Beliefs About Stress Attenuate the Relation Among Adverse Life Events, Perceived Distress, and Self‐Control

Park, Daeun; Yu, Alisa; Metz, Sarah E.; Tsukayama, Eli; Crum, Alia J.; Duckworth, Angela

doi:10.1111/cdev.12946

Cited by 81 publications

(87 citation statements)

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“…We find that mindsets on stress, failure, and willpower were significantly correlated with each other (rs > 0.20, ps < 0.007; see Table 2). It is notable that participants reported greater stress-is-enhancing mindsets than populations studied in the past (e.g., Crum et al, 2013;Park et al, 2017). This may be due to self-selection into this extremely stressful environment, social desirability effects, or a combination of these factors.…”

Section: Baseline Survey Correlationsmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…In environments with prolonged and highintensity demands, are stress mindsets still beneficial? Some research has suggested that these mindsets may be even more impactful during extreme stress (Akinola et al, 2016;Park et al, 2017). Other research has suggested the opposite -that mindsets cannot override physiological limits during extreme challenges (Vohs et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stress, Mindsets, and Success in Navy SEALs Special Warfare Training

2020

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Mindsets can impact an individual's performance in stressful experiences such as public speaking or receiving negative feedback. Yet we know little about the boundary conditions of where these mindsets predict success, and where they may become irrelevant or even maladaptive. The current research asks whether mindsets are beneficial in environments of extreme physical and mental stress using participants undergoing the notoriously challenging Navy SEALs training. We hypothesized that participants with stress-is-enhancing mindsets -who believe stress enhances their health, performance and wellbeing -will outperform those with stress-is-debilitating mindsets. In addition, we explore whether other mindsets about willpower and failure predict success in a similar manner. Following 174 Navy SEALs candidates, we find that, even in this extreme setting, stress-is-enhancing mindsets predict greater persistence through training, faster obstacle course times, and fewer negative evaluations from peers and instructors. We also find evidence that failure-is-enhancing mindsets may be detrimental to candidates' success, and non-limited willpower mindsets prompt negative evaluations from others. Multiverse analyses were conducted to test for the robustness of these effects across researcher analytical decisions, which produced consistent results. We discuss how findings in this unique environment can provide insight into the importance of mindsets in other organizations and propose future avenues of research to further understand the causal role of mindsets in diverse workplace contexts.

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Section: Baseline Survey Correlationsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress, Mindsets, and Success in Navy SEALs Special Warfare Training

2020

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“…Recent work extended the mindset approach to understand health behaviors including exercise intentions (Orvidas et al, 2018), dieting goal persistence (e.g., Burnette, 2010), addiction treatment intentions (Burnette et al, 2019), coping strategies for psychological distress (Park et al, 2017), and smoking cessation (Kauffman et al, 2017). For example, inducing a growth mindset about weight served as a buffer against weightgain following severe dieting setbacks (Burnette and Finkel, 2012) and predicted healthier food choices (Ehrlinger et al, 2017).…”

Section: Mindsetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Health Messages and Weight-Related Beliefs: Implications for Well-Being and Stigma

et al. 2019

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Across two studies, we examined the double-edged sword hypothesis, which outlines effects of weight-related beliefs and public health messages on physical and mental health. The double-edged sword hypothesis proposes that growth mindsets and messages (weight is changeable) predict reduced well-being and stigma via an increase in blame, but also predict greater well-being via an increase in efficacy and less stigma via a reduction in essentialist thinking. We tested this model in a correlational study (N = 311) and in an experimental study, randomly assigning participants (N = 392) to different weight-based public health messages. In Study 1, growth mindsets predicted greater onset blame and more offset efficacy. Blame did not predict any of the outcomes. However, offset efficacy predicted reduced risk for eating disorders, fewer unhealthy weight control behaviors, and less psychological distress. And, growth mindsets had a negative indirect effect on outcomes. In Study 2, we experimentally demonstrated that a changeable message about the nature of weight, designed to also reduce blame, indirectly decreased eating disorder risk, unhealthy weight control behaviors, body shame, and prejudice through increased offset efficacy and decreased social essentialism. This work contributes to our theoretical understanding of the psychological consequences of weight beliefs and messages on well-being and stigma.

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“…Generalized stress beliefs have mainly been studied using two psychometrically evaluated self-report questionnaires: The Stress Mindset Measure (SMM) by Crum et al [22] uses a unidimensional, bipolar scale to assess whether individuals generally believe stress to be enhancing or debilitating. Previous research found that positive stress mindsets were associated with reduced distress in response to adverse life events in adolescents throughout one school year [23], with lower perceived stress, favorable well-being and better academic performance in undergraduate university students [24], and with increased vigor and task performance as well as decreased anxiety and depression in employees [22,25]. More recently, the Beliefs About Stress Scale (BASS) [26] was developed to assess stress beliefs using a multidimensional approach, i.e.…”

Section: The Effects Of Stress Beliefs On Daily Affective Stress Respmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Effects of Stress Beliefs on Daily Affective Stress Responses

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Fischer

Ebert

et al. 2019

Annals of Behavioral Medicine

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Background Negative beliefs about the effects of stress have been associated with poorer health and increased mortality. However, evidence on the psychological mechanisms linking stress beliefs to health is scarce, especially regarding real-life stress. Purpose The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of stress beliefs on affect in the daily stress process in a population prone to health-impairing effects of stress: university students. Methods Using daily diaries, 98 university students reported on daily perceived social and work-related stressors as well as positive and negative affect for 10 consecutive days. Stress beliefs, depressive and anxiety symptoms, neuroticism, and demographic variables were assessed prior to the daily diary phase. Results Hierarchical linear models revealed a significant cross-level interaction between negative stress beliefs and the association of daily social stressors with negative affect (B = 0.24; 99% confidence interval [CI] = 0.08–0.41, p < .001). When experiencing social stress, participants who held high negative stress beliefs had higher daily negative affect (simple slope = 4.09; p < .001); however, for participants who held low negative stress beliefs the association between daily social stress and daily negative affect was considerably smaller (simple slope = 2.12; p < .001). Moreover, individuals believing stress to be controllable showed higher positive affect throughout the 10-day daily diary phase. Conclusions Negative stress beliefs were found to moderate the affective response to daily real-life stressors. Given the established relationship between affect and health, this study provides initial evidence of psychological mechanisms linking stress beliefs to health.

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Beliefs About Stress Attenuate the Relation Among Adverse Life Events, Perceived Distress, and Self‐Control

Cited by 81 publications

References 58 publications

Stress, Mindsets, and Success in Navy SEALs Special Warfare Training

Stress, Mindsets, and Success in Navy SEALs Special Warfare Training

Public Health Messages and Weight-Related Beliefs: Implications for Well-Being and Stigma

The Effects of Stress Beliefs on Daily Affective Stress Responses

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