Centre for Research on Occupational and Life Stress, National University of Ireland, Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland.
Anxiety Stress Coping. 2012 Jul;25(4):411-23. doi: 10.1080/10615806.2011.640933. Epub 2012 Jan 11.
Previous work on social support and stress tolerance using laboratory-based cardiovascular stress response paradigms has suggested that perceived social support may be effective in building resilience in recipients. However, such paradigms are often socially de-contextualized insofar as they fail to take account of the social aspects of stress itself. Using 90 healthy college women, the present study sought to examine the association between self-reported perceived social support and cardiovascular stress tolerance. Participants underwent two consecutive exposures to a mental arithmetic task. On second exposure to the stressor, participants completed the task under either social threat or control conditions. Social threat was manipulated using socially salient instructions, to create a high social context. Adaptation to stress was established in terms of comparisons between cardiovascular responses to successive exposures. Results showed that cardiovascular responses tended to habituate across time, with perceived social support associated with the degree of habituation, but only under certain contextual conditions; high perceived support was associated with effective habituation under control conditions only. This response pattern is consistent with the view that high perceived social support buffers against stress in healthful ways, but only in asocial contexts.
先前使用基于实验室的心血管应激反应范式研究社会支持与应激耐受力的工作表明，感知到的社会支持可能对增强接受者的适应能力有效。然而，此类范式往往与社会背景脱节，因为它们没有考虑到应激本身的社会方面。本研究使用 90 名健康的女大学生，旨在检验自我报告的感知社会支持与心血管应激耐受力之间的关联。参与者接受了两次连续的心理算术任务暴露。在第二次暴露于应激源时，参与者在社会威胁或对照条件下完成任务。通过使用有社会显著性的指令来操纵社会威胁，以创建高社会背景。通过比较连续暴露时的心血管反应来确定应激适应。结果表明，心血管反应随着时间的推移趋于习惯化，感知到的社会支持与习惯化的程度相关，但仅在某些情况下；在对照条件下，高感知支持与有效的习惯化相关。这种反应模式与以下观点一致，即高感知社会支持以健康的方式缓冲压力，但仅在非社会性背景下。
