Overzealous traffic cops are but one of the many hassles of city life. So the chronically ticketed may be heartened to know that they bother the police as much as the police bother them.
A team of psychologists from St. John's University and the State University of New York set out to examine the effects of personality on cardiovascular reactivity. They chose as subjects a group with one of the most demanding communications jobs around: New York City Traffic Agents. One hundred and fifteen officers, monitored for mood, heart rate and blood pressure as they wrote parking tickets, averaged more than three angry confrontations with the public each day.
The team discovered that all types of conversation led to sudden, and cumulatively dangerous, increases in cardiovascular activity. But encounters with the public had a greater effect on blood pressure than did talking with supervisors or coworkers--even when interactions weren't hostile. The effects persisted after the encounters ended. Furthermore, the negative effects varied with psychological state: the worse a subject's mood, the sharper the rise in blood pressure.
