Why do Stress Mindsets Matter? Linking stress mindsets to discrete emotions, coping and motivational focus.

Abstract

A promising new area of research suggests that a person’s beliefs about the consequences of stress – stress mindset – may moderate the effects of stress on health outcomes. Exactly how this might work, however, remains unclear. More fully, while links between stress mindsets and health outcomes are increasingly documented, research thus far has been concentrated on possible physiological, behavioural, and cognitive mechanisms. Possible affective mechanisms remain largely understudied. This absence noted, significant literature links emotions with health outcomes suggesting they represent a credible avenue for investigation. Whilst a few studies have linked mindsets with general positive and negative affect, this work is limited in several ways. First, studies have not differentiated among specific (discrete) emotions or assessed how the adaptive functions and motivational tendencies associated with these emotions can illuminate the pathways that link stress mindset with outcomes. Second, experimental studies have been near-entirely conducted with experimentally induced or ecological stressors over a short time frame, precluding commentary as to whether these effects relate to dispositional tendencies or are limited to acute reactions to stress and/or whether effects vary as a function of stressor duration, chronicity, or controllability. The current study assessed the links between stress mindsets and dispositional differences in discrete emotions and regulatory tendencies and examined whether these dispositional differences were similarly manifest in patterns of state emotion. Three hundred and twenty English speaking participants aged 18 – 86 were recruited online. Participants completed a web-based questionnaire assessing demographics, stress mindsets, perceived stress, trait emotion, regulatory tendencies, coping, and health behaviours related to COVID 19. To experimentally manipulate mindsets, two hundred and sixty-eight participants were randomised to video conditions emphasising either the positive or the negative properties of stress. Following the video, participants completed an emotion induction in which they were asked to write for five minutes about their experiences of COVID 19 and complete a final questionnaire assessing state emotion. As expected, a greater stress-is-enhancing mindset predicted greater positive affect, interest, joy, contentment, and pride and lower negative affect, sadness, guilt, and anger, along with a greater promotion focus and lower levels of avoidance coping. However, patterns of dispositional emotionality were not replicated in patterns of state emotion or in the linguistic analysis, perhaps suggesting that dispositional tendencies may not manifest comparably in specific stressor contexts. Additional analyses indicated that the effects of stress are intertwined with those of stress mindsets and that ongoing studies in which stress is controlled are needed. Overall, findings suggest a preliminary characterisation of a stress-is-enhancing mindset as characterising people who tend to experience positive emotions (particularly interest), have approach-based motivations, and a focus on obtaining goal related positive outcomes. Conversely, positive stress mindsets characterise people that are less likely to experience negative emotions (notably sadness) and adopt avoidant coping behaviours, at least in the context of a naturalistic health related stressor. Findings are interpreted within functionalist models of emotion and provide clear evidence that affective characteristics likely contribute to the link between mindsets and adaptive outcomes. Future work should seek to replicate and expand on these findings in the context of chronic health stressors and investigate how these affective and regulatory tendencies influence specific health outcomes.