Journal ArticleDOI
Psychological vulnerability and stress: the effects of self-affirmation on sympathetic nervous system responses to naturalistic stressors.
TLDR
The findings demonstrate that sympathetic nervous system responses to naturalistic stressors can be attenuated by self-affirmation, and were strongest among individuals most concerned about negative college evaluation, those most psychologically vulnerable.Abstract:
Objective: Everyday stressors can threaten valued aspects of the self. Self-affirmation theory posits that this threat could be attenuated if individuals affirm alternative self-resources. The present study examined whether self-affirmation would buffer cumulative stress responses to an ongoing academic stressor. Design: Undergraduate participants provided 15-hr urine samples on the morning of their most stressful examination and baseline samples 14 days prior to the examination. Participants were randomly assigned to the self-affirmation condition where they wrote two essays on important values over the 2-week period prior to exam, or a control condition. Main Outcome Measures: Samples were analyzed for urinary catecholamine excretion (epinephrine, norepinephrine), an indicator of sympathetic nervous system activation. Participants also indicated their appraisals of the examination experience. Results: Participants in the control condition increased in cumulative epinephrine levels from baseline to examination, whereas participants in the self-affirmation condition did not differ from baseline to examination. The buffering effect of self-affirmation was strongest among individuals most concerned about negative college evaluation, those most psychologically vulnerable. Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that sympathetic nervous system responses to naturalistic stressors can be attenuated by self-affirmation. Discussion centers on psychological pathways by which affirmation can reduce stress and the implications of the findings for health outcomes among chronically stressed participants.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention.
TL;DR: The present review highlights both connections with other disciplines and lessons for a social psychological understanding of intervention and change in self-affirmation interventions.
Journal ArticleDOI
The effects of stress on physical activity and exercise.
TL;DR: Overall, the majority of the literature finds that the experience of stress impairs efforts to be physically active, and some prospective studies report evidence that PA was positively impacted by stress (behavioral activation).
Journal ArticleDOI
Self-reported experiences of discrimination and health: scientific advances, ongoing controversies, and emerging issues.
TL;DR: Controversy remain, particularly around the best approach to measuring experiences of discrimination, the significance of racial/ethnic discrimination versus overall mistreatment, the need to account for "intersectionalities," and the importance of comprehensive assessments, along with emerging areas of emphasis.
Journal ArticleDOI
The New Science of Wise Psychological Interventions
TL;DR: Bryan et al. as mentioned in this paper have shown that specific psychological processes contribute to major social problems, and that precise interventions that alter them can produce significant benefits and do so over time.
Journal ArticleDOI
Deflecting the trajectory and changing the narrative: how self-affirmation affects academic performance and motivation under identity threat.
David K. Sherman,Kimberly A. Hartson,Kevin R. Binning,Valerie Purdie-Vaughns,Julio Garcia,Suzanne Taborsky-Barba,Sarah Tomassetti,A. David Nussbaum,Geoffrey L. Cohen +8 more
TL;DR: To the extent that stereotype and identity threat undermine academic performance, social psychological interventions that lessen threat could buffer threatened students and improve performance, two studies examined whether a values affirmation writing exercise could attenuate the achievement gap between Latino American and European American students.
References
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Book
Stress, appraisal, and coping
Richard S. Lazarus,Susan Folkman +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a detailed theory of psychological stress, building on the concepts of cognitive appraisal and coping, which have become major themes of theory and investigation in psychology.
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Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions
Leona S. Aiken,Stephen G. West +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of predictor scaling on the coefficients of regression equations are investigated. But, they focus mainly on the effect of predictors scaling on coefficients of regressions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions
TL;DR: In this article, multiple regression is used to test and interpret multiple regression interactions in the context of multiple-agent networks. But it is not suitable for single-agent systems, as discussed in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
The ‘Trier Social Stress Test’ – A Tool for Investigating Psychobiological Stress Responses in a Laboratory Setting
TL;DR: The results suggest that gender, genetics and nicotine consumption can influence the individual's stress responsiveness to psychological stress while personality traits showed no correlation with cortisol responses to TSST stimulation.
Journal ArticleDOI
The CONSORT statement: revised recommendations for improving the quality of reports of parallel-group randomised trials
TL;DR: The revised CONSORT statement is intended to improve the reporting of an RCT, enabling readers to understand a trial's conduct and to assess the validity of its results.