Characterizing Stress Processes by Linking Big Five Personality States, Traits, and Day-to-Day Stressors

Abstract

The accumulation of day-to-day stressors can impact mental and physical health. How people respond to stressful events is a key mechanism responsible for the effects of stress, and individual differences in stress responses can either perpetuate or prevent negative consequences. Most research on daily stress processes has focused on affective responses to stressors, but stress responses can involve more than just affect. Additionally, most research has been on the role of neuroticism in shaping those responses, but many other individual differences are associated with stress outcomes. In this study, we more comprehensively characterized daily stress processes by expanding the nomological networks of stress responses to include Big Five personality states. We also linked those stress responses to all Big Five traits, as well as individual differences in stress exposure and stress appraisal. We studied a sample of participants (N = 1,090) who reported on stressful events, their appraisal of events in terms of severity and controllability, and their Big Five personality states daily for 7-10 days (N = 8,870 observations). Multi-level structural equation models were used to separate how characteristics of the perceived stressful situation and characteristics of the person play into daily stress processes. Results showed that (1) all Big Five personality states shift in response to perceived stress, (2) all Big Five personality traits relate to average levels of perceived stress exposure and appraisals, (3) individual differences in personality and average perceived stress exposure and perceived severity relate to the strength of personality state responses to daily stress. Our results point to new pathways by which stressors affect people in everyday life and begin to clarify processes that may explain individual differences in risk or resilience to the harmful effects of stress.

Personality and Clinical Perspectives on Stress Generation: Towards an Integrative Theoretical Model

“…Furthermore, there is initial evidence that state-level constructs may also predict the occurrence of stressful experiences (Mandel et al, 2018;Sears et al, 2018). For example, measures of both state-level and trait-level neuroticism have been found to predict stressful life experiences (Denissen et al, 2019;Ringwald et al, 2022).…”

“…A state-level personal variable (e.g., personality state, current emotions) predicts a short-term stressor (e.g., work conflict). Ringwald et al (2022) examined whether personality states predict the occurrence and perception of stressful minor events in three daily-diary studies.…”