Self-appraisal of stress level and related psychopathology

Abstract

Recent stress research has focused on individual response patterns to both laboratory and real world stressors. Several studies have suggested that dispositional or “personality” variables influence individuals' reactions to stressors. The present study investigated utility of the dispositional model proposed by Derogatis that postulates three types of individual coping styles: accurate stress appraising, stress augmenting, and stress denying. Results from the present study indicate that there are no differences on measures of psychopathology between stress deniers, stress augmenters, and accurate stress appraisers. However, as one might expect, individuals with higher levels of subjective stress evince higher levels of psychopathology. Interestingly, there is a negative relationship between age and subjective level of stress. Discussion focuses on implications of this study and methodological flaws of stress research.