Is this stress beneficial? Stress mindset beliefs for specific categories of stressors

There is individual variability in the degree to which people view stress as debilitating versus enhancing. These stress mindsets have been shown to moderate the link between stress and psychological, physiological, and performance outcomes. However, when people are asked about their stress mindset, they are asked to generally think about stress and how it might impact their health, performance, and well-being. There is a gap in the literature on whether stress mindsets vary for specific categories of stressors. In the present study, we recruited a sample of college students to complete the Stress Mindset Measure-General (SMM-G) and adapted the measure to address 6 different types of stressors in order to investigate whether (1) different stressor types are associated with different stress mindsets, and particularly whether (2) stigma-based stress is perceived as more debilitating in comparison to other categories of stress. Participants are also asked about the degree in which they thought about these 6 stressor categories upon completing the SMM-G. We found that when people complete the SMM-G, they tend to be thinking most about academic oriented events. We also found that stress mindset ratings vary for different categories of stressors, with academic and societal stressors being perceived as the most enhancing and financial and illness/injury related stressors as the least. Importantly, there were differences based on identity, such that those who identify as a racial/ethnic, sexual, and/or gender minority were more likely to consider identity-based stressors in their stress mindset ratings and were more likely to consider identity-based stressors as more debilitating.