How to Improve Adolescent Stress Responses

Abstract

This research integrated implicit theories and the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat, hypothesizing that adolescents would be more likely to conclude that they have the resources to meet the demands of an evaluative social situation when they were taught a belief that people have the potential to change their socially-relevant traits. Study 1 (N=60) randomly assigned high school adolescents to an incremental theory of personality or control condition, and then administered a standardized social stress task. Relative to controls, incremental theory participants exhibited improved stress appraisals, more adaptive neuroendocrine and cardiovascular responses (lower salivary cortisol, reduced vascular resistance, higher stroke volume, and more rapid return to homeostasis after stress offset), and better performance outcomes. Study 2 (N=205) used a daily diary intervention study to test high school adolescents’ stress reactivity outside the laboratory. Threat appraisals (days 5–9 post-intervention) and neuroendocrine responses (cortisol and DHEA-S; days 8–9 post-intervention only) were untethered from the intensity of daily stressors when adolescents received the incremental theory of personality intervention. The intervention also improved grades over freshman year. These findings offer new avenues for improving theories of adolescent stress and coping.

An Entity Theory of Intelligence Predicts Higher Cortisol Levels When High School Grades Are Declining

“…Situation-specific stress appraisals do not operate in psychological isolation but occur within the backdrop of general belief systems (see Crum, Salovey, & Achor, 2013;Yeager, Lee, & Jamieson, 2016). The current research posits that individuals are likely to appraise intellectually demanding situations as more threatening when they believe that intelligence is fixed and cannot be developed-that is, when they hold more of an entity theory of intelligence (Blackwell et al, 2007;Dweck et al, 1995).…”

“…Different analyses using the School 1 data set were reported previously in a randomized trial (Yeager, Lee, et al, 2016) and were posted online (osf.io/9ack7); data from School 2 have not yet been published. Using the School 1 data set, Yeager, Lee, et al (2016) examined the effects of a treatment teaching an incremental theory of personality-the idea that people's personalities and social traits can change-on students' coping with daily social stressors. The incremental theory of personality treatment was orthogonal to the present study for three reasons.…”

“…Some recent research in the domain of socialrelational stressors supports the plausibility of the present integration of the BPS and implicit theories models of coping. In one study (Yeager, Lee, et al, 2016, Study 1), implicit theories of personality-theories about whether social and moral characteristics are fixed and cannot be developed-were related to high school students' threat appraisals (i.e., ratio of perceived demand to perceived resources) and HPA-axis activation (i.e., cortisol levels) following a controlled social stressor (the Trier Social Stress Test; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993). These findings were replicated in a sample of adolescents with elevated internalizing symptoms (Schleider & Weisz, 2016), and in a daily diary and cortisol sampling study (Yeager, Lee, et al, 2016, Study 2).…”

Dealing With Social Difficulty During Adolescence: The Role of Implicit Theories of Personality

“…In experiments in high schools, adolescents who received the incremental theory intervention coped with the social difficulties of moving to high school more productively than students who received a parallel control exercise. Treated adolescents reported less overall stress and earned higher grades during freshman year of high school, which can be a difficult time socially (23,33). In another study, entering ninth-graders who took part in the incremental theory intervention showed 40% fewer depressive symptoms 8-9 months after the intervention, and the effect was more prominent for those who started the year ascribing to an entity theory of personality (34,35).…”

“…Belief in an entity theory predicts more of a threat appraisal to stressors-that is, it calls into question whether fixed traits are up to the task of social success. In two studies (23), an incremental theory of personality created less of a threat appraisal and more of a challenge appraisal, both in response to a stressor (having to give a speech to upperclass students about what makes someone popular) and to typical events in high school (as reported in a daily diary).…”