The biopsychosocial model suggests that people react differently to stressful situations according to how they perceive their ability to cope in them. Perceiving oneself as having sufficient coping resources to meet situational demands is known as a 'challenge appraisal', whereas a ‘threat appraisal’ occurs when an individual feels that situational demands exceed their resources.
While research shows that challenge appraisal is linked to higher task performance when compared to threat appraisal, little research has investigated how different appraisals affect health. The researchers behind the present study thus assessed the associations between challenge and threat appraisals and health-related outcomes, including mental health symptoms, psychological wellbeing, and physical health components.
To do so, they enrolled 395 participants with an average age of 22 years old. Ultimately, they found that a tendency to appraise stressful events as threatening was linked to poorer mental health- including more symptoms of depression and anxiety, poorer wellbeing- reflected in lower vitality, and poorer physical health- including more respiratory illnesses, headaches, and sleep disturbances.
To explain the findings, the researchers noted that threat appraisals might be linked to more avoidant coping behaviors, such as behavioral or mental disengagement, which may contribute to mental ill-health and poorer wellbeing. They further noted that threat appraisals may result in fewer anabolic hormones being released, which are essential for growth, tissue repair, and protection against infection, thus making individuals more susceptible to illness.
The researchers wrote that their findings suggest interventions aimed at discouraging threat appraisals may benefit health and wellbeing. They cited a previous study that found that a 'stress-is-enhancing' mindset works synergistically with a growth mindset to reduce threat-type responses, and benefit health and wellbeing.
They noted, however, that their findings have some limitations, such as having a cross-sectional study design relying on self-reports. They wrote that future research should, therefore, include longitudinal designs and objective markers of health to better understand causal relationships between challenge and threat appraisals and health outcomes.
Sources: Science Daily, Stress and Health
