Job strain → Cortisol.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-jobstrain-cortisol (atlas updated 2026-09-02).

https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-jobstrain-cortisol

Papers