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Embodying psychological thriving: physical thriving in response to stress - Thriving: Broadening the Paradigm Beyond Illness to Health
Journal of Social Issues, Summer, 1998 by Elissa S. Epel, Bruce S. McEwen, Jeannette R. Ickovics
Figure 3 integrates the reviewed empirical findings, as well as a theoretical schema, on the pathways from cognitive appraisal and type of stressor to hormonal response to health consequences. Exposure to uncontrollable or chronic stress, or enduring threat appraisals of stressors, can lead to prolonged elevations in cortisol and weakened counterregulatory systems. Over time, this leads to allostatic load and disease. Conversely, exposure to intermittent controllable stressors and psychological factors such as perceptions of control and appraisals of potential for growth can lead to a different cascade of physiological events: short-term increases in catecholamines and, we speculate, strong anabolic counterregulatory responses. These responses may lead to more resilient or toughened stress responding, enhanced allostasis, and physical thriving. We next turn to test one potential measure of physiological thriving: cortisol adaptation to repeated stress.
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As a caveat, we must note that frequent exposure to stressors, despite a positive psychological set and apparent physical resilience, may nevertheless have physical costs. Prolonged states of arousal, such as increased blood pressure and heart rate due to challenge perceptions, may still take a toll on physiology; a wealth of research documents the negative impact of general arousal on risk of disease. Thus, the cost of coping with challenge may add up over time. However, new ways to examine specific mechanisms of arousal - such as whether arousal is due to increases in sympathetic or decreases in parasympathetic nervous system activity - may help separate salutary and detrimental effects of positive arousal.
Method
Toward an Empirical Validation of Cortisol Habituation as a Measure of Physical Thriving in Response to Stress
Above, we proposed that psychological thriving should be related to physical thriving, and one form of physical thriving is rapid adaptation to stressors. One way to test this is to examine whether a thriving-related psychological measure - post-stressor psychological growth - is related to a resilient response to laboratory stressors.
We exposed women to a paradigm of repeated (intermittent) lab stress, while we measured their cortisol reactivity, in a study examining stress reactivity. The women were exposed to three consecutive laboratory stress sessions, each lasting 3 hours and starting at the same time in the afternoon, as described elsewhere (Epel et al., 1998). The tasks included solving difficult math and visuospatial problems and delivering a speech. They were initially told the study examined motivation and upon completing the study were fully debriefed about the focus on stress responses. We hypothesized that women who adapted quickly in their cortisol responses to the chronic laboratory stressor would also score higher on a measure of psychological thriving. Thus, we predicted that psychological thriving would be related to a pattern of habituation: high cortisol reactivity on day 1, when most people respond to a novel challenge, and lower cortisol reactivity on days 2 and 3.
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