Stressor

About: Stressor is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5192 publications have been published within this topic receiving 225733 citations. The topic is also known as: Stresser.

Psychological resilience, positive emotions, and successful adaptation to stress in later life.

Abstract: In 3 studies, the authors investigated the functional role of psychological resilience and positive emotions in the stress process. Studies 1a and 1b explored naturally occurring daily stressors. Study 2 examined data from a sample of recently bereaved widows. Across studies, multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses revealed that the occurrence of daily positive emotions serves to moderate stress reactivity and mediate stress recovery. Findings also indicated that differences in psychological resilience accounted for meaningful variation in daily emotional responses to stress. Higher levels of trait resilience predicted a weaker association between positive and negative emotions, particularly on days characterized by heightened stress. Finally, findings indicated that over time, the experience of positive emotions functions to assist high-resilient individuals in their ability to recover effectively from daily stress. Implications for research into protective factors that serve to inhibit the scope, severity, and diffusion of daily stressors in later adulthood are discussed.

Coping, stress, and social resources among adults with unipolar depression

Abstract: We used a stress and coping paradigm to guide the development of indices of coping responses and to explore the roles of stress, social resources, and coping among 424 men and women entering treatment for depression. We also used an expanded concept of multiple domains of life stress to develop several indices of ongoing life strains. Although most prior studies have focused on acute life events, we found that chronic strains were somewhat more strongly and consistently related to the severity of dysfunction. The coping indices generally showed acceptable conceptual and psychometric characteristics and only moderate relationships to respondents' sociodemographic characteristics or to the severity of the stressful event for which coping was sampled. Coping responses directed toward problem solving and affective regulation were associated with less severe dysfunction, whereas emotional-discharge responses, more frequently used by women, were linked to greater dysfunction. Stressors, social resources, and coping were additively predictive of patient's functioning, but coping and social resources did not have stress-attenuation or buffering effects.

Social factors in psychopathology: stress, social support, and coping processes.

Abstract: Our review has focused centrally on the etiologic significance of social factors in the development of psychopathology. Our implicit assumption has been that social factors in general, and stressors in particular, may play a causal role in the development of psychopathology. Yet the evidence is clear that the vast majority of people who are exposed to stressful life events or to chronic stress situations do not develop significant psychiatric impairments. For this reason, research interest over the past decade has shifted to factors like social support and coping strategies that may ameliorate the impact of stress. We have examined some of the important empirical results from recent studies of stress, support, and coping, and we have discussed ways in which these new understandings have informed long-standing attempts to explain group differences in emotional functioning. In each section of the review we have attempted not only to summarize existing results but also to provide some evaluation of the literature and suggestions for future research. It is important to recognize that the contributors to the work reviewed here do not all share a common research agenda. Some of them are primarily committed to unraveling the psychosocial determinants of a particular clinical disorder. Others are mainly concerned with the effects of a particular stressor. Still others are interested in the processes that link stress to health across a broad array of stress situations and health outcomes. In the face of these diverse interests, it is little wonder that our understanding of social factors in psychopathology is uneven. There is good reason to believe, however that these diverse strands of research are beginning to converge on a common conception of the stress process and on a common research design. The conception at present is only in rough form, but its outlines are nonetheless capable of description. At its center is the notion that stress exposure sets off a process of adaptation. It recognizes that this process unfolds over time, and it acknowledges that this process is modified by structural factors as well as by personal dispositions and vulnerabilities. There is growing recognition that the analysis of this process requires longitudinal methods. Also, it is becoming increasingly clear that experimental interventions are required to unravel the parts of this process that link stress and health. It is too early to know if this nascent convergence will lead to an integrative theory of adaptation, yet it is almost certain to promote methodological and conceptual rigor and facilitate replication and cumulation of findings.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

The Environment of Poverty: Multiple Stressor Exposure, Psychophysiological Stress, and Socioemotional Adjustment

Abstract: The one in five children growing up in poverty in America have elevated risk for socioemotional difficulties. One contributing factor to their elevated risk may be exposure to multiple physical and psychosocial stressors. This study demonstrated that 8- to 10-year-old, low-income, rural children (N = 287) confront a wider array of multiple physical (substandard housing, noise, crowding) and psychosocial (family turmoil, early childhood separation, community violence) stressors than do their middle-income counterparts. Prior research on self-reported distress among inner-city minority children is replicated and extended among low-income, rural White children with evidence of higher levels of self- and parent-reported psychological distress, greater difficulties in self-regulatory behavior (delayed gratification), and elevated psychophysiological stress (resting blood pressure, overnight neuroendocrine hormones). Preliminary mediational analyses with cross-sectional data suggest that cumulative stressor exposure may partially account for the well-documented, elevated risk of socioemotional difficulties accompanying poverty.