How we see and react to stress is shaped by groups, says study

Jul 17 2013

A University of Limerick study has found that a shared community or identity influences how we view and respond to stress. The study, ‘Social identity influences stress appraisals and cardiovascular reactions to acute stress exposure’ recently published in the British Journal of Health Psychology.

Lead researcher, Dr Stephen Gallagher, University of Limerick explains; “Prior research has tended to show how we respond and think about stress is something that we did as individuals. However our research has shown that how we see and react to stress is shaped by the groups that we share membership with, those people who we would consider to be like us.”

Dr Stephen Gallagher

Over one hundred participants took part in the study where they were hooked up to blood pressure monitors and asked about their psychological state over the course of the experiment. They were then told that they were going to have to do a maths task. During the experiment, university students were told by someone who they considered to be like them, a fellow student, that an impending math stressor was challenging rather than stressful the students reacted accordingly. Not only did they report less stress after doing the maths task, they also had lower blood pressure reactions and performed much better at the task compared to those who were told it was stressful. This pattern was not evident when the information was given by an outsider, who they had nothing in common with.

Dr Gallagher said “These informational exchanges by groups members not only has psychological consequences for these people but it also affected them physiologically too and together these have implications for health. You are more likely to trusts others similar to you, and believe what they tell you. This trust allows the informational exchange to be acted upon and processed by the receiver in a way that is meaningful to them which can have positive or negative effects on health and in our study context it was managing and responding to stress”.