Dr. Alia Crum

But as you know, if you actually dive deeper into the literature on stress and the origins of stress, what you find is that, you know, the literature, like most literature, is not so clear cut.

And in fact, there's a large amount of evidence to support the fact that the experience of stress, meaning encountering adversity or challenge in one's goal related efforts, uh,

It does not have to be debilitating.

And in many cases, the body's response was designed to enhance our ability to manage at those moments.

Right.

So some research showing that stress narrows our focus, increases our attention, speeds up the rate at which we're able to process information faster.

There was some research out there showing this phenomenon of physiological toughening, the process by which the release of catabolic hormones and the stress response recruit or activate anabolic hormones, which help, as you know, build our muscles, build our neurons to help us grow and learn.

And there was a whole body of emerging research on post-traumatic growth or this phenomenon in which even the experience of the most traumatic stressors, the most chronic and enduring stressors, could lead not to destruction, but in fact to the exact opposite, to an enhanced sense of connection with our values, connection to others, sense of joy and passion for living there.

My work since then has been not to try to argue that stress is enhancing and not debilitating, but try to point out that the true nature of stress is a paradox.

The true nature of stress is manifold and complex and lots of things can happen.

But to question, what's the role of our mindset about stress in shaping our response to stress?

So some work had already been done looking at your perception of the stressor, right?

So do you view a stressor like a challenging exam or a health diagnosis as a challenge or a threat?

And that had shown pretty convincingly that when you view stressors more as a challenge, less as a threat, that your brain and body responds more adaptively.

What our question was was to take the sort of psychological construal one step higher in abstraction.

So not just the stressor, but the nature of stress, right?

Do you, you know, at that core level, do you view stress as something that's bad, is going to kill us and therefore should be avoided?

Or do you view stress as natural and something that's going to enhance us?

And so we set out to design a series of studies to test the extent to which these mindsets about stress mattered.

And we found in a number of correlational studies that that more enhancing stress mindset was linked to better health outcomes, better well-being, and higher performance.