EMOTIONAL STABILITY AND GOAL-RELATED STRESS

The experience of anticipatory and reactive stress associated with goa ls was examined as a function of the trait of emotional stability. Dur ing the first few weeks of the academic year, first-year college stude nts completed a measure of emotional stability, provided a set of thei r goals, rated these goals on anticipated stress, and 6 months later, re-evaluated the same set of goals on reactive stress. Results indicat e that emotional stability relates to reactive stress but not anticipa tory stress. While this general finding held for the academic, social, pleasure, independence, and moral/religious goal domains, three other content domains required substantive qualifications. Emotional stabil ity related to both anticipatory and reactive stress in the health dom ain, and to neither kind of stress in the organization and material we alth domains. Potential explanations of these differences and implicat ions for using trait and goal units conjointly are discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.