Published online Jun 2, 2023. doi: 10.5496/wjmg.v11.i2.8
Peer-review started: February 8, 2023
First decision: April 28, 2023
Revised: April 28, 2023
Accepted: May 22, 2023
Article in press: May 22, 2023
Published online: June 2, 2023
Processing time: 113 Days and 11.9 Hours
Our hypothesis was that cynicism, a distrustful attitude that assumes people are mainly driven by self-interest, would result from John Henryism (JH), a coping strategy that involves working hard and exerting high levels of effort to deal with chronic stress. We reasoned that as JH is a way of handling discrimination, and that cynicism involves skepticism and negativity towards others, the two traits would be related. Furthermore, both JH and cynicism are linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, while cynicism also often accompanies burnout syndrome, another cardiovascular risk factor.
Rates of burnout are increasing broadly across the globe. Burnout can cause physiological and emotional distress. Understanding the role of stress coping skills such as JH may help clarify the role of occupational stress in overall health and well-being.
The present study aimed to determine if JH is correlated with the cynicism component of burnout by using approaches from statistical genetics.
Genotype and phenotype data from the “CARDIA Cohort” study were obtained from the Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were performed in plink version 1.9 on the log-normalized JH, cynicism, and cynical distrust (CD) phenotypes as well as a binary “high/Low” trait for each phenotype using a two-stage discovery and replication approach. The GWAS results were then used to develop polygenic risk score (PRS) algorithms using supervised machine learning in scikit-learn. Significant variants identified in the discovery stage were tested for replication by performing GWAS in a second, independent set of data restricting variants only to those candidates identified in discovery (for continuous variables) or through chi-square testing for the binary variable. The performance of the PRS algorithms at classifying individuals as “high” or “low” for the phenotype was evaluated in scikit-learn using the area under the receiver operator characteristics curve.
The GWAS identified significant variant associations with JH (2), cynicism (727), or CD (204) scores and with high cynicism (173) or CD (109). PRS classifiers were successfully developed for cynicism and CD (AUC > 0.65), but not for JH. Neither of the classifiers for cynicism or CD could predict JH traits, nor could the JH classifier predict cynicism or CD.
There are genetic variants associated with each trait, however JH active coping does not appear to be correlated with cynicism or CD levels.
The genetic associations with these phenotypes suggest that further research could provide insight into how each trait results in health impacts such as cardiovascular disease.