The shift-and-persist model has emerged in order to account for unintuitive, positive health outcomes in some individuals of low socioeconomic status. [1] [2] A large body of research has previously linked low socioeconomic status to poor physical and mental health outcomes, including early mortality. [3] [4] [5] [6] Low socioeconomic status is hypothesized to get "under the skin" by producing chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, which increases allostatic load, leading to the pathogenesis of chronic disease. [7] However, some individuals of low socioeconomic status do not appear to experience the expected, negative health effects associated with growing up in poverty. To account for this, the shift-and-persist model proposes that, as children, some individuals of low socioeconomic status learn adaptive strategies for regulating their emotions ("shifting") and focusing on their goals ("persisting") in the face of chronic adversity. [1] According to this model, the use of shift-and-persist strategies diminishes the typical negative effects of adversity on health by leading to more adaptive biological, cognitive, and behavioral responses to daily stressors.
Broadly, "shift" strategies encompass a variety of cognitive and emotion self-regulation approaches that individuals use to deal with stress, including cognitive restructuring, reframing, reappraisal, and acceptance strategies, which change the meaning of a stressor or reduce its emotional impact. [1] These shift strategies particularly focus on changing one's response to a stressor, instead of attempting to change the situation or stressor itself. [1] [8] [9] As shift strategies depend more on internal processes (self-control and regulation), than external resources, it is hypothesized that shift strategies may be particularly adaptive responses to the chronic, uncontrollable stressors that are associated with low socioeconomic status.
According to Chen and Miller, "persist" strategies are any strategies that help individuals to maintain optimism about the future, create meaning from their experiences of challenge and hardship, and persist "with strength in the face of adversity." [1]
To evaluate the combination of shift-and-persist strategy use, distinct "shift" and "persist” constructs were initially measured separately by using multiple, self-report measures of reappraisal, emotional reactivity, and future orientation in early research on this model. [2]
In 2015, Chen and colleagues published the Shift-and-Persist Scale, which is a combined self-report measure that assesses both shift and persist strategies. [10] The Shift-and-Persist Scale has been validated for use with adults and teenagers. [10] The questionnaire asks respondents to rate how well 14 statements about various approaches to dealing with life stressors apply to them on a 1-4 scale. [11] Out of the 14 items on the measure, 4 assess a respondent's use of shift strategies, 4 load onto persist strategies, and 6 items are non-relevant distractors that are ignored during scoring. When scoring the Shift-and-Persist Scale, one item (#4) is reverse-scored. This scale is publicly available online. [11]
A simplified 5-item Shift-and-Persist scale has also been published for use with younger children and adolescents (ages 9–15). [12] Total scores on this version of the Shift-and-Persist Scale range from 0-20, such that higher scores are indicative of greater use of shift-and-persist strategies. This scale is also publicly available online and has been previously used in research with children from kindergarten through 8th grade. [12] [13]
The shift-and-persist model mainly hypothesizes that these strategies have protective effects for the health of low socioeconomic status individuals because they affect biological and physiological stress response tendencies that are relevant for disease. [1] There is some evidence that shift responses (e.g., reappraisal) to acute stressors are associated with attenuated physiological responses to stress, including reduced cardiovascular reactivity. [14] [15] Specifically, reappraisal has been linked to a "healthier" pattern of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis response characterized by a rapid return to homeostasis (i.e., faster cortisol recovery) in the wake of a stressor. [16] Persist tendencies, such as optimism, have also been associated with adaptive immune responses and faster cortisol recovery. [17] [18] By constraining the magnitude and duration of biological stress responses, including cardiovascular, hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, and inflammatory responses to stress, shift-and-persist responses are hypothesized to prevent the wear and tear on these systems that increases allostatic load and risk for chronic diseases of aging. [1]
Cross-sectional studies provide some evidence that greater emotion regulation abilities are associated with reduced health risk on a variety of indicators of allostatic load. [19] [20] Similarly, self-reported trait levels of optimism and purpose in life have been linked to better concurrent health and health trajectories over time. [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] However, most of the health benefits associated with shift-and-persist consistent strategies are only seen in low socioeconomic status samples. [26] [27]
Another alternative, but not mutually exclusive hypothesis, is that shift-and-persist strategies affect health by increasing or up-regulating biological responses that enhance stress recovery and resilience. In particular, the parasympathetic nervous system's functioning may be enhanced by shift-and-persist response tendencies. [1] Emotion regulation abilities that are consistent with shift-coping have been linked to greater parasympathetic nervous system functioning at rest, as indexed by higher levels of high-frequency heart rate variability. [28] Further, the parasympathetic nervous system is highly integrated with, and may contribute to the down-regulation of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and immune system stress responses that influence allostatic load over time. [29] [30] Although parasympathetic nervous system activity is correlated with aspects of shift-and-persist coping, it is not yet established that the use of these strategies actually increases parasympathetic nervous system activity.
The oxytocin system has also been identified as another potential mechanism by which shift-and-persist strategies could influence health outcomes. [1] Oxytocin is a hormone that has been linked to a wide range of positive social and emotional functions and can be used to effectively attenuate hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and sympathetic nervous system responses to stress. [31] [32] [33] However, there is little research examining the interplay between shift-and-persist strategy use and the oxytocin system.
It has also been proposed that shift-and-persist strategies may buffer health outcomes in individuals of low socioeconomic status by affecting health behaviors. [1] Previous research has demonstrated that, regardless of socioeconomic status, individuals with emotion regulation difficulties are also likely to engage in poorer health behaviors, including over-eating, sedentary lifestyle, risky sexual health behaviors, and drug use. [34] [35] [36] [37] Individuals of low socioeconomic status who learn to regulate their emotions more effectively, by using "shift" strategies in childhood, may be more likely than their peers with emotion regulation difficulties to establish and sustain positive health behaviors throughout development. Similarly, persist strategies that help individuals to maintain a positive focus on the future may also affect wellbeing through health behaviors. [1] Prior studies have linked being "future-oriented" to lower levels of drug use and sexual risk behaviors. [38] Therefore, it is possible that individuals who regularly use shift-and-persist strategies will be more likely to practice positive health behaviors, which promote healthy development and aging.[ citation needed ]
However, it is important to note that the relationships between emotion regulation abilities and health behavior are bidirectional. Health behaviors, such as physical activity and sleep hygiene, can also have powerful effects on our capacity to successfully regulate emotions. [39] [40]
Since 2012, integrative research groups concerned with clinical health psychology, social psychology, psychoneuroimmunology, and public health have begun to evaluate the relationships postulated by the shift-and-persist model. The majority of empirical studies on this topic test whether shift-and-persist strategies are associated with differential health outcomes in low vs. high socioeconomic status samples.
Thus far, high levels of shift-and-persist strategy use have been linked to:
Although it has been proposed that a variety of psychological interventions for at-risk youth of low socioeconomic status may reduce health disparities, in part, by increasing shift-and-persist tendencies in families, the majority of studies on shift-and-persist have been cross-sectional. Therefore, it remains unknown if shift-and-persist strategies play a causal role in reducing the negative impact of low socioeconomic status on health. [47] [49] More longitudinal and treatment studies are needed to evaluate directional and causal hypotheses based upon the shift-and-persist model.
Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or animal actively maintains the experience, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure. It is an emotion with positive valence and high physiological arousal.
An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves emotional or physical closeness between people and may include sexual intimacy and feelings of romance or love. Intimate relationships are interdependent, and the members of the relationship mutually influence each other. The quality and nature of the relationship depends on the interactions between individuals, and is derived from the unique context and history that builds between people over time. Social and legal institutions such as marriage acknowledge and uphold intimate relationships between people. However, intimate relationships are not necessarily monogamous or sexual, and there is wide social and cultural variability in the norms and practices of intimacy between people.
Emotional dysregulation is characterized by an inability in flexibly responding to and managing emotional states, resulting in intense and prolonged emotional reactions that deviate from social norms, given the nature of the environmental stimuli encountered. Such reactions not only deviate from accepted social norms but also surpass what is informally deemed appropriate or proportional to the encountered stimuli.
Allostatic load is "the wear and tear on the body" which accumulates as an individual is exposed to repeated or chronic stress. The term was coined by Bruce McEwen and Eliot Stellar in 1993. It represents the physiological consequences of chronic exposure to fluctuating or heightened neural or neuroendocrine response which results from repeated or prolonged chronic stress.
Social connection is the experience of feeling close and connected to others. It involves feeling loved, cared for, and valued, and forms the basis of interpersonal relationships.
"Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard and valued; when they can give and receive without judgement; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship." —Brené Brown, Professor of social work at the University of Houston
Childhood trauma is often described as serious adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Children may go through a range of experiences that classify as psychological trauma; these might include neglect, abandonment, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse, witnessing abuse of a sibling or parent, or having a mentally ill parent. These events have profound psychological, physiological, and sociological impacts and can have negative, lasting effects on health and well-being such as unsocial behaviors, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and sleep disturbances. Similarly, children whose mothers have experienced traumatic or stressful events during pregnancy have an increased risk of mental health disorders and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Shelley Elizabeth Taylor is an American psychologist. She serves as a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University, and was formerly on the faculty at Harvard University. A prolific author of books and scholarly journal articles, Taylor has long been a leading figure in two subfields related to her primary discipline of social psychology: social cognition and health psychology. Her books include The Tending Instinct and Social Cognition, the latter by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor.
Emotional exhaustion is symptom of burnout, a chronic state of physical and emotional depletion that results from excessive work or personal demands, or continuous stress. It describes a feeling of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by one's work. It is manifested by both physical fatigue and a sense of feeling psychologically and emotionally "drained".
The self-regulation of emotion or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. The self-regulation of emotion belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.
Positive affectivity (PA) is a human characteristic that describes how much people experience positive affects ; and as a consequence how they interact with others and with their surroundings.
Cognitive appraisal is the subjective interpretation made by an individual to stimuli in the environment. It is a component in a variety of theories relating to stress, mental health, coping, and emotion. It is most notably used in the transactional model of stress and coping, introduced in a 1984 publication by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman. In this theory, cognitive appraisal is defined as the way in which an individual responds to and interprets stressors in life. A variety of mental disorders have been observed as having abnormal patterns of cognitive appraisal in those affected by the disorder. Other work has detailed how personality can influence the way in which individuals cognitively appraise a situation.
Social stress is stress that stems from one's relationships with others and from the social environment in general. Based on the appraisal theory of emotion, stress arises when a person evaluates a situation as personally relevant and perceives that they do not have the resources to cope or handle the specific situation.
Interpersonal emotion regulation is the process of changing the emotional experience of one's self or another person through social interaction. It encompasses both intrinsic emotion regulation, in which one attempts to alter their own feelings by recruiting social resources, as well as extrinsic emotion regulation, in which one deliberately attempts to alter the trajectory of other people's feelings.
Marriage and health are closely related. Married people experience lower morbidity and mortality across such diverse health threats as cancer, heart attacks, and surgery. There are gender differences in these effects which may be partially due to men's and women's relative status. Most research on marriage and health has focused on heterosexual couples, and more work is needed to clarify the health effects on same-sex marriage. Simply being married, as well as the quality of one's marriage, has been linked to diverse measures of health. Research has examined the social-cognitive, emotional, behavioral and biological processes involved in these links.
Attachment and health is a psychological model which considers how the attachment theory pertains to people's preferences and expectations for the proximity of others when faced with stress, threat, danger or pain. In 1982, American psychiatrist Lawrence Kolb noticed that patients with chronic pain displayed behaviours with their healthcare providers akin to what children might display with an attachment figure, thus marking one of the first applications of the attachment theory to physical health. Development of the adult attachment theory and adult attachment measures in the 1990s provided researchers with the means to apply the attachment theory to health in a more systematic way. Since that time, it has been used to understand variations in stress response, health outcomes and health behaviour. Ultimately, the application of the attachment theory to health care may enable health care practitioners to provide more personalized medicine by creating a deeper understanding of patient distress and allowing clinicians to better meet their needs and expectations.
Arline Geronimus wrote about the weathering hypothesis the early 1990s to account for health disparities of newborn babies and birth mothers due to decades and generations of racism and social, economic, and political oppression. It is well documented that people of color and other marginalized communities have worse health outcomes than white people. This is due to multiple stressors including prejudice, social alienation, institutional bias, political oppression, economic exclusion, and racial discrimination. The weathering hypothesis proposes that the cumulative burden of these stressors as individuals age is "weathering", and the increased weathering experienced by minority groups compared to others can account for differences in health outcomes. In recent years, social scientists investigated the biological plausibility of the weathering hypothesis in studies evaluating the physiological effects of social, environmental and political stressors among marginalized communities. The weathering hypothesis is more widely accepted as a framework for explaining health disparities on the basis of differential exposure to racially based stressors. Researchers have also identified patterns connecting weathering to biological phenomena associated with stress and aging, such as allostatic load, epigenetics, telomere shortening, and accelerated brain aging.
Angela J. Grippo is an American neuroscientist and health psychologist known for her research on stress, mood disorders, and cardiovascular disease. She is an associate professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University.
There is empirical evidence of the causal impact of social relationships on health. The social support theory suggests that relationships might promote health especially by promoting adaptive behavior or regulating the stress response. Troubled relationships as well as loneliness and social exclusion may have negative consequences on health. Neurosciences of health investigate the neuronal circuits implicated in the context of both social connection and disconnection.
Parenting stress relates to stressors that are a function of being in and executing the parenting role. It is a construct that relates to both psychological phenomena and to the human body's physiological state as a parent or caretaker of a child.
The psychological impact of discrimination on health refers to the cognitive pathways through which discrimination impacts mental and physical health in members of marginalized, subordinate, and low-status groups. Research on the relation between discrimination and health became a topic of interest in the 1990s, when researchers proposed that persisting racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes could potentially be explained by racial/ethnic differences in experiences with discrimination. Although the bulk of the research tend to focus on the interactions between interpersonal discrimination and health, researchers studying discrimination and health in the United States have proposed that institutional discrimination and cultural racism also give rise to conditions that contribute to persisting racial and economic health disparities.
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