Topic 4 - individual and social factors

Question 1

Questions we can/should ask about different “individual differences” variables

Answer 1

• Do individual differences play a role in selecting individuals into jobs which differ in stressfulness?
• How do individual differences relate to the development of symptoms of psychological strain?
• How do individual difference relate to perceptions of stress in the environment?
• Do they act as moderators in the stress-strain relationship?
• Do they affect the way people cope with stress?

Also, do they act as MEDIATOR or MODERATOR?

These can be mapped back onto the transactional model last week –> individual differences exist, and they can play a role.

Individual differences might exist in how people APPRAISE stuff

Can vary in how they COPE with demands
May vary in need for SUPPORT
(these are more modeators)

• Primary appraisal
• By nature is subject to mediation by individual differences

Question 2

Individual differences as mediators and moderators

Answer 2

• As Mediators:

Mediator = something that is responsible for the “transmission” of an effect, but not the NATURE of an effect” - a factor that helps explain relationship between dependent and independent variable - HOW and WHY does a relationship occur
e.g. Note-taking might influence exam performance, but only because that makes you spend more TIME studying.

• As Moderators

Moderator = a variable in which the presence/strength of it alters the (strength of the) effect/relationship - does not explain it, but depending on the strength of its presence, and the strength of the relationship, it can change that
• Direction of strength between variables.
• Focuses on “level of strength” - if you perceive something as mild stressor - you might cope by 5 deep breaths - but same stressor might be stronger at a different time (exam = little stress early, much stress day before)

Importance to make this distinction, because of its impact on research METHODS in stress research - problem: researchers don’t state “we’re looking at this as mediator” or “as moderator” –> can be hard to understand WHAT we’re looking at.
- If we don’t distinguish these, we can get confused, we need to know if a variable is MEDIATING or MODERATING an outcome

Question 3

Coping

Answer 3

Coping – the cognitions and behaviours adopted by the individual, following the recognition of a stressful transaction that are in some way designed to deal with that reaction (Cox, 1987)
• Typological
• Process of coping

Question 4

Typological approach to coping

Answer 4

Typological: more the idea that there are different TYPES of coping, and individual differences LEAD YOU to different coping categories/behaviors (there is definitely research supporting this). Your personality predisposes you to different types.
typing different types of coping, and which different (individual factors) affect these
They are somewhat independent of nature of situation.

Question 5

Process of coping (approach to coping)

Answer 5

Process: More of a “spectrum” idea - individual differences lead you to a long list of possible copings (your differences INFLUENCE you, but its not as “set” as the typological approach), but not so deterministic as typological - we still have flexibility. (there is infinite number of options of ways we can react)
each individual has long list of coping behaviors available, we can pick and choose for the specific stressor - these different coping alters the situation, and forces us to develop new coping strategies as well.

Question 6

Personality Characteristics and Coping - what they usually affect:

Answer 6

• Types of stressors encountered by an individual
• Frequency of exposure
• The appraisal of stressors
• Coping responses used

These areas = where personality plays a role in coping (and also in stress)

Challenge = hard to seperate these out. They are very tied together

Question 7

Semmer (2006) - how do personaliy charcateristics affect stress and coping

Answer 7

• Depending on personal characteristics people:
• Have different probabilities of encountering certain stressors
• Will perceive specific aspects of a given situation as more or less stressful
• Will react differently to situations, even when severity of stress-appraisal is held constant
• Will show different coping tendencies

Question 8

Encountering Stressful Situations - personality effects

Answer 8

type of encounters: individual differences changing probability of encountering different stressors.

Individuals coming from lower “SES” background = different probability of stressors.
Researchers do agree that individual diffferences can be seen in what people approach/shy away from  affect your probability of a stressful situation.

Seem to involve active choice, but can be involuntary actions too.
Example (of involuntary): depression –> perceived as less attractive = less social support / more isolation  even more depression.

Question 9

Appraising Different Situations - personality effects

Answer 9

• Personality is generally thought to play a role in what people see as stressful (i.e., appraisal)
• Ex) An individual high in Neuroticism has a higher likelihood of appraising something as a problem (compared to someone low in this trait)

Question 10

Reacting Differently - personality effects

Answer 10

• How individual react to events which are appraised in a similar way is another way that personality and stress experiences interact
• Ex) Someone higher on Neuroticism may have more of a reaction that someone with a lower level of Neuroticism even though they both perceptive the situation as stressful in a similar manner (“magnify”)

Question 11

Dealing with Stressful Situations - personality effects

Answer 11

• Personality may play a role in how people react to stressors
• There is some debate as to whether people show consistency over time and across situations in coping behavior
• Though there is significant evidence that coping tendencies are characteristics, it is possible that this stability is from situation-behaviour combination (vs. characteristic factors)

Example of a situation-behavior combination:
Situation: exam - behavior: avoid studying - how you cope with that stituation/behavior might not be so much driven by your personality CHARACTERISTCS that’s “obvious”, but might be “evident” in specific situations - you might be “avoidance” person in this situation, but not in others.
Situation A and B may lead to drinking = there might be characteristic behind it, but it might also be situational.

Question 12

Personality

Answer 12

• Tendencies in perceiving, thinking, feeling and acting that have some stability

• 1) Examined in relationship to personality models
• Ex. The Big Five
• 2) focusing on one or more characteristics and examining the association with specific forms of coping (e.g. optimism/pessimism)

Question 13

Big 5

Answer 13

• Neuroticism
• Extraversion
• Conscientiousness
• Agreeableness
• Openness to Experience

Some studies have looked at all traits.

We tend to focus on the first 2 (neuroticism and exraversion)
Important to note that personality by “situation of interaction” has not been covered much in research, there might be some interesting processes going on there.

Important take away: re-orientation back to the reading - and know most research focuses on the first 2, but also shown in research the other 3 are important (as well as personality - behavior- situation interaction)
would be interesting to look at using the process model from last week - more “real world” feedback.

Question 14

Neuroticism - trends in coping

Answer 14

• Choose ineffective strategies
• Strategies chosen are more likely to make things worse
• Less problem solving
• More confrontation, escape avoidance, self-blame, interpersonal withdrawal
• Not rigid copers

People high in N = poor copers. Ineffective coping strategies, and the strategies they choose often make situation worse rather than better
Less problem solving, more confrontation and withdrawal
They are not “rigid” or have limited repetoire - they just choose ones that don’t work well for their situations - may be because of high level of negative emotion - negative emotion may lead to bad choices and drive poor coping choice.

Question 15

Extraversion- trends in coping

Answer 15

• More effective and active copers
• More likely to use a variety of coping strategies
• Cognitive reframing
• More likely to engage in compromise, accepting responsibility
• May struggle with coping during close (i.e. romantic) interpersonal conflicts
• People high on extraversion often seen as more effective, and good coper = high variety of coping strategies.
• More likely to engage in compromise/accept responsibility
• But may use more self-blaming (compared to active coping

Question 16

Conscientiousness - trends in coping

Answer 16

• More likely to use empathetic responding, stoic distancing, problem solving
• Less escape avoidance and self-blame
• Though may be more likely to use self-blame during romantic interpersonal conflicts

Question 17

Agreeableness- trends in coping

Answer 17

• Less likely to use confrontation
• More likely to seek support
• May play more of a role during interpersonal stressors

People high in agreeableness.
More “communal” coping strategies, not so much confrontantion, likely to seek support, less likely to self-blame

Agreeableness more a factor in interpersonal confrontations, rather than no-interpersonal ones.
when coping with pain = no effect of A –> possibly more related to interpersonal stressors.

Doesn’t seem to be as strong an indicator.

Question 18

Openness to Experience - trends in coping

Answer 18

• May be particularly sensitive to the influence of situation/type of stressor
• outcome depend more on situation rather than personality.
• Whether a coping behavior is going to be HELPFUL or not - if someone high in O, that interacts a LOT with the TYPE of stressor they use, in the COPING they choose, and how efficient it is - that “superadaptability” might be influenced a lot by the environment, they might not have as stable a copign pattern.
• more adaptive and flexible copers
• Lower lever of distancing coping behaviours and more empathetic responding

Question 19

personality – situation dynamic

Answer 19

that can influence the coping strategies that are chosen and the effectiveness of them – coping strategies and personality isn’t just a 1 to 1 relationship, ones preferred method of coping is an effect of BOTH your personality AND the situation you’re positioned in.

• Example: If we think about extraversion, they are more effective at active coping, but maybe not in interpersonal relations =example of situation-personality dynamic and how it influences coping strategies

Question 20

Locus of Control (LOC)

Answer 20

How likely someone is to believe they have control over their life circumstances

Rotter (1966) - Developed out of social learning theory

High internal LOC = Inner thought that they might be able to control the outcomes in their lives.
- High locus of control might be able to cope better = its within their power to help themselves - sense of “i can do something about this” - BUT! Could also be not so helpful in that it might cause a person to self-blame a lot.

High external LOC = (thought that) External forces have control over their lives
- High external LOC = if someone were to die, you might not blame yourself (which could be a positive thing)

Question 21

Hardiness

Answer 21

• Maddi (1997, 1999, 2002)
• Hardiness = Made of three components
• Commitment
• Commitment = really about “active involvement” in life - ability to believe in truth, importance, and high interest value in who you are and what you’re doing = makes you involve yourself fully in what you do - tendency to involve yourself fully.
• tendency to involve oneself fully in life
• Challenge = change rather than stability is normative
• Control = tendency to believe and act as if one can influence events

Overall: more hardiness = better ability to cope.
But if we control for neuroticism, this sometimes eliminates positive effect/impact of hardiness
–> hardiness may just be a facet of neuroticism.

Hardiness may be more related to physical health, rather than affective states.
Neuroticism may be better predictor of affective states, hardiness may be better predictor of physical states.

BUT! If neuroticism is BAD for coping, and hardiness is GOOD, how can controlling for neuroticism control for hardiness?
If we think about it more on a dimension/range, rather than dichotomy - someone high in hardiness might have some elevation on neuroticism - but not so much of the negative emotion component.
Also, keep in mind, not every study controlling for neuroticism eliminate impact of hardiness, only some do, and propose whether hardiness might be aspect of neuroticism.

Question 22

Social Support

Answer 22

• (definition of social support:) Support accessible to an individual through social ties to other individuals, groups and the larger community (Lin, Simeone, Ensel, & Kuo, 1979)
• Culture is important here! We will come back to that later
• Positive society support of high quality can enhance resilience to stress
• High positive social support (and high quality of it) is thought to enhance resiliency to stress, and protect against psychological difficulties (or at least the severity of them)

Theoretical Models of Social Support Identify Two Important Dimensions
• (1) Structural Dimension
• Includes network size, frequency of social interactions
• (2) Functional Dimension
• Focus on emotional part (receiving love/empathy) + instrumental components (meaning practical help, financial help, housing support, “i need this” kinda support)

Most features have found functional dimensions are strongest predictor, compared to structural dimension - both are important, but functional is better if you have to choose.
QUALITY of relationships (functional dimension) is better predictor of health, than QUANTITY (structural dimension)

• At the Macro Level, society factors influence the stress process - Ex. Stress exposure
• At the Micro Level, stress is often interpersonal in origin and subsequent coping is intricate and dynamic

We know relatively little about MECHANISMS of social support - HOW is it important

At macro level, societal factors impact stress (exposure)
A microlevel: interpersonal

Take away: there was a “launch point” for investigationg of social support - need to look at it more critically. What they have been trying to do is identify different COMPONENTS -large research showing social support is beneficial, but we don’t know much about how social support INFLUENCES psychological and physical health.
- I guess it all relates to WHERE the mechanisms of social support occur – is it mechanisms at micro or macro level that are important?

Question 23

Theoretical Models of Social Support Identify Two Important Dimensions

Answer 23

(1) Structural Dimension
• Includes network size, frequency of social interactions
(2) Functional Dimension
• Focus on emotional part (receiving love/empathy) + instrumental components (meaning practical help, financial help, housing support, “i need this” kinda support)

Most features have found functional dimensions are strongest predictor, compared to structural dimension - both are important, but functional is better if you have to choose.
QUALITY of relationships (functional dimension) is better predictor of health, than QUANTITY (structural dimension)

Question 24

Mechanisms of social support (positive)

Answer 24

Social support is effective, because it acts as “asisstant” to coping.

Social relationships may influence coping in lots of different ways, e.g.:

• Social referencing (Bandura, 1986)
• turning to others to see how they respond to specific situations, so that’s how I should act in a similar situation
• Providing information (Carpenter & Scott, 1992)
• giving info - what would you do if…. Can I get some advice…
• Satisfaction with supports
• when high, individual report better use of adaptive coping strategies

Question 25

Mechanisms of social support (negative)

Answer 25

Negative mechanisms
• Disappointment due to perceived lack of support
• Mismatch
• Negative interactions

Disappointment : around PERCEPTION that there is lack of support - you might be dissatisfied - it’s not that they ARE not there, but you PERCEIVE they are not

Mismatch : whatever the support is OFFERING, does not match with the person NEEDS

Negative interactions - support providers may provide criticism = may not be helpful. = can get in the way of effective coping

Question 26

interaction between coping choices, and support

Answer 26

There seems to be interaction between coping choices, and support, in that your coping choices seem to affect their SATISFACTION with the support you receive. (last week’s reading (he Delongin study) - your coping strategy in the morning affected how you perceived your support later in the day - e.g. Withdrawal coping –> perceived less support)
It’s not easy and straight forward “good support vs bad support”

Question 27

Dupéré and Perkins (2007) study

Answer 27

Take aways: idea that looking at variation at block level, and block type would explain above and beyond personal level of stress and support, and hypothesized better blocks in lower disorder and better supprt = better outcomes/mental health and vice versa.
They did a lot of interviews, mostly female, mostly minority status, looked at many factors, found tha block types can be described in terms of disorder and social ties. No differences in mental health ABOVE AND BEYOND individual and socioeconomic impacts.
Biggest step forward: ability to describe living in different neighborhoods more holistically. More an advancement in methdology, than in the actual litterature.

more in depth:

Looking at environmental stressors and impact on mental health:
Premise: high exposure to high environmental stressors, in addition to area that lacks RESOURCES to deal with stressors - tied COMMUNITIES and resource accesability (and the stress people were exposed to) to how they impacted mental health.

Block TYPE would have some role at variation of the stress they were looking at
People living with more disorder and low resources = poor mental health.
Blocks with more social ties + lower disorder = better mental health.

Take away: dupere and perkin tried to figure out if they could find relationship between block type and mental health (and physical health) beyond personal SES (socio economic status?) and personal support level (i think)

Stats:
•	412 interviews were completed
•	65.5% of those interviewed were female
•	52.4% were Black
•	46.3% were White
•	Mean age 49.7 years
•	Mean residential stability 13.9 years (at current address, 14.6 years in area)
WILL NOT ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT SPECIFIC PERCENTAGES

• Measured
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Well-being
• Also looked at
• Sex
• Age
• Race
• Household income
• Education
• Unemployment
• Single parenthood
• Residential stability
• Personal stress
• Negative interpersonal experiences
• Social support

You need to know what’s on the slide, not the other stuff – overall what they measured and looked at.

Results:
• Did not find any block type having both high levels of environmental stressors and high levels of social resources
• Did find that you can identify block types based on disorder, fear of crime, participation and informal social ties