Poverty, stressful life events, and coping strategies

It was hypothesized that individuals of low socioeconomic status are exposed to a greater number of stressful events and therefore have a higher incidence of psychological disorders. However, the way they interpret, evaluate and cope with these stressful situations may either cause them to maintain, intensify or eliminate their overall stress. Past research indicates that the poorest individuals tend most frequently to falsely minimize or avoid stressful situations, which lowers the probability of resolving their problems. The objective of this study is to discover and compare the situations that have produced a high level of stress in subjects of three different socioeconomic groups over the last three months, as well as the strategies they used to cope, and their perceived effectiveness. The sample included 900 subjects of both sexes living in Mexico City. Among them, 346 were extremely poor, 260 were moderately poor and 312 were not poor. The results indicate that socioeconomic status is related to the frequency with which subjects report certain kinds of stressful situations. It was also found that non-poor subjects use problem-focused coping methods more than the other groups, while the poor use more emotionally-focused coping strategies, This article analyzes the strategies used by each group in each type of stressful situation reported.     

The stress-eating paradox: Multiple daily measurements in adult males and females

Abstract

The stress-eating relationship was examined in a prospective study of 158 subjects who completed daily records of stress and eating for 84 days, yielding 16.188 person days of observation. Using both within-subjects and between-subjects analyses, individuals were much more likely to eat less than usual than to eat more than usual in response to stressful daily problems. The likelihood of eating more did not change as severity of stress increased, but the likelihood of eating less increased substantially. There were also clear gender differences. Males had a slight tendency to eat less than to eat more across all levels of stress, except at the highest level, where eating less occurred much more frequently. In females, the tendency to eat less as opposed to eating more emerged at middle levels of stress; at the highest level of stress, females were more than three times more likely to eat less than to eat more. Individual subjects were highly consistent over levels of stress in the direction of eating; 82% of the subjects were consistent in eating more or less over the majority of their stressful periods. These results show a clear effect of stress on eating, with eating less being the predominant response.     

Stress resilience in early marriage: can practice make perfect?

As all couples experience stressful life events, addressing how couples adapt to stress is imperative for understanding marital development. Drawing from theories of stress inoculation, which suggest that the successful adaptation to moderately stressful events may help individuals develop a resilience to future stress, the current studies examined whether experiences with manageable stressors early in the marriage may serve to make the relationship more resilient to future stress. In Study 1, 61 newlywed couples provided data regarding their stressful life events, relationship resources (i.e., observed problem-solving behaviors), and marital satisfaction at multiple points over 2? years. Results revealed that among spouses displaying more effective problem-solving behaviors, those who experienced moderate stress during the early months of marriage exhibited fewer future stress spillover effects and reported greater increases in felt efficacy than did spouses who had less experience with early stress. Study 2 examined stress resilience following the transition to parenthood in a new sample of 50 newlywed couples. Again, spouses who experienced moderate stress during the early months of marriage and had good initial relationship resources (i.e., observed support behaviors) reported greater marital adjustment following the transition to parenthood than did spouses who had good initial resources but less prior experience coping with stress. Together, results indicate that entering marriage with better relationship resources may not be sufficient to shield marital satisfaction from the detrimental effects of stress; rather, couples may also need practice in using those resources to navigate manageable stressful events.     

More alike than meets the eye: Perceived gender differences in subjective experience and its display

This research investigated perceived gender differences in subjective experience and its outward display. Subjects imagined a female friend or a male friend in a series of brief situations, each of which was said to elicit a particular subjective experience in the friend. After each situation, they estimated the extent to which the friend would experience the feeling, and also the extent to which the friend would display the feeling to others. Results confirmed two related predictions, both based on attribution research: First, perceived gender-related differences in the outward display of an experience were generally greater than perceived gender-related differences in the subjective experience itself. Males and females, that is, were generally viewed as more alike in their internal feelings than in their overt behaviors. Second, perceived female/male differences in outward display varied more with the feeling elicited by the situation than perceived female/male differences in subjective experience. Specifically, subjects estimated that females would display communal, socially desirable feelings more than males and self-oriented, less desirable feelings less than males, but that females would experience both categories of feelings somewhat more intensely than males would experience them. In addition to confirming these two predictions, our results also indicated that the sex viewed as having greater hidden feelings—operationalized as the amount by which estimations of subjective experience exceeded estimations of display—also varied with the situation. With communal, highly desirable feelings, males were viewed as having greater hidden feelings, but with self-oriented, less desirable feelings, females were viewed as having greater hidden feelings. This pattern did not interact with gender of perceiver. The data, however, indicated that female perceivers tended to rate both males and females higher on measures of both experience and display than males did, and that male perceivers tended to perceive greater gender differences than females did.     

The Testing Effect is Preserved in Stressful Final Testing Environment

Previous studies have shown that retrieval practice leads to better long‐term memory than additional study of a material (a phenomenon termed the testing effect). In this study, we compared the effectiveness of these learning strategies when the final test occurs under stress (such as in an exam). Participants studied word pairs; then half of the material was repeatedly studied, whereas the other half was repeatedly tested. Following a 7‐day delay, participants were exposed to either a psychosocially stressful situation or a control task, followed by an associative recall task that tested memory for all items. Multiple measures were used to assess stress levels: emotional state assessments as well as assays of salivary cortisol and alpha‐amylase levels. Results are in favour of the ecological validity of retrieval‐based learning. Participants recalled more retested items than restudied items regardless of being exposed to a stressful situation and the hormonal (cortisol) response to stress. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stress processes and the misuse of drugs in older adults

There is increasing concern about the misuse of drugs among the elderly. We assessed misuse, including drug usage, drug interactions across pharmacologic classes, and multiple drugs in the same pharmacologic class, in a community sample of 65 to 74-year-olds, and evaluated its relation to stress and coping processes and psychological and somatic health. Assessments were made repeatedly over a 6-month period. Results indicated that misuse was multidimensional and widespread. Misusers did not differ from nonmisusers on antecedent psychosocial variables, nor did they report more hassles or cope differently than nonmisusers. However, misusers and nonmisusers differed on their subjective experience of stressful encounters; misusers experienced their hassles as more intense, and they experienced more threat emotions and more dissatisfaction with their coping than did nonmisusers. Misuse was also associated with long-term psychological satisfaction, psychological symptoms, and somatic health.     

Impact of stress on objectively recorded menopausal hot flushes and on flush report bias

The hot flush (or flash) is the most widely reported menopausal symptom. Anecdotal reports suggest that women experience more hot flushes when stressed. Although stress may actually trigger hot flushes, another possibility is that women under stress may be more aware of the physiological changes associated with flushes and, therefore, more likely to report them. The goal of this study was to test these hypotheses by investigating the association between stress and both objective (i.e., physiologically recorded) and subjective hot flushes. Twenty-one postmenopausal women who reported having frequent hot flushes each underwent psychophysiological monitoring during stressful and nonstressful laboratory sessions. Significantly more objective flushes were recorded during the stress session than during the nonstress session. The stress manipulation, however, did not affect subjects' propensity to report flushes. These results suggest that the observed association between reported hot flushes and stress is not due to changes in report bias. The physiological mechanisms through which stress may stimulate hot flushes are discussed.     

Evaluations of Self,Parents, and Family: Variations Caused by Family Structure and Personal Stress

Using the Personal Attribute Inventory (Parish, Bryant, & Shirazi, 1976), 164 undergraduate students voluntarily evaluated themselves, their parents, and their families. The students also completed the Holmes and Rahe (1967) Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Although these self-evaluations and evaluations of families did not vary significantly in relation to the students' level of personal stress and familial configuration, fathers received higher evaluations from students with intact families and families where the father had died as opposed to families where divorce had occurred. Students who were under stress gave their mothers evaluations that were significantly more negative than did students who under less stress. Overall, the evaluations of mothers by students with divorced parents who were from highly stressful backgrounds were much more negative than those given by any other comparative group.     

Child Care Time,Parents’ Well-Being,and Gender: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey

This study used data from the ‘Well Being Module’ of the 2010 American Time Use Survey (N = 1699) to analyze how parents experience child care time in terms of meaning and stress levels. Multivariate multilevel regressions showed clear differences by gender and the circumstances of child care activities. Mothers experienced child care time as more stressful than fathers, and fathers as slightly more meaningful. Interactive child care was experienced as more meaningful and less stressful than routine child care, whereas these differences were stronger among fathers than among mothers. Mothers experienced child care with a minor child as highly meaningful, and with an adolescent as particularly stressful. Fathers experienced child care with an infant as highly stressful, and with an offspring in middle childhood as disproportionally meaningful. The spouse’s presence was moderately associated with higher senses of meaning and lower levels of stress during child care, but these differences were modest, and only visible among fathers. Paid work hours increased mothers’ stress levels during child care activities, but reduced fathers’ stress levels. Meanwhile, nonemployed fathers reported child care time as less meaningful than non-employed mothers. Overall, this study has important scientific and practical implications for `understanding the gendered nature of parents’ child care time and well-being.     

Stressful academic situations: study on appraisal variables in adolescence

Several studies emphasized the key role of the cognitive appraisal processes on the way stress is experienced by adolescents. Surprisingly, few studies applied this concept to the academic stress. This research studied adolescents’ cognitive appraisal processes and their relationships with academic stress. A sample of adolescents (N = 100, mean age = 16.9 years) reported 145 academic stressful situations. Sex and age differences were analyzed. Girls granted greater importance to the stressful situation, while boys perceived themselves as having more resources for coping with it. Student’s age was negatively correlated with the perception that the stressful situation will be resolved on its own. Five appraisal patterns were identified using cluster analysis. Subsequent analysis showed that the five groups differ in their perceived degree of stress. One group was labelled at-risk appraisal group, demonstrating a high level of perceived stress, and two groups showed a favorable appraisal pattern associated with low level of perceived stress. Implications for future research and applications in school psychology are suggested.     

Vigilance and the reinforcing properties of shock

There have been some observations to indicate that waiting for a shock is stressful, that the coining of an anticipated shock can serve as a tension reliever, and that failure to obtain an anticipated shock is more stressful than being shocked. Based on these observations, the following hypotheses were tested. If it is true that failure to receive shock is more stressful than the shock itself, it should be possible to train an animal to bring on a shock that had failed to come when anticipated. If a period of anticipating shock is stressful, and shock serves as a reliever of the stress, it should be possible to train an animal to perform a response instrumental to bringing on the shock sooner. Results indicated that shock does seem to serve as a reliever, that waiting for shock is stressful, but that failure to receive an anticipated shock under these circumstances is not more stressful than the shock itself. In addition, it was found that subjects learned to produce shock instrumentally if the shock was inevitable and could thus be brought about sooner. Results were inconclusive, though generally negative, on the issue of whether S’s would produce an avoidable shock that had failed to come when anticipated.     

The two faces of alcohol myopia: attentional mediation of psychological stress

Two studies provided evidence that alcohol's relationship to psychological stress is indirect and is mediated by the allocation of attention. Study 1 found that, as the attentional demands of a distracting activity increased, so did alcohol's reduction of anxiety. Study 2 replicated this effect and found that a highly demanding activity could reduce anxiety even without alcohol. This study further implicated the role of attention in anxiety reduction by demonstrating a relationship between changes in anxiety and response latency to a secondary monitoring task. Finally, in both experiments, intoxicated subjects who did not perform any activity showed an increase in anxiety. From these data, we argue that alcohol affects psychological stress, to an important degree, through its ability, in conjunction with ongoing activity, to affect the amount of attention paid to stressful thoughts.     

Positive impact of prior military combat exposure on Terrorism Prevention work: Inoculation to stress

Forty-four Israeli security agents employed by the Israeli Government Terrorism Prevention Agency providing security services for the national Israeli airlines and the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles were administered the Subjective Stress Experience Scale (SSES). This scale measures stress at terrorism-prevention work, past stress during combat exposure, and subjects’ most stressful life events. Results support the hypothesis that terrorism prevention personnel who are also combat veterans appraise their work as less stressful than their noncombat exposed counterparts. Combat veterans also rated their combat experience as significantly more stressful than prevention team member’s other stressful life events. Subjects presented a uniform stress- inoculation effect but, combat veterans of the prevention team were more stress-inoculated than their noncombat exposed counterparts.     

Stress and Distress as a Function of Jenkins Activity Survey-Defined Type A Behavior and Control Over the Work Environment

Although laboratory studies have demonstrated that situational factors which are particularly threatening to Type A individuals induce both Type A behaviors and cardiovascular reactivity, field studies have failed to demonstrate consistent differences between Types A and B in response to stress. Rhodewalt, Hays, Chemers, and Wysocki (1984) argued that this inconsistency is caused by the failure to take into account the individual's perception of the situation. They demonstrated that Type A individuals who perceived high levels of job stress reported more psychological and physical health problems than Type As under low stress or Type Bs under high or low stress. This study attempted to replicate this earlier finding, as well as identify factors in the situation which lead Type A individuals to perceive their job as stressful. Three hundred thirty-six male school principals (categorized as Type A or Type B by the Jenkins Activity Survey [JAS]) completed questionnaires assessing their degree of control in their work environment, perceived job stress, and physical and psychological well-being. A path mediation analysis indicated that Type A individuals reported more job stress under lower levels of perceived control, and that higher job-stress levels subsequently lead to greater incidence of physical and psychological symptoms, especially for Type As.     

The Association Between Cardiovascular Stress Responsivity and Perceived Stress Among Subjects with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Temporomandibular Joint Disorder: A Preliminary Analysis

This study sought to evaluate the association between perceived and cardiovascular stress responsivity among subjects with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Temporomandibular Disorder (TMJ). Eight participants with IBS, eight participants with TMJ and 16 nonsymptomatic comparison participants took part in the experiment. Participants completed a series of personality and mood questionnaires as well as a laboratory procedure measuring aerobic fitness, cardiovascular responses (i.e., pulse rate and blood pressure), and perceived stress while performing stressful laboratory tasks (i.e., the Stroop Color Naming Test and a speech task). Although IBS and TMJ participants did not vary significantly from comparison participants in blood pressure or heart rate during the laboratory procedures, IBS and TMJ participants reported experiencing the laboratory tasks as more stressful than comparison participants. Although preliminary due to the small sample size, results suggest that IBS and TMJ sufferers may be more sensitive to perceived stress than others.     

Revisiting the Effects of Anger on Risk‐Taking: Empirical and Meta‐Analytic Evidence for Differences Between Males and Females

That anger elicited in one situation can carry over to drive risky behavior in another situation has been described since the days of Aristotle. The present studies examine the mechanisms through which and the conditions under which such behavior occurs. Across three experiments, as well as a meta‐analytic synthesis of the data, results reveal that incidental anger is significantly more likely to drive risky decision making among males than among females. Moreover, the experiments document that, under certain circumstances, such risk‐taking pays off financially. Indeed, the present experiments demonstrate that, because the expected‐value‐maximizing strategy in these studies rewarded risk‐taking, angry‐male individuals earned more money than did both neutral‐emotion males and angry females. In sum, these studies found evidence for robust disparities between males and females for anger‐driven risk‐taking. Importantly, although men did not experience more anger than women, they did show a heightened tendency to respond to anger with risk‐taking. Published 2016. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.     

Relationship of perceived stress with depression: complete mediation by perceived control and anxiety in Iran and the United States

This study sought to clarify the importance and cross-cultural relevance of associations between generalized perceived stress and depression. Also tested was the hypothesis that perceived stress would correlate more strongly with anxiety than with depression, whereas control would be more predictive of depression than of anxiety. Relationships between perceived stress, anxiety, depression, and perceived control were examined in samples of Iranian (n = 191) and American (n = 197) undergraduates. Correlations among these variables were generally similar across the two societies. Perceived stress did predict anxiety better than depression, but perceptions of control predicted depression significantly better than anxiety only in the United States. Best fitting structural equation models revealed that anxiety and perceived control completely accounted for the linkage between perceived stress and depression in both societies. An equally acceptable and more parsimonious model described perceived stress as a consequence rather than as an antecedent of anxiety and perceived control. Structural equation models were essentially identical across the two cultures except that internal control displayed a significant negative relationship with anxiety only in Iran. This result seemed to disconfirm any possible suggestion that a supposedly individualistic process like internal control could have no noteworthy role within a presumably more collectivistic Muslim society like Iran. Overall, these data documented the importance of anxiety and perceived control in explaining the perceived stress-depression relationship cross-culturally and therefore questioned the usefulness of perceived stress in predicting depression. Whether this understanding of the stress-depression relationship deserves general acceptance will require additional studies that measure the frequency of stressful life events and that utilize a longitudinal design.     

Stepparents and Parenting Stress: The Roles of Gender,Marital Quality,and Views about Gender Roles

Previous research suggests that stepparenting can be stressful, although the mechanisms that contribute to the experience of parenting stress in stepfamilies are less clear. This study examines gender, marital quality, and views about gendered family roles as correlates of parenting stress among 310 stepmothers, stepfathers, and biological mothers and fathers. Findings suggest that stepparents, and especially stepmothers, experience higher levels of parenting stress than biological parents. Findings also suggest that less traditional views about gendered family roles and higher dyadic adjustment are associated with lower parenting stress for stepparents, particularly in combination. Stepparents reporting both of these protective factors were indistinguishable in terms of parenting stress from biological parents. These findings indicate potential pathways to mitigate the stress associated with stepparenting.     

Personality and the Problems of Everyday Life: The Role of Neuroticism In Exposure and Reactivity to Daily Stressors

This article investigates mechanisms through which neuroticism leads to distress in daily life. Neuroticism may lead to distress through exposing people to a greater number of stressful events, through increasing their reactivity to those events, or through a mechanism unrelated to environmental events. This article evaluates the relative importance of these three explanations. Subjects were 339 persons who provided daily reports of minor stressful events and mood for 6 weeks. Exposure and reactivity to these minor stressors explained over 40% of the distress difference between high- and low-neuroticism subjects. Reactivity to stressors accounted for twice as much of the distress difference as exposure to stressors. These results suggest that reactions within stressful situations are more important than situation selection in explaining how neuroticism leads to distress in daily life.