Written by Malin Meyer.
Read this blog on Substack.
When I find myself at family gatherings or at a friend’s birthday celebration, I sometimes get asked ‘What do you do in your research?’. When I respond that ‘I research stress’, people say that it is very relevant because ‘stress is everywhere’, or they may jokingly point out that I could study their life. I have had many of these conversations and they usually amuse me. I find it fascinating how ubiquitous people’s narratives about ‘stress’ are and how easily they can retrieve these in everyday conversation.
Malin K. Meyer is a PhD candidate at University Medical Center Groningen in the Health Science department. She has a strong interest in conceptual and theoretical work and is part of the theory development of Research Theme 1 of Stress in Action. Specifically, Malin focuses on the different kinds of stressors present in modern society as well as different relevant contextual factors of stress.
In my research, I focus specifically on stressors: the experiences that can cause stress responses in individuals. I usually mention that I want to understand what makes people stressed rather than what it is like to be stressed. Again, I encounter a similar phenomenon: most people begin sharing what ‘stress’ means to them and which experiences they consider stressors in their lives. Some explain that something is stressful because they cannot control it, others mention that uncontrollable situations make them anxious but not stressed, yet others begin listing experiences like deadlines or rushing to work. These conversations often make me wonder how these stress narratives – i.e., people’s intuitive understanding of the word ‘stress’- relate to scientific research of stressors.
Scientific research on daily life stressors
Within our Stress in Action research consortium, we use so-called ‘ecological momentary assessments’ (EMA) to measure daily life stressors. In EMA, participants are asked to report the stressors they encounter throughout the day by responding to notifications on their phone. Daily life stressors can unfold anywhere and at any time, such as a looming deadline, a conflict with a colleague at work, or experiencing social exclusion.
Questionnaires assessing stressors are ideally developed based on specific definitions of stressors. Further, some EMA questionnaires explicitly use the word ‘stress’ in the questions posed (e.g., “Did you experience something stressful?”).
Because participants are usually not aware of the scientific definitions of stressors, studies may provide participants with these definitions before the start of the study. Participants are then asked to keep these definitions in mind throughout the course of the study. At the same time, people may already bring their own narratives of ‘stress’ to the research study due to the common and casual use of the word ‘stress’ in daily life.
Thus, the question arises: is it a problem if people already hold their own narratives of ‘stress’ when entering research studies on ‘stress’?
I do not think that it is a problem; I think it is an interesting research area to explore. If, for example, someone only associates ‘stress’ with time pressure, they may not report experiences as ‘stressful’ that do not relate to time pressure, such as discrimination or conflicting social roles. Yet these experiences may still exert effects on the person. Similarly, if a person associates ‘stress’ with feeling overwhelmed and being unable to cope, they may not report experiences that they coped with effectively. As a result, participants’ responses to questions that use the word ‘stress’ may partially reflect their narratives of ‘stress’ and not only the construct specified in the research design. There are different ways that researchers address this potential role of stress narratives. For example, some studies do not use the word ‘stress’ at all and instead directly ask participants whether they experienced specific situations, such as social exclusion. Other studies combine varied methods to capture stressors holistically, for example, including questionnaires that use and do not use the word ‘stress’. I think another and complementary approach may be to view stress narratives as a research area in itself. Researchers could study in detail which experiences people describe with the word ‘stress’ in daily conversations, and subsequently study whether these stress narratives play a role in certain types of stressor measurement.
There is an additional facet why stress narratives are an interesting research area. Namely, researchers may discover new ideas or research questions by studying different stress narratives. For example, some scientific theories define stressors partially as constraints through which people are unable to be, have, or do what they desire. This definition of stressors may align with a person’s narrative, and this person may point out that constraints largely make them feel paralyzed. Learning from this person’s narrative, a researcher could develop novel research questions to study whether and how feeling paralyzed actually relates to the phenomena of constraint-based stressors.
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The science of ‘stress’ in today’s world
Sometimes I wonder how the conversations I have today would have played out 70 or 80 years ago. Would I have received the same response to my notion that ‘I research stress’? I presume, the response would have been different because the word ‘stress’ was not as commonly used to think about and articulate our everyday experiences. Today, ‘stress’ has become a ubiquitous word in our daily interactions and a core way of articulating ourselves. If we aim to understand ‘stress’ scientifically, we may benefit from a better understanding of its social reality in today’s world.
For interested readers, an example study on stress narratives:
Wezyk, A. B., Arden-Close, E., & Turner-Cobb, J. M. (2024). ‘Ask a hundred people, you get a hundred definitions’: A comparison of lay and expert understanding of stress and its associations with health. Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress, 40(3), e3328. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.3328
