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Social stress and the sociology of emotions; coping and hostility

Brief description:

The impact of adverse circumstances differs among individuals, and coping resources of diverse types could help people master and overcome adverse circumstances. While the social stress model addresses the link between social position, stressors, psychological stress and health outcomes, the sociology of emotions examines how the social world is experienced in emotional loaded categories, such as hostility with its’ bodily correlates.

Objective:

The study aim is twofold: to investigate the different health impacts of a range of stressors according to the way the stressors were appraised by those afflicted and how the buffering resources are socially distributed. In these studies coping is considered to be a dynamic process. Also the aim is to investigate how hostility reflects the individual’s social position and whether this emotion of shame and anger is independently related to morbidity and mortality.

Time period:

From 2003 and ongoing

Project description:

Previous research has mainly focused on coping and on hostility as dispositions with little attention on how these dispositions are connected to the position in social structures at the macro level. Socioeconomic factors have been included as confounders in several studies of different coping strategies in a range of stressors and in analyses of the detrimental health effects of hostility. We address the following issues: 1) The association between social position and coping strategies with different health problems and different life events, including the association between outcomes of patient education and counseling and individual coping strategies. 2) How hostility is related to people’s location within social structures in adult life and in a life course perspective. I.e. hostility and social position may affect each other during the life course and we aim to study these associations between generations and within generations with multiple measurements of hostility and socioeconomic position.

Data:

The coping studies are based on data from:  The Danish Longitudinal Study on Work, Unemployment and Health, The Copenhagen Multi-centre Psychosocial Infertility Research Programme (COMPI) and, Copenhagen Aging and Midlife Biobank (CAMB). 

The studies on hostility are based on: The Metropolit project, The Danish Longitudinal Study on Work, Unemployment and Health and, Copenhagen Aging and Midlife Biobank (CAMB). 

Researchers:

Ulla Christensen, Margit Kriegbaum, Rikke Lund, Naja Hulvej Rod, Lone Schmidt, Charlotte Ørsted Hougaard

Collaboration:

Jacky Boivin, Cardiff University,  Brennan D. Peterson, Chapman University,   Anne Frölich and Ditte Hjorth Hansen, Bispebjerg University Hospital

Contact persons:

Ulla Christensen and Margit Kriegbaum

Publications:

Peterson BD, Pirritano M, Christensen U, Boivin J, Block J, Schmidt L. The longitudinal impact of partner coping in couples following 5 years of unsuccessful fertility treatment. Hum Reprod 2009; 24:1656-64

Peterson BD, Pirritano M, Christensen U, Schmidt L. The impact of partner coping in couples experiencing infertility. Hum Reprod 2008; 23:1128-37

Christensen U, Schmidt L, Hougaard CØ, Kriegbaum M, Holstein BE. Socioeconomic position and variations in coping strategies in musculoskeletal pain: a cross-sectional study of 1,287 40- and 50-year-old men and women. J Rehab Med 2006; 38(5):316-21

Christensen U, Schmidt L, Kriegbaum M, Hougaard CØ, Holstien BE. Coping with unemployment: does educational attainment make any difference? Scand JPublic Health 2006; 34(4): 363-70

Christensen U, Lund R, Damsgaard MT, Holstein BE, Ditlevsen S, Diderichsen F, Due P, Iversen L, Lynch J. cynical hostility, socioeconomic position, health behaviors, and symptom load: a cross-sectional analysis in a Danish population-based study. Psychosom Med 2004; 66(4): 572-77

Schmidt L, Christensen U, Holstein BE. The social epidemiology of coping with infertility. Hum Reprod 2004; 20(4): 1044-52