The Direct and Interactive Effects of Life Stressors and Dispositional Traits in the Prediction of Youth Psychopathology

Dispositional differences are likely to influence youth's adjustment to stressors; however, the potential for interactions among stressors and dispositional traits is uncertain. Prior efforts to examine these interactions have yielded mixed results: whereas some results have shown that presence of both exposure to stressors and trait vulnerabilities are needed to trigger psychopathological responses (i.e., the diathesis-stress model), other results have shown that trait vulnerabilities trigger psychopathological responses regardless of exposure to stressors (i.e., the direct vulnerability model). Moreover, variability in operationalizations of stressors and dispositional traits has made it difficult to draw conclusions across studies. The current research aims to elucidate the potential interactive effects of stressors and dispositional traits while overcoming these limitations. To enhance consistency with results from prior investigations, the direct and interactive effects of stressors and dispositional traits were examined (1) across family-level versus youth-specific stressors (i.e., to allow the evaluation of specific effects across different types of stressors) and (2) using comprehensive models of dispositional trait (i.e., five-factor model of child personality; higher- and lower-order temperament traits). To this end, two investigations using nonclinical youth samples were conducted. In the first study, the hypothesis that child personality traits moderate stress-psychopathology associations during the transition into early adolescence was examined. No systematic evidence for moderation emerged; rather, results supported an additive hypothesis. In the second study, the hypothesis that dispositional traits influence the appraisal of stressors by examining their associations with discrepancies among parent- and youth-reports of stressors was examined. Informant discrepancies for stressors were positively correlated with negative affectivity, supporting the hypothesis that negative affectivity influences appraisal of stressors. Overall, this research elucidates idiographic responses to stressors in youth, and therefore has implications for assessment, prevention, and intervention efforts in clinical child and adolescent psychology.

Department dc:contributor.department

Psychology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Kushner, Shauna Caitlin

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Bagby, R. Michael
• Tackett, Jennifer L

• dispositional traits
• personality
• psychopathology
• stressors
• temperament
• youth

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/75271

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/75271