HEALTH AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO DAILY STRESS AND INDIVIDUAL ORIENTATION

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between centrality of hassles and health outcome through individual orientations. Centrality of hassles refers to the personal significance or importance of an event that has a momentous impact on an individual's psychological or physical well-being. Individual orientations, such as the sense of coherence and dispositional optimism, are personality characteristics which strongly influence well-being. One hundred and three undergraduate students took part in this study. The findings generally replicated those of previous studies where an increase in hassles was related to poorer health outcome. In addition, an increase in the centrality of hassles was also inversely correlated with health outcome. Centrality of hassles was also found to be a better predictor of health outcome over and above that of the numbers of hassles. Moreover, individual orientation was found to perfectly mediate the relationship between hassles and health but only partially mediates the effects of centrality of hassles to health. Finally, results from this study indicate that in order to understand the role that stress plays in health, it must be studied from multiple perspectives.