Exposure to adverse life events typically predicts subsequent negative effects on mental health and well-being, such that more adversity predicts worse outcomes. However, adverse experiences may also foster subsequent resilience, with resulting advantages for mental health and well-being. In a multiyear longitudinal study of a national sample, people with a history of some lifetime adversity reported better mental health and well-being outcomes than not only people with a high history of adversity but also than people with no history of adversity. Specifically, U-shaped quadratic relationships indicated that a history of some but nonzero lifetime adversity predicted relatively lower global distress, lower self-rated functional impairment, fewer posttraumatic stress symptoms, and higher life satisfaction over time. Furthermore, people with some prior lifetime adversity were the least affected by recent adverse events. These results suggest that, in moderation, whatever does not kill us may indeed make us stronger.

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The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat (BPS) holds that during active goal pursuit, psychological processes reliably lead to specific patterns of cardiovascular responses. Because psychological experience during goal pursuit is not otherwise easily accessible, using cardiovascular responses to infer psychological states can provide valuable insight. In this context, challenge results from evaluating high resources and low demands, whereas threat results from evaluating low resources and high demands. Both challenge and threat lead the heart to beat faster and harder than during rest, but challenge results in dilation in arteries and more blood pumped, whereas threat results in constriction and less blood pumped. This article summarizes the BPS, presents recent research applications, and discusses remaining questions and future directions, including how research from other theoretical perspectives may clarify the nature of task engagement and how the BPS can inform the study of resilience to stressors.As college students wait, pencil in hand and scantron ready, for the final exam in a course to be passed out, and then begin working on that exam once they receive it, consider how their bodies might respond. All students remain seated at their desks, perhaps moving only enough to fill in their answers on the page in front of them; none are likely to stand up until they have completed the exam. Despite this, their hearts may be beating as fast and as hard as though they were running around campus. The culmination of a cascade of physiological changes these students may be experiencing during their final exam, such cardiovascular responses not only suggest that the body is at a state of physical readiness but also may reveal what has occurred in the mind to precipitate those physiological changes. In other words, cardiovascular responses can be used to infer psychological states and processes, which lends them great utility as a methodological tool for testing research questions in social and personality psychology. The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat accounts for such a relationship between physiology and psychology. In this article, a description of the model is followed by a review of recent research and a discussion of remaining questions and future directions. The Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and ThreatThe biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat (BPS;Blascovich, 2008a;Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996) provides a theoretical rationale for a connection between specific psychological states and patterns of physiological responses. Importantly, the BPS holds that it is psychological processes that lead to physiological changes. These physiological responses occur quickly -in a matter of seconds -and affect the functioning of the cardiovascular system. Cardiovascular changes, in turn, can be measured relatively easily and noninvasively, with negligible discomfort for research participants. This provides the opportunity to measure cardiovascular responses and reliably infer the psychologic...

We examined cardiovascular responses indicating challenge and threat during social comparisons. Experiment 1 manipulated comparison direction (i.e. upward/downward) within a cooperative social interaction, during which we measured cardiovascular responses, evaluations of demands and resources, and self-reports. Participants interacting with upward comparison partners evaluated the task as more`threatening' (demands relative to resources) than participants cooperating with downward comparison partners. Moreover, participants cooperating with upward comparison partners exhibited cardiovascular reactivity consistent with threat (i.e. increased ventricle contractility, no changes in cardiac output, and vasoconstriction). In contrast, participants interacting with downward comparison partners exhibited challenge responses (i.e. increased contractility, increased cardiac output, and vasodilation). This basic ®nding was extended in Experiment 2 with the examination of a classic moderator of social comparison, attitudinal similarity of the comparison partner. Participants paired with attitudinally dissimilar partners exhibited exacerbated reactions relative to participants paired with attitudinally similar partners. That is, relative to similar partners, dissimilar partners engendered greater threat responses during upward comparisons and a tendency toward greater challenge responses during downward comparisons. These results are discussed within an assimilative/contrast model of social comparisons.

The factors that predict academic performance are of substantial importance yet are not understood fully. This study examined the relationship between cardiovascular markers of challenge/threat motivation and university course performance. Before the first course exam, participants gave speeches on academics-relevant topics while their cardiovascular responses were recorded. Participants who exhibited cardiovascular markers of relative challenge (lower total peripheral resistance and higher cardiac output) while discussing academic interests performed better in the subsequent course than those who exhibited cardiovascular markers of relative threat. This relationship remained significant after controlling for two other important predictors of performance (college entrance exam score and academic self-efficacy). These results have implications for the challenge/threat model and for understanding academic goal pursuit.

This article responds to Wright and Kirby's (this issue) critique of our biopsychosocial (BPS) analysis of challenge and threat motivation. We counter their arguments by reviewing the current state of our theory as well as supporting data, then turn to their specific criticisms. We believe that Wright and Kirby failed to accurately represent the corpus of our work, including both our theoretical model and its supporting data. They critiqued our model from a contextual, rational-economic perspective that ignores the complexity and subjectivity of person-person and person-environmental interactions as well as nonconscious influences. Finally, they provided criticisms regarding possible underspecificity of antecedent components of our model that do not so much indicate theoretical flaws as provide important and interesting questions for future research. We conclude by affirming that our BPS model of challenge and threat is an evolving, generative theory directed toward understanding the complexity of personality and social psychological factors underlying challenge and threat states.

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