Emphasizing eustress to change students’ stress mindsets : a randomized controlled trial

Stress is often portrayed as an overwhelmingly negative phenomenon in cultural discourse (Helman, 2006) even though research on stress demonstrates that it can have both beneficial and harmful effects on health, well-being, and performance (Crum, Salovey, & Achor, 2013a; Dhabhar, 2018; McGonigal, 2015). Further, there is evidence that a person’s beliefs about the nature of stress – known as a stress mindset – can influence those individual outcomes (Crum et al., 2013a). In a partial replication of Crum et al.’s (2013a) study, I conducted a randomized controlled trial using a stress mindset intervention with college undergraduate students to test whether “stress-is-enhancing” video content influenced participants’ stress mindsets in a positive direction. Undergraduate students (N=236) at The University of Texas at Austin were recruited via subject pool and randomly assigned (1:1) to treatment and control groups. The primary intervention outcome variable, stress mindset, was measured in both groups pre- and post-intervention. With independent samples t-test, I found that stress mindset scores of the treatment group increased positively compared to the control group. Linear regression modeling showed that participant sex, pre-intervention stress mindset score, and treatment group assignment were statistically significant predictors of post-intervention stress mindset. These results suggest that video-based content can influence students’ overall beliefs about stress toward a view that stress can be enhancing.