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This paper focuses on the relevance of stress mindsets to college students. Stress
mindsets describe the intuitive beliefs that people hold about the nature of stress
as either enhancing or debilitating. In two studies, we sampled distinct groups of
current or recent college students (N = 1170) regarding their stress mindsets, perceived
distress, well-being, academic performance, procrastination habits, descriptions of
stress, and personality characteristics. Our five main goals were to: (1) replicate
prior findings that stress mindsets predict perceived distress, well-being, and academic
outcomes (GPA), (2) assess how stress mindsets relate to procrastination, (3) explore
whether language can reveal students’ stress mindsets, (4) consider how Big 5 personality
traits inform stress mindsets, and (5) test whether stress mindset predicts important
outcomes even when controlling for the potential third variable of personality. Our
results supported prior research in noting that an enhancing stress mindset was associated
with lower perceived distress, higher well-being, and higher GPA. Study 1 also indicated
that an enhancing stress mindset predicted lower procrastination. Enhancing stress
mindsets were significantly associated with positive emotional language, negative
emotional language, and words related to drive, achievement, and reward across studies.
Stress mindset was also associated with personality; participants were more likely
to hold an enhancing stress mindset when they were lower in openness, higher in conscientiousness,
higher in extraversion, and lower in neuroticism. Finally, after controlling for relevant
personality traits, stress mindset continued to be a significant unique predictor
of perceived distress, well-being, and GPA, but not procrastination. Together, our
findings underscore the relevance of stress mindset to important outcomes in college
students, suggesting that language can provide a window into stress mindsets, and
that personality may play a role in shaping one’s beliefs about the nature of stress.
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