(PS9-92) The Relationships Between Cognitive Responses to Stressors and Distress in Thailand and the United States

Cognitive responses to stressors and their relationship to distress cannot be assumed to be consistent across all peoples. A recent meta-analysis by Yao et al. (2023) found that trait anxiety was positively correlated with oftentimes unhelpful cognitive responses (catastrophizing, blaming the self, blaming others, rumination) and negatively correlated with oftentimes more helpful cognitive responses (acceptance, positive refocusing, refocus on planning, putting into perspective, positive reappraisal). Importantly, they also found level of individualism to moderate the relationships between trait anxiety and both helpful and less helpful cognitive responses. The present study evaluated whether psychological distress was associated with acceptance, positive reappraisal, self-blame, and other-blame among persons from the USA and Thailand.   

The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire-Short (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006) was used to measure cognitive responses to stressors. The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale-10 (Kessler et al., 2002) was used to measure distress. Measures were translated from English to Thai and then back translated. The survey was distributed through social media (posts and direct messages), emails to university students, and a university student research recruitment platform. With age outliers removed, the overall sample contained 446 participants (M age = 22.39, 73.3% female). Among the US sample (N = 194), participants had an average age of 24.6 and were 72.7% female. Among the Thai sample (N = 252), participants had an average age of 20.74 and were 71.4% female. Four hierarchical regressions were conducted to predict distress with each regression examining one cognitive stress response. Age and sex were entered first followed by country and cognitive response. An interaction term between cognitive response and country was entered last.

Results indicated that blaming others and blaming oneself was associated with greater distress (respectively: β = .137, p < .01; β = 2.82, p < .001) and positive reappraisal was associated with less distress (β = -.177, p < .001). Country was only a significant predictor of distress in the self-blame regression model such that being from the US was related to greater distress (β = .125, p = .02). None of the interaction terms predicted significant additional variance. Explanations for nonsignificant main effects of country and interactions will be offered.