Brooks B Gump, Stefanie Pilkay, Xiafei Wang, Sara Vasilenko, Nader H Atallah-Yunes, Sarah Woolf-King, Stephen Maisto, Edith Chen, Craig K Ewart
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Adversity (e.g., poverty, discrimination, or stress) does not always produce harmful effects. "Striving" against adversity has been linked to positive psychological outcomes, such as lower depression, suggesting resilience; however, striving against severe adversity appears to simultaneously produce cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk (framed in the literature as "John Henryism").
Method: We assessed striving (self-report survey) and adversity (nine indices, including socioeconomic status, discrimination, and city stress) in a sample of 9-11-year-old children (N = 283; 45.6% female; 54.4% self-identifying as Black and 45.6% as White). For outcomes, we assessed subclinical CVD indicators (left ventricular [LV] mass and resting blood pressure), as well as children's depressive symptoms and hostility (self-report survey).
Results: After adjusting for covariates, we found a number of significant Striving × Adversity interactions (p values < .05) such that greater striving for children living in high adversity resulted in greater LV mass, higher systolic blood pressure, higher hostility, but lower depressive symptoms, whereas increasing striving for children living in moderate adversity resulted in lower LV mass, systolic blood pressure, and hostility, but no association with depressive symptoms.
Conclusions: This pattern we observed is becoming consistent in the literature, whereby striving against adversity produces psychological and physical benefits when adversity is below a certain threshold but produces continued psychological benefits yet CVD risks when adversity rises beyond this threshold. Efforts to protect children living in severe adversity might benefit from interventions designed to maintain the psychological benefits associated with striving against adversity while simultaneously blocking any harm to the cardiovascular system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
期刊介绍：
Health Psychology publishes articles on psychological, biobehavioral, social, and environmental factors in physical health and medical illness, and other issues in health psychology.
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