Indiana Psychological Association News
PsychByte: Rethinking Stress
Rethinking Stress
Stress, consistently portrayed as harmful in healthcare and workplace settings, has been linked to the six leading causes of death - heart disease, accidents, cancer, liver disease, lung disease, and suicide (Schneiderman, Ironson, & Seigel, 2005). Few would argue the assertion that stress is debilitating under most circumstances, but a new line of research is designed to question this claim.
Crum, Salovey, and Achor (2013) set out to examine whether one’s “stress mindset” is a variable that influences the stress response differently from other influential variables, including perceived amount of stress, appraisal of stress, and methods of coping with stress.
Crum and colleagues (2013) defined a “stress mindset” as “the attributes and expectations ascribed to stress whether one is stressed or not” (p. 718; i.e., a belief that “stress-is-enhancing” vs “stress-is-debilitating”). Results showed individuals who endorse a “stress-is-enhancing” mindset tended to report fewer psychological symptoms and improved work performance. They also reported a stronger desire to receive feedback than those who endorsed a “stress-is-debilitating” mindset and measured more adaptive cortisol functioning (i.e., more cortisol if under-aroused, less cortisol if over-aroused).
The Stress Mindset Measure (SMM) developed by Dr. Crum asked individuals to rate their agreement to several statements regarding stress in general and stress related to a specific event or situation. Statements included: “The effects of stress are negative and should be avoided;” “Experiencing stress facilitates my learning and growth;” “Experiencing stress depletes my health and vitality.”
Crum and others (2013) asserted that previous models of stress (e.g., Alpert & Haber, 1960; Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) and coping have not yielded enough information to move the curve on adaptive functioning in the face of stressful life events. The authors concluded by saying: “For many years, the spotlight has been on stress’s negative aspects, including detrimental health effects, loss of productivity, and depression. This interpretation may be well intended, but the result of such perspective may be countereffective. The message of this research is ultimately a positive one: eliciting the enhancing aspects of stress (as opposed to merely preventing the debilitating ones) may be, in part, a matter of changing one’s mindset” (p. 729).
References:
Crum, A., Salovey, P., & Achor, S. (2013). Rethinking stress: The role of mindsets in determining the stress response. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 716-733.
Schneiderman, N., Ironson, G., & Seigel, S.D. (2005). Stress and health: Psychological, behavioral, and biological determinants. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 607-628.
Further reading:
Keller, A., et al. (2012). Does the perception that stress affects health matter? The association with health and mortality. Health Psychology, 31, 677-684.
McGonigal, K. (2015). The Upside of Stress. New York: Penguin Random House.
Contributor:
Natalie Dattilo, Ph.D., MHA, HSPP
Indiana University Health Neuroscience Center
"PsychBytes” is a weekly educational resource from the Indiana Psychological Association provided for psychologists, their colleagues and their patients.