A New Study Finds Many People Are Less Stressed at Work Than at Home
It may sound odd, but a study has found that many people are less stressed at work than they are at home. Let's see. At work there's… work. At home there's TV, couches, beds, dogs, alcohol, etc. And yet researchers at Pennsylvania State University found that most people are simply less uptight when they're working. Not only that, but women, especially, seemed to enjoy work more than being at home.
It started when researcher Sarah Damaske wanted to know why, exactly, people say that they're always so busy and stressed from being at work. There have been plenty of studies on how much we hate working. In 2005, a paper published by the Work and Families Institute showed that almost 90 percent of workers reported that they either "never had enough time in the day to do their job" or their job "required them to work very hard." A more recent study, by the Pew Research Center, found that over 50 percent of all working moms and working dads claimed to experience "work-family conflict."
Since work stress is obviously a trend, Damaske and her team set out to find out more. They used a couple of tests to dig deeper. First, they swabbed 122 people for saliva tests at various points throughout the day. These would be used to test for cortisol levels in the participants' bodies. The more cortisol we have in our systems, the more stressed we are. Next Damaske and her team asked the participants how they were feeling at times other than during the saliva tests. What the team found was that almost everyone was happier at work than at home, but women reported being happier at work than at home more often than men. "This is across gender, across education level, across occupation level," Damaske told NPR. "So, a pretty strong finding."
Why in the world would people like work better than being at home? Well, at work, your role is easily defined. You do this, then you go home. At home — especially if you have kids — there is a ton of variables. "The fact that people’s stress levels go down when they are at work, I don’t think it means that they don’t like their homes or their kids,’’ Damaske explained to The New York Times. "I think it suggests that there is something about work that is good for you. Being in the moment, focusing on a task, completing that task, socializing with your co-workers — all of these are beneficial and that’s part of what’s lowering your stress level."
In other words, the next time you're feeling stressed out at work and want to punch Steve from accounting in the neck because he won't replace the water in the cooler even though he always empties it, just think — it could be worse. You could be at home.
[Image via Flickr - Steve]
