Biomedical subjects

N Bolger

Publications and source records attributed to N Bolger.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1991

Social relationships, personality, and anxiety during a major stressful event.

Although it is commonly believed that social relationships buffer the effects of stress on mental health, these apparent buffering effects may be spurious reflections of personality or prior mental health. This possibility was investigated in a prospective study of a medical school entrance examination. Five weeks before the examination, Ss (N = 56) rated their personality (extraversion and neuroticism) and social relationships (number of social contacts and perceived support). They then rated their anxiety for 35 days surrounding the examination. Controlling for personality and prior anxiety, social contacts buffered against increases in anxiety, whereas perceived support did not. Further analyses revealed that discretionary social contacts were beneficial whereas obligatory contacts were not.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1991

Personality and the problems of everyday life: the role of neuroticism in exposure and reactivity to daily stressors.

This article investigates mechanisms through which neuroticism leads to distress in daily life. Neuroticism may lead to distress through exposing people to a greater number of stressful events, through increasing their reactivity to those events, or through a mechanism unrelated to environmental events. This article evaluates the relative importance of these three explanations. Subjects were 339 persons who provided daily reports of minor stressful events and mood for 6 weeks. Exposure and reactivity to these minor stressors explained over 40% of the distress difference between high- and low-neuroticism subjects. Reactivity to stressors accounted for twice as much of the distress difference as exposure to stressors. These results suggest that reactions within stressful situations are more important than situation selection in explaining how neuroticism leads to distress in daily life.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1990

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, neither neuroticism nor specific coping efforts influenced examination performance.

Achievement↗

PubMed1989

Effects of daily stress on negative mood.

This article examines the influence of daily stressors on mental health in a community sample. Ss were 166 married couples who completed diaries each day for 6 weeks. In pooled within-person analyses, daily stressors explained up to 20% of the variance in mood. Interpersonal conflicts were by far the most distressing events. Furthermore, when stressors occurred on a series of days, emotional habituation occurred by the second day for almost all events except interpersonal conflicts. Contrary to certain theoretical accounts, multiple stressors on the same day did not exacerbate one another's effects: rather an emotional plateau occurred. Finally on days following a stressful event, mood was better than it would have been if the stressor had not happened. These results reveal the complex emotional effects of daily stressors, and in particular they suggest that future investigations should focus primarily on interpersonal conflicts.

Emotions↗