Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Program, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.
Stress Health. 2023 Feb;39(1):87-102. doi: 10.1002/smi.3165. Epub 2022 Jun 13.
Subjective stress severity appraisals have consistently emerged as better predictors of poor health than stressor exposure, but the reason for this is unclear. Subjective stress may better predict poor health for one of at least two reasons. First, because stressor exposure measures consider all stressors as equal, stress severity measures-which "weight" stressors by self-reported severity-might better predict poor health simply by not treating all stressors as being equally impactful. Second, subjective stress appraisals may index important individual differences in stress vulnerability. We tested these two possibilities in this preregistered, two-study manuscript. Across these two different studies, subjective stress severity was a better predictor of poor health than independently weighted stress severity or stressor exposure. These results demonstrate that, beyond weighting of stressful experiences, subjective stress severity indexes health-relevant individual differences. Moreover, the results suggest that subjective stress severity may be the preferred stress summary metric even when derived from imprecise stress assessment instruments.
主观压力严重程度评估一直比压力源暴露更能准确预测健康状况不佳，但原因尚不清楚。主观压力可能更好地预测健康状况不佳，至少有两个原因。首先，由于压力源暴露测量将所有压力源视为同等重要，而压力严重程度测量——通过自我报告的严重程度“加权”压力源——可能不会将所有压力源视为同等重要，因此可以更好地预测健康状况不佳。其次，主观压力评估可能会反映出压力易感性的重要个体差异。我们在这项预先注册的两项研究手稿中检验了这两种可能性。在这两项不同的研究中，主观压力严重程度比独立加权的压力严重程度或压力源暴露更能准确预测健康状况不佳。这些结果表明，除了对压力经历进行加权外，主观压力严重程度还可以反映与健康相关的个体差异。此外，这些结果表明，即使是从不精确的压力评估工具中得出的主观压力严重程度，也可能是首选的压力综合指标。
