More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science

Abstract

Stress can influence health throughout the lifespan, yet there is little agreement about what types and aspects of stress matter most for human health and disease. This is in part because "stress" is not a monolithic concept but rather, an emergent process that involves interactions between individual and environmental factors, historical and current events, allostatic states, and psychological and physiological reactivity. Many of these processes alone have been labeled as "stress." Stress science would be further advanced if researchers adopted a common conceptual model that incorporates epidemiological, affective, and psychophysiological perspectives, with more precise language for describing stress measures. We articulate an integrative working model, highlighting how stressor exposures across the life course influence habitual responding and stress reactivity, and how health behaviors interact with stress. We offer a Stress Typology articulating timescales for stress measurement - acute, event-based, daily, and chronic - and more precise language for dimensions of stress measurement.

Keywords: Acute stress; Affect; Allostatic load; Appraisals; Chronic stress; Daily stress; Emotional contagion; Emotions; Measurement; Motivational states.

Fig. 1.

This figure presents a transdisciplinary model that describes “stress” as a set of interactive and emergent processes. The figure illustrates that stressors are experienced within the context of a person’s life, represented by the contextual factors in the blue triangle. These contextual factors include individual-level characteristics such as personality and demographic factors, the environment in which one lives, current and past stressor exposures, and protective factors; all of which combine to determine the baseline allostatic state of physiological regulation, and the lens through which stressors are perceived and assigned meaning. Contextual factors and habitual processes together influence psychological and physiological responses to acute and daily stressors. These responses, if dysregulated, are thought to lead to allostatic load and ultimately biological aging and early disease.

Fig. 2.

This figure describes how different time scales of stressor exposure – months, daily, momentary – are nested within each other. In short, chronic stressor exposure shapes how an individual perceives daily or acute stressors.

Fig. 3.

This figure shows that stressor context, cognitive factors, developmental stage, and individual differences including historical stress influence one’s physiological response to an acute stressor.

Fig. 4.

Acute reactivity profiles associated with vulnerability.