Abstract Social-evaluative stressors—experiences in which people feel they could be judged negatively—pose a major threat to adolescent mental health 1–3 and can cause young people to disengage from stressful pursuits, resulting in missed opportunities to acquire valuable skills. Here we show that replicable benefits for the stress responses of adolescents can be achieved with a short (around 30-min), scalable 'synergistic mindsets' intervention. This intervention, which is a self-administered online training module, synergistically targets both growth mindsets 4 (the idea that intelligence can be developed) and stress-can-be-enhancing mindsets 5 (the idea that one’s physiological stress response can fuel optimal performance). In six double-blind, randomized, controlled experiments that were conducted with secondary and post-secondary students in the United States, the synergistic mindsets intervention improved stress-related cognitions (study 1, n = 2,717; study 2, n = 755), cardiovascular reactivity (study 3, n = 160; study 4, n = 200), daily cortisol levels (study 5, n = 118 students, n = 1,213 observations), psychological well-being (studies 4 and 5), academic success (study 5) and anxiety symptoms during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns (study 6, n = 341). Heterogeneity analyses (studies 3, 5 and 6) and a four-cell experiment (study 4) showed that the benefits of the intervention depended on addressing both mindsets—growth and stress—synergistically. Confidence in these conclusions comes from a conservative, Bayesian machine-learning statistical method for detecting heterogeneous effects 6 . Thus, our research has identified a treatment for adolescent stress that could, in principle, be scaled nationally at low cost.
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Evoking Stress Reactivity in a Virtual Dance Competition
Stress reactivity involves a physiological response to a stressful task, as a biological mechanism related to mental and physical health outcomes. Traditional stressors evoke social evaluative threat, which is fear of judgment and a threat to social status, typically via public speaking tasks. To be well-suited for virtual reality, however, a novel approach is necessary in the design of new stress tasks. We hypothesized that a virtual reality stress task involving social evaluative threat through a dance competition in front of an audience, elicits a stress response, measured by autonomic nervous system, cortisol, and testosterone reactivity. Participants (n = 18) showed autonomic nervous system reactivity in terms of increased heart rate and decreased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, indicating a stress response. Levels of cortisol increased in response to the dance competition, especially within responders, whereas testosterone levels did not change significantly over time. A virtual reality dance competition involving physical social evaluative threat elicits a stress response.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1757900
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10224738
- Editor(s):
- Cassenti, D; Scataglini, S; Rajulu, S; Wright, J
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Advances in Simulation and Digital Human Modeling. AHFE 2020
- Volume:
- 1206
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 48-55
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract The degree to which experimenters shape participant behavior has long been of interest in experimental social science research. Here, we extend this question to the domain of peripheral psychophysiology, where experimenters often have direct, physical contact with participants, yet researchers do not consistently test for their influence. We describe analytic tools for examining experimenter effects in peripheral physiology. Using these tools, we investigate nine data sets totaling 1,341 participants and 160 experimenters across different roles (e.g., lead research assistants, evaluators, confederates) to demonstrate how researchers can test for experimenter effects in participant autonomic nervous system activity during baseline recordings and reactivity to study tasks. Our results showed (a) little to no significant variance in participants’ physiological reactivity due to their experimenters, and (b) little to no evidence that three characteristics of experimenters that are well known to shape interpersonal interactions—status (using five studies with 682 total participants), gender (using two studies with 359 total participants), and race (in two studies with 554 total participants)—influenced participants’ physiology. We highlight several reasons that experimenter effects in physiological data are still cause for concern, including the fact that experimenters in these studies were already restricted on a number of characteristics (e.g., age, education). We present recommendations for examining and reducing experimenter effects in physiological data and discuss implications for replication.
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Objectives: Though previous research has indicated that language brokering can be stressful, the findings are mixed, pointing to potential moderators of the association. Guided by an ecological perspective, we examined the role of individual, family, and environmental factors in Mexican American adolescents’ acute cortisol responses to language brokering. Method: The study consisted of 46 Mexican American adolescents recruited around a metropolitan city in Central Texas. Participants translated a difficult medical document from English to Spanish for their parents, followed by an arithmetic task (modeled after the Trier Social Stress Test [TSST]). Participants’ perceptions (perceived efficacy and parental dependence), parental hostility, and discrimination experiences were assessed via self-report and were examined as moderators of adolescents’ responses to the task. Results: Results revealed differential responses to the task based on individual, family, and environmental factors. High efficacy and low dependence−parental hostility−discrimination related to stress responses characterized by low baselines, steeper reactivity, and faster recovery. Low efficacy and high dependence related to greater baseline stress and a slower recovery. High levels of parental hostility related to a slower recovery. High levels of discrimination related to greater baseline stress. Conclusions: The study demonstrates that the modified TSST task can elicit an acute hypothalamic−pituitary−adrenal axis response, but the nature of this response is dependent upon participants’ perceptions of language brokering (parental dependence and efficacy), parental hostility, and discrimination experiences. Adolescents’ individual characteristics and contextual demands remain important considerations in understanding their acute stress responses.more » « less
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Abstract Children's self‐regulation is a core adaptive system in child development. Physiological indices of regulation, particularly the autonomic nervous system (ANS), have garnered increased attention as an informative level of analysis in regulation research. Cardiography supports the simultaneous examination of both ANS branches via measures of pre‐ejection period (PEP) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as indicators of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, respectively. However, despite their heavily intertwined functions, research examining autonomic coordination across sympathetic and parasympathetic systems is scarce. Moreover, extant efforts have favored static, mean level reactivity analyses, despite the dynamic nature of ANS regulation and the availability of analytic tools that can model these processes across time. This study drew on a sample of 198 six‐year‐old children from a diverse community sample (49.5% female, 43.9% Latinx) to examine dynamic autonomic coordination using bivariate latent change score modeling to evaluate bidirectional influences of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity over the course of a challenging puzzle completion task. Results indicated that children evidenced reciprocal sympathetic activation (i.e., PEP attenuation and RSA withdrawal) across the challenge task, and these regulatory responses were characterized by a temporally leading influence of PEP on lagging changes in RSA. The current findings contribute to our understanding of children's autonomic coordination while illustrating a novel analytic technique to advance ongoing efforts to understand the etiology and developmental significance of children's physiological self‐regulation.
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Abstract Are children from “Eastern” cultures less emotionally expressive and reactive than children from “Western” cultures? To answer this, we used a multi‐level and multi‐contextual approach to understand variations in emotion displays and cortisol reactivity among preschoolers living in China and the United States. One hundred two preschoolers from China (
N = 58; 55% males) and the United States (N = 44, 48% males) completed three (i.e., control, interpersonal‐related, and achievement‐related) emotion‐challenging paradigms over 3 days. Behavioral emotion expressions were coded, and salivary cortisol was sampled 30 minutes before and across 90 minutes post‐task. Without considering context, Chinese preschoolers displayed fewer levels of positive and negative emotion expressions relative to their United States counterparts. However, Chinese preschoolers displayed similar levels of expressions as their United States counterparts during an achievement‐related challenge that is more salient to their sociocultural emphases and showed higher negative emotion expressions in this challenge, relative to other contexts. Moreover, only the achievement‐related challenge elicited increased cortisol levels among Chinese preschoolers, and this was correlated with higher levels of negative expressions. For US preschoolers, no cortisol increase was observed in any challenging paradigms, nor was cortisol associated with emotional expressions. Findings counter prior notions that East Asian children are generally less emotionally expressive. Instead, an achievement‐related challenge elicited higher emotion expression and cortisol reactivity among Chinese preschoolers, suggesting that children's emotion expression and biological reactivity may be most responsive to contexts salient to their socio‐cultural environments. We discuss the importance of considering cultural contexts when studying emotion regulation.RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS Chinese preschoolers displayed lower overall positive and negative expressions relative to their US counterparts without considering situational contexts.
Chinese preschoolers displayed similar levels of emotion expressions as their US counterparts during an achievement‐related challenge salient to their social‐cultural environment.
Chinese preschoolers are particularly responsive to achievement‐related challenges, relative to other emotion‐challenging situations that are less culturally salient.
No cortisol increase was observed in any of the emotion‐challenging paradigms among US preschoolers.
Children's emotion expression and biological reactivity may be most responsive to challenges relevant to their socio‐cultural environments.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51064-0_7
