Investigation of the role of personality traits and psychological symptoms in stress generation

Stress generation hypothesis suggests that there is a tendency of depressive individuals to put themselves into stressful situations due to their symptoms or certain characteristics and claims that individuals contribute to the stressors they experience. The main aim of the current study was to investigate the role of psychological symptoms and personality traits on stress generation process. Personality traits that were investigated in this process were re-assurance seeking, sociotropy, and interpersonal style. And to pursue this aim hierarchal regression analysis via Microsoft IBM Statistics Program 23 was conducted with the data gathered from 92 young adults (M=22.36, SD=2.32, range=18-25). In the first phase of the data-gathering process, the survey included the Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale (SAS), Re-assurance (BDI) Seeking Scale (RSS), and Interpersonal Style Scale (ISS), Beck Depression Inventory and Form of Interpersonal Conflict in Close Relationships (FCCR). 3 months later a second survey including BDI, and FCCR was sent to these e-mail addresses. The results of the hierarchal regression analysis revealed that sociotropy, re-assurance seeking, and interpersonal style measured in T1 had a significant predictive role on the dependent stressors in T2 (∆R²=.17, F [3,86] =5.64, p= .001). Next, the psychological symptoms variable was added to the regression equation. It was indicated that psychological symptoms measured in T1 were not found to explain the variance in dependent stressors in T2 beyond and above re-assurance seeking, sociotropy, and interpersonal style. The results are discussed according to the existing literature.