An Exploratory Study on the Epigenetic Mechanism of Emotional Labor Chronic Stress in Hotel Employees
The World Health Organization clearly proposed that the health of employees makes the success of enterprises,and calls on enterprises to follow the principle of"health before wealth".Over the past 40 years of Reform and Opening-up,the service industry in China is developing rapidly,and the number of employees in the hotel industry is increasing day by day.The physical and mental health problems of hotel employees are directly related to the socio-economic development and public health security.Therefore,it is of great theoretical significance and practical value to pay attention to the mental health problems of hotel employees.Emotional labor has become an inevitable chronic occupational stressor for hotel employees,but the psychobiological mechanism of emotional labor affecting hotel employees'mental health is not clear.However,the epigenetic mechanism of emotional labor adaption has not received due academic attention.Previous studies have shown that dopamine receptor D3(DRD3)gene is closely related to stress-related psychological symptoms.Hence,this study used anxiety and depression as indicators of chronic stress response to emotional labor for longitudinal investigation,603 hotel interns from secondary vocational colleges were tracked and investigated through cluster sampling.This study grouped emotional labor tolerance according to the change trajectory of their anxiety and depression under the chronic stress of emotional labor.Among them,the tolerance group showed that anxiety or depression had been at a low level(below the 10 score threshold),and the susceptible group showed that anxiety or depression had not been detected before working in the hotel,but the anxiety and depression had increased continuously after working in the hotel and exceeded the threshold level.Then,we extracted 22 samples from the susceptible group of emotional labor and 38 samples from the tolerance group,and matched 21 people in the control group according to age,education,etc.Finally,we extracted the oral mucosal cells for high-throughput BSP sequencing to try to explore the relationship between emotional labor tolerance and DRD3 methylation.The results show that the 2205 site of the DRD3 show obvious population differences,and the methylation level of the susceptible group was significantly higher than that of the control group.However,there was no significant difference in the methylation level of this gene site between the emotional labor tolerance group and the control group,and there was no significant difference in the methylation level of other sites of DRD3 gene between groups.Therefore,we suggested that the 2205 site of the DRD3 gene can be used as one of the associated gene site of individuals with emotional labor stress susceptibility.This study provides a reference for exploring the epigenetic mechanisms of emotional labor tolerance and chronic occupational stress.This study provides a psychobiological perspective for health research in the field of tourism in an interdisciplinary way,introduces theoretical mechanisms such as epigenetic and chronic stress into the field of tourism through the perspective of human and environment interaction,This study also carries out an updated exploration of the classic and relatively mature research topicemotional labor,and contributes integrated wisdom to the expansion of the existing knowledge system.