| dc.description.abstract |
The goal of this study was to evaluate how beliefs about stress as enhancing versus
debilitating, also known as stress mindsets, relate to health and academic performance
in an undergraduate sample. College students (n=499) were surveyed on their general
and stressor-specific mindsets, and self-reported on their stress, health, coping,
and GPA. Our findings suggest that beliefs about stress vary as a function of stressor
type (acute versus chronic, and controllable versus uncontrollable), and that some
stressor-specific mindsets may be more predictive of health than others. General
mindsets were associated with health, consistent with prior findings. When stressor-specific
mindsets were examines, chronic controllable mindsets were most pervasively related
to health. Specifically, believing that chronic controllable stressors are harmful
was related to worse mental and physical health. Consistent with prior findings,
we found that measures of stress were associated with health, however this relationship
was moderated by stress mindsets. Believing that stress is enhancing rather than
debilitating appears to provide a psychological “buffer” against the negative effects
of stress. Our work suggests that interventions which challenge students’ beliefs
about stress may help students handle large amounts of stress with a lessened impact
on their health. Interventions targeting chronic controllable mindsets may be more
effective than current general stress mindset interventions. Future work calls for
the development of student-oriented, stressor-specific stress mindset interventions.
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