Trait self-enhancement as a buffer against potentially traumatic events: A prospective study.

Longitudinal research has associated the disposition toward self-enhancing biases with better adjustment following potentially traumatic events (PTEs). However, self-enhancement was always measured in these studies after the PTE, thus confounding it with exposure. This study used a prospective design that tracked PTEs in college students over a 4-year period using an online checklist (n = 69). Most participants experienced at least 1 PTE, and the mean number of PTEs was 4.40. Trait self-enhancement, measured at the beginning of the study and prior to the PTEs, was associated with reduced distress in both the first and fourth year of college. Participants with greater exposure to PTEs had greater distress in their fourth year; however, individuals high in self-enhancement were relatively unaffected by PTE exposure. High self-enhancement participants were also rated as better copers in anonymous ratings obtained from participants' close friends. Overall, these results offer the first prospective evidence demonstrating that self-enhancement serves as a buffer against the potentially harmful effects of trauma. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hardiness and health: A prospective study.

Hypothesized that hardiness—commitment, control, and challenge—functions to decrease the effect of stressful life events to producing illness symptoms. 259 upper- and middle-level male managers (mean age 48 yrs) were administered a battery of tests (including Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale, the Schedule of Life Events, and the Seriousness of Illness Survey) covering a 5-yr period. Results support the hypothesis by showing main effects on illness for both stressful life events and hardiness and an interaction effect for these independent variables. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping as a personality process: A prospective study.

The study tested the proposition that coping is personality in action under stress. Using a stressful medical school entrance examination, the study examined (a) whether neuroticism emerged in coping patterns over time and (b) whether the influence of neuroticism on coping accounted for changes in anxiety and examination performance. Fifty premedical students reported their coping efforts at 35 days before, 10 days before, and 17 days after the examination. They provided daily reports of anxiety for 35 days surrounding the examination. Neuroticism influenced coping efforts and increases in daily anxiety under stress. Two types of coping, wishful thinking and self-blame, explained over half the relationship between neuroticism and increases in preexamination anxiety. Consistent with previous research (e.g., S. E. Krantz; see record 1983-31242-001), neither neuroticism nor specific coping efforts influenced examination performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family functioning and parental smoking as predictors of adolescent cigarette use: A six-year prospective study.

The goal of this study was to determine how family functioning influences the onset of adolescent cigarette smoking and how family functioning and parental smoking together influence adolescent smoking. A 6-year prospective design was used to follow a group of 508 families with a child aged 11–13 years. Predictor measures were parents" smoking status at Time 1, parents" scores on scales measuring family cohesion and parent–adolescent strain, and adolescents" scores on 3 scales measuring psychological adjustment. Results showed that poorer family functioning predicted subsequent adolescent smoking, independent of other measured factors. The strongest predictions were yielded by the combination of low family cohesion and parental smoking, with early adolescents who had a parent who smoked and low family cohesion reporting more than twice the rate of smoking in late adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group self-identification and adolescent cigarette smoking: A 1-year prospective study.

As an extension of previous work, we analyzed the longitudinal relations between group self-identification and adolescent cigarette smoking. The predictive precedence of cigarette smoking and identification with 6 different types of peer groups was examined. Results indicated that 7th-grade group self-identification predicted 8th-grade cigarette smoking, whereas 7th-grade cigarette smoking did not predict 8th-grade group self-identification. Group self-identification also was compared with 7 other psychosocial variables as predictors of smoking 1 yr later. The pattern of results suggests that group self-identification is about as good a predictor of smoking as other psychosocial variables, and that group self-identification is more than a mere proxy of other psychosocial variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obesity as a prospective predictor of depression in adolescent females.

Objective: Both obesity and depression are prominent during adolescence, and it is possible that obesity is a trigger for adolescent depression. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether overweight or obese status contributes to the development of depression in adolescent girls. Design: Participants were 496 adolescent girls who completed interview based measures of depression and had their height and weight measured at four yearly assessments. Repeated measures logistic regressions with generalized estimating equations were used to evaluate whether overweight or obese status were associated with major depression or an increase in depressive symptoms the following year. Main Outcome Measures: Major depression and depressive symptoms were evaluating using a modified version of the K-SADS interview. Overweight and obese status was determined by using standardized protocols to measure height and weight. Results: Results showed that obese status, not overweight status, was associated with future depressive symptoms, but not major depression. This study demonstrated that obesity is a risk factor for depressive symptoms, but not for clinical depression. Conclusions: As depressive symptoms are considered along the spectrum of depression with clinical depression at the high end, these results suggest that weight status could be considered a factor along the pathway of development of depression in some adolescent females. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive appraisals and problem-directed coping: A prospective study of stress.

Information-seeking and problem-directed coping behaviors following a stressful event were observed as a function of cognitive appraisals of the coping resources of 138 undergraduates. Subjectively defined failure on a college exam served as an example of a mild stressor. Prior to the 1st midterm exam, Ss generated alternative strategies that could be used in the event of dissatisfaction with performance and rated the feasibility of using these strategies. Academic coping behaviors were measured by self-report and direct observation during the 3 wks prior to the next exam. Results show that coping cognitions predicted academic behaviors but not exam scores. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relations of delinquency to adolescent substance use and problem use: A prospective study.

Although studies have indicated that delinquency predicts adolescent substance use, little research has examined whether it predicts problem use or has explored the mechanisms by which it relates to problem use. Accordingly, this study tested the nature of the relations between delinquency and problem use over a 1-year interval in adolescents who had been treated for substance abuse. Results show that delinquency moderated the relation between consumption and problem use, with high-delinquent teens showing consistently elevated levels of use-related problems across all levels of substance use and nondelinquent teens showing a stronger correspondence between use levels and problems. Results support the assertion that antisocial pathology fosters problem substance use. Implications for treatment and future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social interest as a moderator of life stress.

Tested 3 hypotheses: (1) Social interest (SI) is of value in ameliorating or eliminating many of the unnecessary problems that occur in human relationships; (2) SI moderates the effect of later life stresses on psychological symptoms; and (3) the negative relation between SI and anxiety, depression, and hostility will be stronger in people who recently have experienced greater stress than in those who have encountered little stress. 74 undergraduates were administered the Social Interest Scale (SIS) and the Social Interest Index (SII), and then the Social Readjustment Rating Scale and the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List 1 yr later. It was found that scores on the SII and the SIS were negatively related to the number of stressful experiences encountered during the following year. Stress was correlated with anxiety, depression, and hostility more strongly among low- than among high-SI Ss, and SI was more negatively correlated with these symptoms among high-stress Ss compared with moderate- or low-stress groups. The SII and the SIS showed somewhat different patterns of results, and possible reasons for these differences are discussed. (49 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal study of stress buffering for adolescent problem behaviors.

A 2-wave longitudinal design, with a 6-mo interval between occasions of measurement, was used to study the interrelations between stressful life events, perceived social support from family and friends, and the internalizing (e.g., depressive symptoms) and externalizing (e.g., alcohol use and delinquent activity) of problems of a sample of 277 middle adolescents (mean age?=?15.7 yrs). Although little support was found for the stress-buffering effects of either family or friend social support, the main effects of stressful life events and low family support were significant prospective predictors of problem behaviors for adolescent girls but not adolescent boys. Results are discussed with regard to mechanisms of differential gender socialization, such as the adolescent gender intensification hypothesis (J. P. Hill and M. W. Lynch, 1983). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping dimensions, life stress, and adolescent substance use: A latent growth analysis.

The relation of seven coping dimensions to substance (tobacco, alcohol, marijuana) use was tested with a sample of 1,668 participants assessed at mean age 12.5 years and two yearly follow-ups. An associative latent-growth model showed one index of engagement (behavioral coping) to be inversely related to initial level of adolescent use and growth over time in peer use. Three indices of disengagement (anger coping, helpless coping, and hangout coping) were positively related to initial levels of peer use and adolescent use and to growth in adolescent use. Moderation tests indicated that effects of coping were significantly greater at higher level of stress; behavioral coping buffered the effects of disengagement. Effects of life stress were greater for girls than boys. Results are discussed with reference to mechanisms of coping-substance use relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A prospective study of stressful life events and schizophrenic relapse.

In this prospective, longitudinal study, 11 recent-onset schizophrenic outpatients who met criteria for psychotic relapse or significant psychotic exacerbation during a 1-year period of standardized maintenance medication, and 19 patients who did not relapse during this follow-up period, were interviewed monthly regarding life events. As hypothesized, for relapsing patients, a significantly higher number of independent life events (those not the result of symptomatology or personal influence) occurred in the month preceding relapse. This increase was apparent relative to either the analogous month of a "nonrelapse" period in the same patient or the average number of independent events per month during a 1-year standardized medication period for nonrelapsing patients. The methodological advances of this design as well as the consistency of these findings with those of previous retrospective studies supports the hypothesis that life events may sometimes "trigger" schizophrenic episodes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Symptoms of posttraumatic stress in children after Hurricane Andrew: A prospective study.

The authors examined symptoms of posttraumatic stress in 3rd–5th grade children during the school year after Hurricane Andrew. From a conceptual model of the effects of traumatic events, 442 children were evaluated 3, 7, and 10 months postdisaster with respect to (a) their exposure to traumatic events during and after the disaster, (b) their preexisting demographic characteristics, (c) the occurrence of major life stressors, (d) the availability of social support, and (e) the type of coping strategies used to cope with disaster-related distress. Although symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) declined over time, a substantial level of symptomatology was observed up to 10 months after the disaster. All 5 factors in the conceptual model were predictive of children's PTSD symptoms 7 and 10 months postdisaster. Findings are discussed in terms of the potential utility of the model for organizing thinking about factors that predict the emergence and persistence of PTSD symptoms in children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prenatal maternal stress and prematurity: A prospective study of socioeconomically disadvantaged women.

Developed and tested a biopsychosocial model of birth weight and gestational age at delivery using structural equation modeling procedures. The model tested the effects of medical risk and prenatal stress on these indicators of prematurity after controlling for parity. Ss were 130 women (aged 18–42 yrs) of low socioeconomic status (SES) interviewed throughout pregnancy in conjunction with prenatal care visits to a public clinic. Ss also completed an abbreviated version of the Perceived Stress Scale (S. Cohen et al; see record 1984-24885-001) and the State form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Lower birth weight was predicted by earlier delivery and by prenatal stress. Earlier delivery was predicted by medical risk and by prenatal stress. Parity was not related to time of delivery or to birth weight. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family life stress and insomnia symptoms in a prospective evaluation of young adults.

The present study prospectively investigated the association between family life stress and insomnia symptoms among 115 undergraduates, ages 17-22 years. Participants completed the following questionnaires at 2 study time points, spaced 3 weeks apart: the Insomnia Severity Index, the Negative Life Events Questionnaire (NLEQ), and the Beck Depression Inventory. First, family life stress at baseline was hypothesized to predict elevated insomnia symptoms 3 weeks later, above and beyond depressive symptoms. Second, compared with academic stressors, negative family and social life events were expected to best predict increased insomnia. Regression analyses were conducted to test study predictions. Hypotheses were partially supported. Family life stress was significantly associated with increased insomnia symptomatology, even after controlling for depression. Results also revealed that negative family life events, together with academic stress, predicted the highest levels of insomnia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictors of the generation of episodic stress: A longitudinal study of late adolescent women.

The effects of depression and Axis I comorbidity on subsequent self-generated life stress were examined in a longitudinal sample of 134 late adolescent women. The results indicated that specific forms of psychopathology constitute a risk factor for future self-generated episodic stress, even when controlling for prior chronic stress. Comorbid depression had a particularly salient effect in the prediction of stress related to interpersonal conflicts. The effects of family psychopathology and sociotropy were mediated through participant psychiatric status, whereas autonomy made an independent contribution to the prediction of episodic stress. These results support C. Hammen's (1991) stress generation model in a community sample, demonstrating how individuals with depression play a role in the creation of stress, and also refine prior work by showing that only the comorbid form of depression is associated with subsequent conflict-related stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality-based hardiness as a buffer for discrimination-related stress in members of Toronto's Chinese community.

Hypothesized that experiencing discrimination would be associated with higher levels of psychological symptoms reflecting difficulties in optimal functioning and that the relationship between experienced discrimination and psychological symptoms would be notably stronger among respondents low in hardiness than in those high in hardiness. 184 members (aged 18 yrs and older) of Toronto's Chinese community responded to questionnaires that measured hardiness in terms of a composite of perceived personal control and self-esteem. Both hypotheses were supported. Hardiness was associated with several background dimensions likely to facilitate successful coping and adaptation to Toronto, such as a higher level of education, an occupation with higher SES, and a greater reported proficiency with English. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation of successful dietary restriction to change in bulimic symptoms: A prospective study of adolescent girls.

Recent experimental evidence that dietary restriction results in decreased bulimic and depressive symptoms seems inconsistent with findings from prospective studies and etiologic theory. However, because the dieting manipulated in these experiments may be unrepresentative of real-world weight loss dieting, the authors tested whether successful dietary restriction was associated with decreases in these outcomes by using longitudinal data from a school-based study of 496 adolescent girls. Moderately overweight participants who evidenced successful dietary restriction showed significantly greater decreases in bulimic symptoms than weight-matched participants who did not show successful dietary restriction; however, there were no effects for depressive symptoms. In conjunction with past experimental findings, results seem to imply that successful dietary restriction curbs bulimic symptoms, suggesting that current etiologic models may need revision. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative life events, coping responses, and combat-related psychopathology: A prospective study.

This study examined the relations of life events and coping responses to combat-related psychopathology among 255 Israeli soldiers who suffered a combat stress reaction episode during the 1982 Lebanon War. Follow-ups 1 and 2 years after their participation in combat found (a) significant effects of psychopathology at 1 year after the war on the occurrence of negative life events and the choice of coping responses during the following year; (b) unique and significant effects of negative life events and coping responses on psychopathology at 2 years after the war; (c) a significant interaction between life events and coping responses on psychopathology; and (d) a significant indirect effect of negative life events on psychopathology via the choice of coping responses. Theoretical implications of the findings were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A prospective study of church attendance and health over the lifespan.

Objective: The objective of the current study was to help clarify the previously ambiguous results concerning the relationship between church attendance and later physical health. Design: The current study examined the effect of church attendance on 4 different indicators of later health in a sample of inner city men followed throughout their lifecourse. Measures of previous health status, mood, substance abuse, smoking, education, and social class were used as covariates in regression analyses predicting health at age 70 from church attendance at age 47. Main outcome measures: Health at age 70 was assessed by 4 indicators: mortality, objective physical health, subjective physical health, and subjective well-being. Results: Though church attendance was related to later physical health, this was only through indirect means, as both physical health and church attendance were associated with substance use and mood. However, findings do suggest a more direct link between church attendance and well-being. Conclusion: Indirect effects of church attendance on health were clearly observed, with alcohol use/dependence, smoking, and mood being possible mediators of the church attendance-health relationship. The effects of church attendance on more subjective ratings of health, however, may be more direct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)