Despite the preponderance of evidence documenting the benefits of workplace social support for employees, the link between social support and employees' physiological functioning and physical health outcomes has received relatively less research attention. In particular, diurnal cortisol patterns and body mass index (BMI) are key indicators of physiological functioning and physical health, respectively, that can be used to illuminate how social support influences employee health. However, existing applied psychology research has yet to examine the dynamic nature of diurnal cortisol secretion and its long-term effect on BMI change. Further, research linking social support and cortisol has produced conflicting findings. To address these critical gaps, we draw from Heaphy and Dutton's (2008) theory of positive social interactions at work and the allostatic load model (Sterling & Eyer, 1988) to link supervisor and coworker support at work to employees' diurnal cortisol pattern and change in BMI. We tested our hypotheses using growth modeling on a sample of Japanese employees with multi-wave data spanning across 6 years. We found support for our hypotheses regarding supervisor support but not coworker support, as cortisol exhibited a diurnal pattern, and higher levels of supervisor support were associated with more pronounced, healthier diurnal cortisol patterns, with a steeper decline from morning to evening, which were further associated with smaller BMI increases 4 years later. Overall, our findings suggest social support at work, especially supervisor support, can have far-reaching effects on employees' physical health. The implications of these findings for applied psychology research and practice are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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工作中的社会支持很重要：社会支持、员工的昼夜皮质醇模式和体重指数之间的关系。

尽管有大量证据证明了工作场所社会支持对员工的好处，但社会支持与员工生理功能和身体健康结果之间的联系受到的研究关注相对较少。特别是，昼夜皮质醇模式和体重指数 (BMI) 分别是生理功能和身体健康的关键指标，可用于阐明社会支持如何影响员工健康。然而，现有的应用心理学研究尚未检验昼夜皮质醇分泌的动态性质及其对 BMI 变化的长期影响。此外，将社会支持和皮质醇联系起来的研究产生了相互矛盾的发现。为了解决这些关键差距，我们借鉴了 Heaphy 和 Dutton s (2008) 工作中的积极社会互动理论和平衡负荷模型 (Sterling & Eyer, 1988) 将主管和同事在工作中的支持与员工的昼夜皮质醇模式和 BMI 变化联系起来。我们使用跨越 6 年的多波数据的日本员工样本使用增长模型测试了我们的假设。我们发现支持我们关于主管支持而不是同事支持的假设，因为皮质醇表现出昼夜模式，并且更高水平的主管支持与更明显、更健康的昼夜皮质醇模式相关，从早到晚下降幅度更大，这进一步与 4 年后较小的 BMI 增加相关。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，工作中的社会支持，尤其是主管支持，可以对员工的工作产生深远的影响。身体健康。讨论了这些发现对应用心理学研究和实践的影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。