Journal
STRESS-THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON THE BIOLOGY OF STRESS
Volume 20, Issue 1, Pages 75-85Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/10253890.2017.1286322
Keywords
Cumulative life stress; executive function; stress perception; cognitive flexibility; resilience; STRAIN; mediated moderation; risk; health; disease
Funding
- University of California, Davis Provost's Fellowship
- Hellman Foundation Fellowship
- National Institutes of Health [K08 MH103443]
- NARSAD from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation [23958]
- Society in Science-Branco Weiss Fellowship
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH [K08MH103443] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
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Executive function is a neuropsychological construct that enables controlled cognitive processing, which has been hypothesized to enhance individuals' resilience to stress. However, little empirical work has directly examined how executive function under different conditions mitigates the negative effects of stress exposure on health. To address this issue, we recruited 110 healthy young adults and assessed their recent life stress exposure, executive function in either a stressful or non-stressful context, and current health complaints. Based on existing research, we hypothesized that individuals exhibiting better executive function following a laboratory-based stressor (but not a control task) would demonstrate weaker associations between recent stress exposure and health because they perceived recent life stressors as being less severe. Consistent with this hypothesis, better executive function during acute stress, but not in the absence of stress, was associated with an attenuated link between participants' recent life stress exposure and their current health complaints. Moreover, this attenuating effect was mediated by lesser perceptions of stressor severity. Based on these data, we conclude that better executive function under stress is associated with fewer health complaints and that these effects may occur by reducing individuals' perceptions of stressor severity. The data thus suggest the possibility of reducing stress-related health problems by enhancing executive function.
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