Anxiety Stress and Coping最新文献

Background and objectives: The Cognitive Transactional Model of Coping suggests coping is maximized when individuals respond flexibly to situational demands. Directly testing the coping flexibility hypothesis is contingent on developing measures to capture the person-situation transactional process of coping. This study assessed the validity of a new performance-based approach to measuring coping flexibility and examined its contribution to predicting life satisfaction and psychological distress above existing measures.

Design and methods: 343 participants (52% male, 68% white) presented with two stressor scenarios were asked to describe how they would respond. Qualitative responses were coded to assess the breadth of individual coping repertoires and fit between the situation and strategy.

Results: The measurement approach effectively captured the varying demands of the stressor scenarios. Situation-strategy fit predicted increased life satisfaction and decreased psychological distress above existing coping flexibility measures. Contrary to prediction, the breadth of coping repertoires predicted decreased life satisfaction and increased psychological distress.

Conclusions: The current study introduced a performance-based approach for coping flexibility and supported situation-strategy fit as an important component. A more sophisticated operationalization of repertoire is needed to delineate variability in coping responses that indicate flexibility from haphazard coping.

Background and objectives: Previous studies have suggested associations between pain perception and psychological factors such as mood, distress, fatigue, and quality of life. However, these factors and their relationship to pain sensitivity have typically been investigated in isolation and with insufficient sample sizes. To address these limitations, we examine the interplay between distinct psychological factors and thermal pain sensitivity in a large adult sample.

Methods: We implemented a multivariate latent variable modeling approach in a sizable sample of adult participants (n = 257), to examine the interplay between distinct psychological factors and thermal pain sensitivity. Using exploratory factor analysis of 10 mental health questionnaires, we identified three psychological factors related to distress, fatigue and bodily symptoms. Additionally, we established a measure of laboratory pain sensitivity by applying principal component analysis to three thermal pain thresholds (cold, heat, and combined cold and heat).

Results: Regression analyses revealed no significant relationships between psychological factors and laboratory measures of thermal pain across individuals ranging from asymptomatic to those with subclinical and clinical mental health manifestations.

Conclusion: Our findings provide no evidence supporting an association between psychological factors, either individually or collectively, and thermal pain sensitivity.

Background and Objectives: Existing research highlights the potential role of self-compassion in promoting trauma recovery over time but does not clarify whether an individual's level of self-compassion prior to experiencing a trauma is a protective factor against the onset of symptoms. This prospective study tests whether baseline self-compassion buffers the link between exposure to traumatic or stressful events and subsqeuent mental and behavioral health (post-traumatic stress symptoms, general psychological distress, eating pathology, alcohol use problems, and sexual dissatisfaction) among college students.Design & Methods: Undergraduate students (n = 312) completed an electronic survey at the beginning of the academic semester (T1) and 7-10 weeks later (T2).Results: T1 trait self-compassion did not consistently buffer the impacts of experiencing traumatic or negative events during the semester on end-of-semester mental and behavioral health.Conclusions: Results suggest that trait self-compassion may be a factor associated with better functioning across some domains following trauma or stress, but that the links between exposure and poor mental and behavioral health may be similar regardless of one's pre-exposure levels of self-compassion. Enhancing self-compassion may facilitate better recovery following trauma exposure but trait self-compassion does not appear to reduce the impacts associated with exposure.

Background: Perfectionism is an important characteristic among university students given its associations with their wellbeing and coping. One approach to studying student perfectionism is the 2 × 2 model of perfectionism, which examines the interaction between self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism (SPP). The model is useful for studying student perfectionism, but tests in different cultural contexts remain limited, with some suggesting its hypotheses need modification.

Objectives: This article builds on existing research by presenting two novel studies that provide the model's first tests in predicting university student wellbeing and coping in a Filipino context, as well as tests of alternate cultural makeup and aggravating factor hypotheses for SPP's role.

Methods: Following preregistered protocols, two independent samples of Filipino university students completed questionnaires measuring variables of interest - one cross-sectionally (N = 294) and one longitudinally (N = 324) with a 3-month follow-up.

Results and conclusion: Moderated regression analyses showed support for the model's hypotheses across both samples depending on the variable. Findings provided clearer support that students with high SPP or a strong belief that others expect perfection are more vulnerable to poorer wellbeing and unhealthy coping, making SPP an aggravating factor in the Filipino context.

Background: Social phobia scrutiny fear is a stress response triggered by perceptions of social evaluation. However, the role of genetic polymorphisms in the Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) axis in shaping this fear is not well understood. This study investigates how the cumulative genetic score of the HPA axis influences social phobia scrutiny fear.

Method: Two independent samples were used. The first examined the relationship between the cumulative genetic effects of the HPA axis and social phobia scrutiny fear. The second sample replicated these findings and explored the mediating roles of psychoticism and social face.

Results: Both samples revealed that individuals with a higher cumulative genetic score, associated with increased cortisol reactivity, experienced greater social phobia scrutiny fear. Moreover, psychoticism and social face mediated this relationship, with a stronger genetic predisposition, higher psychoticism, and more pronounced social face correlating with greater scrutiny fear.

Conclusion: These findings highlight the significant role of the HPA axis in social phobia scrutiny fear and shed light on the psychological pathways through which genetic effects are influenced by personality traits.

Background: Test anxiety is a common experience, and a variety of intervention approaches for it have been developed. In recent years, single sessions of expressive writing (a brief exercise in which students write about their worries just prior to taking a test) have been promoted as an intervention.

Objective: We conducted a meta-analysis to determine whether single-session expressive writing reduces test anxiety or increases test performance.

Method: Our literature search yielded 15 relevant documents comprising 21 studies (total N = 1,457 participants), with 30 effect sizes across measures of anxiety and test performance.

Results: Our meta-analysis found only a negligible, nonsignificant effect of expressive writing on anxiety (r = -.05, p = .57), an effect that remained nonsignificant after an extreme outlier was removed (leading to r = -.10, p = .08). The effect on test performance was initially significant (r = .09, p = .02) until an extreme outlier was removed (leading to r = .06, p = .06). There was very little evidence of publication bias. Although there was substantial heterogeneity in effect sizes across studies, the tested moderators failed to show robust effects.

Conclusion: The available research literature fails to support single sessions of expressive writing as a treatment for test anxiety. However, other treatments with more supportive evidence are available.

Background and objectives: Individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder and those high in social anxiety (HSA) experience greater anger difficulties compared to those with low social anxiety (LSA).

Methods: This study examined trait and state anger in individuals with HSA (n = 46) and LSA (n = 45). The study also explored group differences in state and trait cognitive reappraisal and the effectiveness of instructed cognitive reappraisal to regulate state anger among participants with HSA and LSA in response to films containing rejection-salient content.

Results: Participants with HSA, relative to LSA, exhibited greater trait and state anger. The HSA group reported lower trait cognitive reappraisal than the LSA group. However, results revealed no significant group differences in state cognitive reappraisal. Further, both groups exhibited a significant reduction in state anger after receiving instructions to use cognitive reappraisal.

Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that when instructed to use cognitive reappraisal, individuals with HSA were able to do so effectively, and experienced a comparable magnitude in the reduction of state anger as participants with LSA. Implication of these findings are discussed.

Background and objectives: Posttraumatic growth research demonstrates equivocal findings with limited consensus on the expected relationship between posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic distress. This study evaluated the relationship of the change dynamics for posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic distress using a nonlinear approach.

Design: A longitudinal design with three primary surveys at baseline, 6-weeks, and 6-months and a daily survey (Ecological Momentary Assessment: EMA) for a month immediately after baseline was used.

Methods: Participants opted in to participate in a daily EMA for 1-month. The brief daily (<5 min) surveys included traumatic distress, coping, posttraumatic growth, and posttraumatic distress. We investigated the relationship of change dynamics (level, velocity, and acceleration) for both posttraumatic distress and posttraumatic growth. We utilized multilevel modeling.

Results: We found significant models for level, velocity, and acceleration of distress with velocity and acceleration of posttraumatic growth. Level of posttraumatic growth was not significant in any of our models when posttraumatic growth velocity and acceleration were included.

Conclusions: The synchronization of PTG and distress change dynamics offer unique insights into the process of how these variables interrelate over time. These findings provide important new research avenues that may shed light on the equivocal findings encountered in this literature.

Background and objectives: This two-wave longitudinal study examines changes in personal values during war, investigating mean changes and the impact of situational and socio-demographic variables on values' change.

Design: The study is based on the theory of human values (Schwartz, 2017).

Methods: The measurements were conducted several weeks before Hamas's invasion of Israel in October 2023, and eight months later, during the war in Gaza. Jewish Israelis, aged 18-35 years, participated in the study (n = 600).

Results: The importance of self-direction-action and achievement values decreased, and the importance of power-dominance and security-social values increased during the war. For all values, a higher pre-war level of a value was associated with a smaller change in this value during the war. A stronger threat to oneself during the war was associated with larger increases in power-dominance and humility values and larger decreases in universalism-care values. People who perceived a stronger threat to close others showed a smaller decrease in self-direction-action and a larger decrease in security-personal values.

Conclusions: The study enhances our understanding of coping with war threats by examining changes in the individual's motivational system.

Background: Although research on unfinished tasks began almost a century ago, the mechanisms through which unfinished tasks are related to sleep quality are not well-known.

Objective: Building on previous studies but focusing on a new mediator, the aim of this study was to ascertain whether unfinished tasks may act as a workplace stressor and negatively impact subjective ease of falling asleep through the experience of negative emotions at work.

Method: By conducting a diary study, the hypothesized relationships were investigated in a sample of 126 employees followed for 10 consecutive working days. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to estimate the hypothesized relationships at the within-person and the between-person levels of analysis.

Results: Results showed that unfinished tasks were negatively related to subjective ease of falling asleep through the experience of negative emotions at work at both levels.

Conclusions: In brief, our findings uncover one of the mechanisms linking unfinished tasks to employees' subjective ease of falling asleep, revealing that the observed relationships operate at the within-person and the between-person levels of analysis.