John Henryism is a strategy for coping with prolonged exposure to stresses

Chronic stress

Chronic stress is the response to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period over which an individual perceives he or she has no control. It involves an endocrine system response in which occurs a release of corticosteroids...

 such as social discrimination

Discrimination

Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...

 by expending high levels of effort which results in accumulating physiological costs

Illness

Illness is a state of poor health. Illness is sometimes considered another word for disease. Others maintain that fine distinctions exist...

.

The term was conceived by epidemiologist

Epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...

 and public health

Public health

Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" . It is concerned with threats to health based on population health...

 researcher Sherman James while investigating racial health disparities. One of the people he interviewed was a black

Black people

The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

 man who, despite being born into an impoverished sharecropper family and having only a second grade

Second grade

In the United States, second grade is a year of primary education. Second grade is the second school year after kindergarten. Students are traditionally 7–8 years old, depending on when their birthday occurs....

 education, could read and write, had freed himself and his offspring from the sharecropper system, had 75 acres (303,514.5 m²) of farmed land by age 40, but by his 50s had hypertension

Hypertension

Hypertension or high blood pressure is a cardiac chronic medical condition in which the systemic arterial blood pressure is elevated. What that means is that the heart is having to work harder than it should to pump the blood around the body. Blood pressure involves two measurements, systolic and...

, arthritis

Arthritis

Arthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....

, and severe peptic ulcer

Peptic ulcer

A peptic ulcer, also known as PUD or peptic ulcer disease, is the most common ulcer of an area of the gastrointestinal tract that is usually acidic and thus extremely painful. It is defined as mucosal erosions equal to or greater than 0.5 cm...

 disease. His name, John Henry Martin, and his circumstances are evocative of folk hero

Folk hero

A folk hero is a type of hero, real, fictional, or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. This presence in the popular consciousness is evidenced by...

 John Henry

John Henry (folklore)

John Henry is an American folk hero and tall tale. Henry worked as a "steel-driver"—a man tasked with hammering and chiseling rock in the construction of tunnels for railroad tracks. In the legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam powered hammer,...

, an African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 who worked vigorously enough to compete successfully with a steam powered

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...

machine, but died as a result of his effort.

Sherman James developed a scale for measuring John Henryism based on rating agreement with a series of statements such as "When things don't go the way I want them to, that just makes me work even harder." Men who score higher on this scale generally have higher blood pressure than men with lower scores. This effect is strongest in those who are poorest.