The impact of daily stress on health and mood: Psychological and social resources as mediators.

Abstract

This study examined daily stress processes among 75 married couples across 20 assessments during a 6-month period. The somatic and psychological effects of common everyday hassles were investigated. Overall, there was a significant relationship between daily stress and the occurrence of both concurrent and subsequent health problems such as flu, sore throat, headaches, and backaches. The relationship of daily stress to mood disturbance was more complex. The negative effects of stress on mood were limited to a single day. with the following day characterized by mood scores that were better than usual. Furthermore, striking individual differences were found in the extent to which daily stress was associated with health and mood across time. Participants wiih unsupporlive social relationships and low self-esteem were more likely to experience an increase in psychological and somatic problems both on and following stressful days than were participants high in self-esteem and social support. These data suggest that persons with low psychosocial resources are vulnerable to illness and mood disturbance when their stress levels increase, even if they generally have little stress in their lives. Despite long-standing misgivings about its usefulness, the concept of stress continues to generate great interest because of the conviction that it is a causal factor in illness. This conviction has motivated widespread use of measures of stress based on life events and also lies behind our own measure of stress based on daily hassles. There are methodological and theoretical grounds for questioning much of the research that has attempted to relate stress, whether measured in terms of life events or hassles, to long-term health status. One difficulty is that stress itself is not a simple variable but a system of interdependent processes, including appraisal and coping, which mediate the frequency, intensity, duration, and type of psychological and somatic response. Most investigators of the stress-health relationship treat stress as a unitary variable and do not take these processes into account. A second difficulty is that much of the research that attempts to demonstrate the causal relationship between stress and This article is based on a dissertation submitted by the first author to the University of California, Berkeley. Richard S. Lazarus served as chairman of the dissertation committee.

Real-Time Associations Between Engaging in Leisure and Daily Health and Well-Being

“…For example, daily stressors have been associated with both concurrent and subsequent health problems [35], and daily negative affect has been associated with engagement in more negative health behaviors [36]. Moreover, higher resting [37] and ambulatory [38] heart rate levels have been shown to predict poor cardiovascular health and mortality.…”

Whites have a more robust hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis response to a psychological stressor than blacks

“…There are four subscales: Hassles Frequency (number of events rated as a hassle); Hassles Severity (average severity rating on a 4-point scale for hassles (0 = none or not applicable, 1 = somewhat, 2 = quite a bit, and 3 = a great deal)); Uplifts Frequency (number of events rated as an uplift); and Uplifts Intensity (average intensity rating on 4-point scale for uplifts (0 = none or not applicable, 1 = somewhat, 2 = quite a bit, and 3 = a great deal). This scale has been shown to have both test-retest and internal consistency and concurrent validity (Delongis, 1985;Delongis et al, 1988).…”

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

“…Non-specific physical symptoms are regularly experienced by the general population (Rief, Hessel, & Braehler, 2001), and represent a measure of current ongoing physical health below the threshold of disease (Ferguson, Cassaday, Erskind, & Delahaye, 2004). DeLongis and colleagues found that daily stressors influenced both somatic symptoms and mood when measured at the daily level (Delongis, Folkman, & Lazarus, 1988). C has also been investigated in the study of symptom reporting, and evidence suggests that those low on C report the experience of more severe symptoms (Ferguson et al, 2004).…”