Strack Juliane, Esteves Francisco
a Department of Psychology , ISCTE-IUL - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa , Lisbon , Portugal.
Anxiety Stress Coping. 2015;28(2):205-14. doi: 10.1080/10615806.2014.931942. Epub 2014 Jul 8.
The present study examined why people differ in how they appraise the same stressful situation (an approaching exam).
We explored whether interpreting anxiety as a facilitative emotion can affect the type of stress appraisal people make.
One hundred and three undergraduate students took part in this study, which lasted for 10 days (leading up to an exam). The students completed a daily self-reported evaluation of anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and stress experienced.
The findings suggest a process by which a stressful time can be experienced as motivating rather than threatening or emotionally exhausting. For example, interpreting anxiety as facilitative moderated the relationship between anxiety and stress appraisals. When interpreting their anxiety as facilitative, individuals showed a higher tendency to make challenge stress appraisals and a lower tendency to appraising the stressor as a threat. These differences were especially visible with high levels of anxiety. Furthermore, interpreting anxiety as facilitative was negatively associated with emotional exhaustion, but positively associated with the academic performance.
These findings suggest an explanation why people differ in how they appraise the same stressor: how people interpret their anxiety may to a large part affect how they appraise difficult events and situations.
本研究探讨了为何人们对相同的压力情境（即将到来的考试）的评估方式存在差异。
我们探究了将焦虑理解为一种促进性情绪是否会影响人们进行压力评估的类型。
103名本科生参与了这项为期10天（直至一场考试）的研究。学生们每天完成一份关于焦虑、情绪耗竭和所经历压力的自我报告评估。
研究结果表明了一个过程，即一段压力时期可以被体验为具有激励作用而非具有威胁性或导致情绪耗竭。例如，将焦虑理解为具有促进作用调节了焦虑与压力评估之间的关系。当将自己的焦虑理解为具有促进作用时，个体做出挑战性压力评估的倾向更高，而将压力源评估为威胁的倾向更低。这些差异在高焦虑水平时尤其明显。此外，将焦虑理解为具有促进作用与情绪耗竭呈负相关，但与学业成绩呈正相关。
这些研究结果为人们对相同压力源的评估方式为何存在差异提供了一种解释：人们如何理解自己的焦虑可能在很大程度上影响他们对困难事件和情境的评估。
