Stress, health and illness: Four challenges for the future

Abstract

The concept of stress has a long and perhaps foundational history in health psychology. However, it is also not without its detractors, who point out imprecise and simplistic use of the concept. Four challenges for stress research in health psychology delineate the nuanced and contextualised future. First, 'stress' can be located in the environment, in appraisal or in response (e.g., emotions or physiology). Careful conceptualisation and assessment can differentiate among these locales, as well as reveal interactions among them. Second, coping refers to the transaction between stress and the affected person. Understanding exactly why coping moderates the effects of stress is a major challenge for coping research. Third, stress happens to different people with different personalities and temperaments and at different stages of their lives. People may even be different from themselves at different life stages. These individual differences can impact all manner of stress and coping. Fourth, stress is dynamic. Minor events come and go, and major events create a cascade of changes in the individual's life. Understanding how stress, coping and health change over time within individuals (i.e., in a multi-level framework) will be a major advance for the field.

Investigating the effects of conscientiousness on daily stress, affect and physical symptom processes: A daily diary study

“…Indeed, there is some evidence that personality can change as a function of experience (Jackson, Thoemmes, Jonkmann, Ludtke & Trautwein, 2012;Roberts & Jackson, 2008;Tang et al, 2009). Therefore, in order to fully elucidate how personality and stress processes interact over time, researchers ought to adopt life course approaches that assess multiple predictors and multiple outcomes across a large number of years (for more detail see Segerstrom & O"Connor, 2012;also Hagger-Johnson et al, 2012) or econometric approaches (Ferguson, 2013b;Ferguson, Heckman & Corr, 2011). The importance of adopting such approaches is underscored by the recent publication of the landmark study by Jokela et al (2013b) that demonstrated that C was the only higher-order personality trait to be related to mortality risk across a staggering 7 different cohort studies.…”

“…Future research using these methods could determine whether the observed differences in stress appraisals and positive affect have any physiological parallels (see also Segerstrom & O"Connor, 2012). …”

Challenging Performativity in Higher Education: Promoting a Healthier Learning Culture

“…Stress and coping have been identiied as important variables afecting health [65][66][67]. The evidence points to increased stress and distress as adversely impacting the health of higher education students also [40].…”

Satisfacción con la vida, victimización y percepción de inseguridad en Morelos, México

“…9 Esta relación puede atribuirse al hecho de que ser víc-tima, especialmente de delitos violentos, es un estresor no normativo que supone una merma significativa de la satisfacción con la vida. [10][11][12] Sin embargo, en su estudio, Moore 13 encontró que la experiencia de victimización no ejerce ningún impacto significativo en la satisfacción con la vida, por lo que se deben considerar otras variables. En este sentido, Michalos y Zumbo 14 observaron que la victimización se asocia con una menor calidad de vida cuando se tiene en cuenta la satisfacción con el vecindario y la pareja.…”