Raymond Catherine, Marin Marie-France, Hand Anne, Sindi Shireen, Juster Robert-Paul, Lupien Sonia J
Centre for Studies on Human Stress, Research Centre, Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal, Montreal, Canada H1N 3M5; Department of Neuroscience, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada H3C 3J7.
Centre for Studies on Human Stress, Research Centre, Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal, Montreal, Canada H1N 3M5.
Neural Plast. 2016;2016:3136743. doi: 10.1155/2016/3136743. Epub 2015 Dec 29.
The self-help industry generates billions of dollars yearly in North America. Despite the popularity of this movement, there has been surprisingly little research assessing the characteristics of self-help books consumers, and whether this consumption is associated with physiological and/or psychological markers of stress. The goal of this pilot study was to perform the first psychoneuroendocrine analysis of consumers of self-help books in comparison to nonconsumers. We tested diurnal and reactive salivary cortisol levels, personality, and depressive symptoms in 32 consumers and nonconsumers of self-help books. In an explorative secondary analysis, we also split consumers of self-help books as a function of their preference for problem-focused versus growth-oriented self-help books. The results showed that while consumers of growth-oriented self-help books presented increased cortisol reactivity to a psychosocial stressor compared to other groups, consumers of problem-focused self-help books presented higher depressive symptomatology. The results of this pilot study show that consumers with preference for either problem-focused or growth-oriented self-help books present different physiological and psychological markers of stress when compared to nonconsumers of self-help books. This preliminary study underlines the need for additional research on this issue in order to determine the impact the self-help book industry may have on consumers' stress.
北美自助产业每年创造数十亿美元的收益。尽管这一行业广受欢迎，但令人惊讶的是，几乎没有研究评估自助书籍消费者的特征，以及这种消费是否与压力的生理和/或心理指标相关。这项初步研究的目的是，首次对自助书籍消费者与非消费者进行心理神经内分泌分析。我们测试了32名自助书籍消费者和非消费者的昼夜及应激唾液皮质醇水平、性格和抑郁症状。在一项探索性的二次分析中，我们还根据他们对问题聚焦型与成长导向型自助书籍的偏好，对自助书籍消费者进行了分类。结果显示，与其他组相比，成长导向型自助书籍的消费者对应激社会心理压力源的皮质醇反应性增加，而问题聚焦型自助书籍的消费者则表现出更高的抑郁症状。这项初步研究的结果表明，与非自助书籍消费者相比，偏好问题聚焦型或成长导向型自助书籍的消费者呈现出不同的压力生理和心理指标。这项初步研究强调了对此问题进行更多研究的必要性，以便确定自助书籍行业可能对消费者压力产生的影响。
