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Health complaints, stress and distress: exploring the central role of negative affectivity (1989)
| Venue: | Psychological Review |
| Citations: | 328 - 3 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Watson89healthcomplaints,,
author = {David Watson and James W. Pennebaker},
title = {Health complaints, stress and distress: exploring the central role of negative affectivity},
journal = {Psychological Review},
year = {1989},
pages = {234--254}
}
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Abstract
Most current models in health psychology assume that stress adversely affects physical health. We re-examined this assumption by reviewing extensive data from the literature and from six samples of our own, in which we collected measures of personality, health and fitness, stress, and current emotional functioning. Results indicate that self-report health measures reflect a pervasive mood disposition of negative affectivity (NA); self-report stress scales also contain a substantial NA component. However, although NA is correlated with health complaint scales, it is not strongly or consistently related to actual, Jong-term health status, and thus will act as a general nuisance factor in health research. Because self-report measures of stress and health both contain a significant NA component, correlations between such measures likely overestimate the true association between stress and health. Results demonstrate the importance of including different types of health measures in health psychology research. Various types of health models have been adopted by clinical, social, and medical researchers. Most of these models assume that psychosocial stressors adversely affect physical health as well as psychological well-being. In recent years, researchers have studied a number of hypothesized precursors of health, including major life changes (e.g., divorce, death of spouse or
Keyphrases
negative affectivity health complaint central role physical health major life change health model self-report health measure health psychology hypothesized precursor various type health complaint scale psychological well-being self-report measure self-report stress scale current emotional functioning health research extensive data health psychology research different type current model medical researcher true association significant na component psychosocial stressor general nuisance factor substantial na component jong-term health status recent year pervasive mood disposition health measure
