Department of Psychology, Tel Hai College, Upper Galilee, Israel.
Int J Psychol. 2013;48(4):641-8. doi: 10.1080/00207594.2012.676181. Epub 2012 May 3.
The objective of the current study is to explore optimism as a predictor of personal and collective fear, as well as hope, following laboratory-induced stress. Students (N = 107; 74 female, 33 male) were assigned randomly to either the experimental (stress--political violence video clip) or the control group (no-stress--nature video clip). Questionnaires of fear and hope were administered immediately after the experiment (Time 1) and 3 weeks later (Time 2). Structural equation modeling indicated the following: (a) Optimism significantly predicted both fear and hope in the stress group at Time 1, but not in the no-stress group. (b) Optimism predicted hope but not fear at Time 2 in the stress group. (c) Hope at Time 1 significantly predicted hope at Time 2, in both the stress and the no-stress groups. (d) Gender did not predict significantly fear at Time 1 in the stress group, despite a significant difference between genders. This study supports previous studies indicating that optimism plays an important role in people's coping with stress. However, based on our research the data raise the question of whether optimism, by itself, or environmental stress, by itself, may accurately predict stress response.
本研究旨在探讨在实验室诱发的压力下，乐观主义作为个人和集体恐惧以及希望的预测指标的作用。研究将 107 名学生（74 名女性，33 名男性）随机分配到实验组（压力源-政治暴力视频剪辑）或对照组（无压力源-自然视频剪辑）。在实验后立即（时间 1）和 3 周后（时间 2），对学生进行了恐惧和希望的问卷调查。结构方程模型表明：（a）在压力组中，乐观主义在时间 1 时显著预测了恐惧和希望，但在无压力组中则不然。（b）在压力组中，乐观主义在时间 1 时预测了希望，但不能预测恐惧；在时间 2 时则相反。（c）在压力组和无压力组中，时间 1 的希望均显著预测了时间 2 的希望。（d）尽管在压力组中存在明显的性别差异，但性别在时间 1 时对恐惧的预测并不显著。本研究支持了先前的研究，即乐观主义在人们应对压力方面起着重要作用。然而，基于我们的研究结果，数据提出了一个问题，即乐观主义本身或环境压力本身是否可以准确预测压力反应。
