Stress Reactions in College Students: How Stressors Affect Psychological and Physiological Reactions Based on Personality Traits
Poster Number
077
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Department
Psychology
Faculty Mentor
Tara J. Collins, Ph.D.
Abstract
College students are met with many stressors that can affect their everyday life as well as their academic performance. The current study examined the relationship between personality traits and stress factors in college students. A sample of 100 college students took part in an online survey which measured personality traits, including minority stress, extraversion, femininity, and masculinity, and stress reactions to specific stressor events, such as college examinations or being called on in class. We found that, overall, college students reacted to the given stressors with high-threat emotions, primarily anxiety. We were unable to connect stress reactions to specific personality types, which may be due in part to the limitations of our study, such as the fact that our sample was primarily female. These limitations could skew our measures of personality and therefore would not correlate to specific stress reactions due to a lack of representation for a variety of personality types. These findings suggest that college students, as a whole, are likely to respond to everyday stressors with high-threat emotions such as anxiety and fear. Later research should focus on a wider participant pool and the possibility of connecting the constructs of attitudes and confidence to stress reactions in order to obtain a more general and dynamic approach to the study.
Course Assignment
PSYC 302 – Collins
Previously Presented/Performed?
Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA) Annual Meeting, Jacksonville, Florida, March 2019
Start Date
12-4-2019 2:15 PM
End Date
April 2019
Stress Reactions in College Students: How Stressors Affect Psychological and Physiological Reactions Based on Personality Traits
Richardson Ballroom – DiGiorgio Campus Center
College students are met with many stressors that can affect their everyday life as well as their academic performance. The current study examined the relationship between personality traits and stress factors in college students. A sample of 100 college students took part in an online survey which measured personality traits, including minority stress, extraversion, femininity, and masculinity, and stress reactions to specific stressor events, such as college examinations or being called on in class. We found that, overall, college students reacted to the given stressors with high-threat emotions, primarily anxiety. We were unable to connect stress reactions to specific personality types, which may be due in part to the limitations of our study, such as the fact that our sample was primarily female. These limitations could skew our measures of personality and therefore would not correlate to specific stress reactions due to a lack of representation for a variety of personality types. These findings suggest that college students, as a whole, are likely to respond to everyday stressors with high-threat emotions such as anxiety and fear. Later research should focus on a wider participant pool and the possibility of connecting the constructs of attitudes and confidence to stress reactions in order to obtain a more general and dynamic approach to the study.
