Stress can influence health throughout the lifespan, yet there is little agreement about what types and aspects of stress matter most for human health and disease. This is in part because "stress" is not a monolithic concept but rather, an emergent process that involves interactions between individual and environmental factors, historical and current events, allostatic states, and psychological and physiological reactivity. Many of these processes alone have been labeled as "stress." Stress science would be further advanced if researchers adopted a common conceptual model that incorporates epidemiological, affective, and psychophysiological perspectives, with more precise language for describing stress measures. We articulate an integrative working model, highlighting how stressor exposures across the life course influence habitual responding and stress reactivity, and how health behaviors interact with stress. We offer a Stress Typology articulating timescales for stress measurement - acute, event-based, daily, and chronic - and more precise language for dimensions of stress measurement.

The extent to which stigmatized interaction partners engender perceivers' threat reactions (i.e., stigma-threat hypothesis) was examined. Experiments 1 and 2 included the manipulation of stigma using facial birthmarks. Experiment 3 included manipulations of race and socioeconomic status. Threat responses were measured physiologically, behaviorally, and subjectively. Perceivers interacting with stigmatized partners exhibited cardiovascular reactivity consistent with threat and poorer performance compared with participants interacting with nonstigmatized partners, who exhibited challenge reactivity. In Experiment 3, intergroup contact moderated physiological reactivity such that participants who reported more contact with Black persons exhibited less physiological threat when interacting with them. These results support the stigma-threat hypothesis and suggest the utility of a biopsychosocial approach to the study of stigma and related constructs.

The authors examined White and Black participants' emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses to same-race or different-race evaluators, following rejecting social feedback or accepting social feedback. As expected, in ingroup interactions, the authors observed deleterious responses to social rejection and benign responses to social acceptance. Deleterious responses included cardiovascular (CV) reactivity consistent with threat states and poorer performance, whereas benign responses included CV reactivity consistent with challenge states and better performance. In intergroup interactions, however, a more complex pattern of responses emerged. Social rejection from different-race evaluators engendered more anger and activational responses, regardless of participants' race. In contrast, social acceptance produced an asymmetrical race pattern-White participants responded more positively than did Black participants. The latter appeared vigilant and exhibited threat responses. Discussion centers on implications for attributional ambiguity theory and potential pathways from discrimination to health outcomes. Keywords intergroup interactions; discrimination; attributional ambiguity; emotion and stress responses; cardiovascular reactivityResponses to social rejection and social acceptance may seem obvious-the former is bad and the latter is good. However, this simple heuristic may not be relevant for all social interactions, especially interracial ones. Social rejection by an outgroup member (i.e., different-race partner) may be construed a variety of ways, including a sense that one's self was rejected, that one's group was rejected, or that one's partner was biased (e.g., racist). Ingroup rejection, in contrast, is unlikely to be interpreted at a group level and is more likely to engender a person-level attribution (e.g., self-blame). Social acceptance may also not be straightforward. To be sure, social acceptance by an ingroup member is likely to be perceived positively and to instill good feelings. However, social acceptance by an outgroup member may be viewed cautiously, with NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript individuals questioning the genuineness of the evaluation, possibly undermining the positive feelings typically associated with social acceptance. In this research, we explored how social rejection and acceptance are perceived, are responded to, and affect an ongoing social interaction between same-race or different-race interaction partners. Intraracial Interactions Versus Interracial InteractionsSocial interactions with partners of different races have been known to produce stress, threat, and anxiety (e.g., Ickes, 1984;Mendes, Blascovich, Lickel, & Hunter, 2002;Stephan & Stephan, 2000). A growing body of research has demonstrated that individuals interacting with or exposed to outgroup members exhibit more negatively toned responses. For example, White participants engaged in cooperative social interactions with Black partners exhibited cardiovascular ...

This research examined the benefits of interpreting physiological arousal as a challenge response on practice and actual Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores. Participants who were preparing to take the GRE reported to the laboratory for a practice GRE study. Participants assigned to a reappraisal condition were told arousal improves performance, whereas control participants were not given this information. We collected saliva samples at baseline and after the appraisal manipulation, which were then assayed for salivary alpha amylase (sAA), a measure of sympathetic nervous system activation. Reappraisal participants exhibited a significant increase in sAA and outperformed controls on the GRE-math section. One to three months later, participants returned to the lab and provided their score reports from their actual GRE. Again, reappraisal participants scored higher than controls on the GRE-math section. These findings illuminate the powerful influence appraisal has on physiology and performance both in and out of the laboratory."Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts." -Albert EinsteinAlthough high-stakes standardized tests, such as the SAT and Graduate Record Examination (GRE), influence whether students will be accepted to or rejected from desired academic programs, the above quote illustrates the necessity of considering factors other than aptitude and ability when evaluating standardized test performance. For instance, test-takers may feel an increase in arousal, or "nervous energy," which may be interpreted as anxiety or threat, and be associated with poor performance (Cassaday & Johnson, 2002).However, arousal is a fuzzy term semantically and psychologically (Blascovich, 1992). Arousal increases co-occur with a variety of emotional, cognitive, and motivational states and do not necessarily indicate a negative state such as anxiety or threat. Arousal increases can also indicate that the body is mobilizing resources to meet the task demands and could signal an approach orientation or challenge response. Because of its association with both benign and deleterious psychological and physiological states, arousal has been at the center of several classic theories in social psychology as the proposed mediator of behavioral outcomes. From Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. More specifically with regards to reappraisal, Gross argues that appraisal processes occur early in the emotion-generative process, and the downstream outcome (the experienced emotion) is most easily altered by changing appraisals of...

It has been suggested that people engage in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) because they (a) experience heightened physiological arousal following stressful events and use NSSI to regulate experienced distress and (b) have deficits in their social problem-solving skills that interfere with the performance of more adaptive social responses. However, objective physiological and behavioral data supporting this model are lacking. The authors compared adolescent self-injurers (n = 62) with noninjurers (n = 30) and found that self-injurers showed higher physiological reactivity (skin conductance) during a distressing task, a poorer ability to tolerate this distress, and deficits in several social problem-solving abilities. These findings highlight the importance of attending to increased arousal, distress tolerance, and problem-solving skills in the assessment and treatment of NSSI.