The stress generation model posits that depression and other psychopathology elevates risk that individuals create or select into stressful life events. Although decades of research support stress generation theory, life stress is inherently challenging to assess and model as an outcome variable, and prior studies follow inconsistent methodological standards. Towards a vision of elevated “next generation” research, we present expert consensus methodological guidelines for conducting stress generation research. A panel of researchers with diverse expertise delineates best practice, acceptable, and non-recommended methods across six areas: stressor operationalizations, assessment, longitudinal study design (including intensive longitudinal design), statistical analysis, openness/ transparency, and avoiding stigmatizing language. For example, the review covers modeling stressors as formative variables, statistically comparing effect sizes for predicting independent and dependent stress, and using life stress interviews versus questionnaires, among other methodological concerns pertinent to stress generation research. Following these guidelines will allow future investigators to construct a research base with greater rigor, transparency, and reproducibility, providing a firmer foundation to improve understanding of stress generation.

The stress generation model suggests that people with internalizing disorders are at increased risk of engaging in behaviours that lead to stressful events. Although stress generation has been shown to contribute directly to chronicity and impairment across mental health conditions, a unifying framework charting how internalizing disorders translate into self-generated stress is needed to understand how stress-generating processes unfold mechanistically. In this Perspective, we present a process model of stress generation that details how affective, behavioural and cognitive factors in people with or at risk of internalizing psychopathology translate into stressful life events. Specifically, we outline a process that develops from alterations in affective functioning to problematic daily behaviours that can — particularly among individuals with high cognitive vulnerability — escalate into self-generated stressful life events. We describe how transdiagnostic factors associated with internalizing psychopathology might trigger escalating feedback loops between the individual and their interpersonal environment. Our model introduces multiple points of intervention that can make targeting stress generation a feasible goal for reducing the impairment and chronicity associated with internalizing disorders. The stress generation model suggests that an individual’s characteristics can increase their chances of experiencing stressful life events. In this Perspective, Starr et al. detail the mechanistic processes of stress generation in people with internalizing psychopathology.

Negative emotion differentiation, the tendency to represent negative emotional experiences with specificity, is associated with more adaptive emotional functioning. Although typically operationalized as an individual difference, negative emotion differentiation can also be conceptualized as a momentary process of structuring affective experience. Distinguishing among semantically related negative emotions requires selectively endorsing some emotion categories while inhibiting others, thereby increasing conceptual precision and constraining affective interpretations. If emotional intensity is shaped in part by how affective states are represented, experimentally engaging differentiation may alter ongoing negative affect. Using a novel within-subjects experimental paradigm, across three studies we investigated whether differentiating emotions influences negative affect in response to brief video clips. Across two studies (Experiment 1, n = 79 undergraduates, and Experiment 2, n = 106 community adults, collected in 2024), there was a large effect of differentiating emotions (vs. "look" control) on negative affect (Cohen's ds = -0.698, -0.852). Although this effect did not replicate in a shorter version of the task (Experiment 3, n = 52 undergraduates), an internal meta-analysis across all three experiments revealed a significant overall effect, indicating that engaging in differentiation reliably attenuated negative affect on average. Although the comparison condition does not isolate differentiation from all forms of regulatory engagement, the results are consistent with the possibility that increasing representational specificity may function as an implicitly regulatory process, although primarily White and female samples limit generalizability. This open-source paradigm facilitates further research to elucidate the process of differentiating emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion differentiation (ED)-the tendency to identify and label one's emotions with specificity-has been linked to a wide range of well-being outcomes. However, it is unclear whether low ED predicts stress generation, or the process by which people create or select into contexts where they are more likely to experience dependent (self-generated) stressors, but not independent (fateful) stressors. This study tested whether ED prospectively predicts stress generation and whether ED amplifies the stress-generating effect of depression symptoms among adolescents. At baseline, 232 adolescents completed diagnostic interviews, then rated their negative and positive emotions four times per day for 7 days. Episodic stressors were assessed using a contextual threat interview at follow-up 1.5 years later. Analyses showed that adolescents with lower negative or positive ED (NED or PED, respectively) at baseline reported higher levels of dependent stress over follow-up, and effects remained when controlling for baseline depression symptoms or same-valence emotion means. However, effects of NED or PED on dependent stress were not significantly stronger than their effects on subsequent independent stress in our sample. Mean negative (but not positive) emotion also predicted subsequent stress, but similar effects were not unique to dependent stress. Neither NED nor PED interacted with depression to predict subsequent self-generated stressors. Although ED may play a role in stress generation among youth, the present findings suggest the link between ED and episodic stress is not specific to dependent stressors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Negative emotion differentiation (NED), or the ability to parse negative emotions (NEs) with precision, is theorised to facilitate emotion regulation (ER), but research examining the link between NED and the development of ER skills in adolescence has been surprisingly sparse and inconsistent. Brooding rumination may help explain heterogeneity in the relationship between NED and ER, as high brooders may continue to negatively perseverate on their NEs even if they are well-differentiated. In this preregistered longitudinal study of adolescents (N = 241, ages 14-17), participants completed self-report measures, interviews, and a seven-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA), with a longitudinal follow up 1.5-years later. NED was linked to lower global emotion dysregulation but not to momentary reappraisal use. NED predicted decreased global emotion dysregulation over time. Brooding predicted stronger associations between low NED and concurrent depression but did not moderate associations between NED and other outcomes (i.e. momentary reappraisal use, concurrent/longitudinal global emotion dysregulation, or longitudinal depression). Results support a complex relationship between NED, brooding, and mental health, and suggest that poor differentiation in youth may contribute to the consolidation of maladaptive regulatory habits.

Difficulty concentrating is an understudied cognitive phenomenon, despite its status as a diagnostic criterion for generalized anxiety disorder and contributor to clinically significant distress and impairment. Worry may constitute a cognitive mechanism by which anxiety leads to difficulty concentrating. The present study examined concurrent and prospective associations between self-reported anxiety, worry, and subjective difficulty concentrating across three timepoints (T1 April/May, T2 July/August, T3 October/November 2020) in 198 adults (M age = 37.94, SD = 13.42; 81% women, 2% gender minority) drawn from a larger study of trajectories of psychopathology during the COVID-19 pandemic. In multilevel models, anxiety was associated with worry both between (β = 0.65, SE = 0.13) and within participants (β = 0.12, SE = 0.11). Difficulty concentrating was also associated with worry between (β = 0.38, SE = 0.03) and within participants (β = 0.09, SE = 0.02). In a structural equation model, worry partially mediated the longitudinal association between anxiety and difficulty concentrating, though this effect was nonsignificant after controlling for difficulty concentrating at T2 and worry, depression, sleep disturbance, and difficulty concentrating at T1. The unadjusted mediation and these other findings are in line with theoretical accounts of worry as a cognitive mechanism linking anxiety to subjective attentional problems.

Efforts to understand psychopathology and related processes via psycholinguistics are expanding across multiple disciplines. “I-talk”, operationalized as the proportion of first-person singular pronouns within a sample of naturalistic speech, is suggested to indicate self-focused attention and low self-distancing, and is associated with depression and related processes, including emotional dysregulation, and brooding. However, I-talk in adolescents has been underexplored, limiting understanding of psycholinguistic markers of emotional health during a key developmental period. Further, it is unclear how environmental risk factors for depression, such as life stress, relate to I-talk. Audio recordings of contextual-threat-based semi-structured life stress interviews may be a viable source of psycholinguistic data, introducing underrealized potential for archival data analysis with existing high-quality studies. Adolescents (N = 241, Mage = 15.9 years, 53

Stress generation theory suggests that individuals with psychiatric disorders have characteristics or engage in behaviors that increase the amount of dependent (self-generated), but not independent (fateful), stress they are exposed to. Our recent comprehensive meta-analysis amalgamating over 30 years of stress generation research (Rnic et al., 2023) documented stress generation effects broadly across various forms of psychopathology. Since the publication of these findings, Dang and Xiao (2025) reanalyzed a subset of studies from the original meta-analysis by controlling for baseline stressful life events (SLEs). We discuss theoretical and statistical concerns with controlling for baseline SLEs when predicting subsequent stressors. First, dependent and independent stress are both composite formative constructs comprised of completely different SLEs aggregated at each assessment wave, such that the formative latent construct is fundamentally different at each time point. Second, temporal precedence of psychopathology relative to SLEs is already established during assessment via careful dating of stressor onsets. Third, given that SLEs are discrete, time-limited experiences, temporal continuity of SLEs cannot be assumed or, in the case of independent stressors, is actively precluded. Fourth, partialing out variance shared among SLEs over time is problematic because shared variance potentially underlies the direct stress generation effect and moderating effects that are critical for examining group differences. With limited exceptions, controlling for baseline SLEs is not recommended. Future stress and stress generation research will benefit from the use of statistical approaches that are aligned with this more precise conceptualization of dependent and independent stress as formative variables. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Increasing research underscores low positive emotion (PE) as a vital component of depression risk in adolescence. Theory also suggests that PE contributes to adaptive coping. However, it is unclear whether naturalistic experiences of emotions contribute to long-term depression risk, or whether daily PE levels equip adolescents to cope with later naturalistic stressors, reducing risk for depression. The current study examines whether PE (and negative emotion [NE]) assessed via ecological momentary assessment (EMA) (a) predict prospective increases in depression, and (b) moderate the association between later life stressors and depression. DESIGN Longitudinal study of community-recruited adolescents, with EMA at baseline. METHOD Adolescents (n = 232) completed contextual threat life stress interviews, interview and self-report measures of depression at baseline and 1.5 year follow-up. At baseline, they completed a seven-day EMA of emotion. RESULTS Preregistered analyses showed that daily NE, but not PE, predicted increased depression over time and moderated the association between interpersonal episodic stress and self-reported depression. CONCLUSIONS Results did not support daily PE as a buffer against depressogenic effects of life stress, but point to daily NE as a marker of depression risk.

Prior work consistently links additive genetic variation in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis-a multilocus genetic profile score (MGPS)-to depression risk in the context of stress exposure. However, despite that HPA MGPS variants were selected based on evidence that they elevate cortisol reactivity, there are surprisingly few tests of whether an HPA MGPS elevates cortisol reactivity to lab-based stress. Similarly, despite neurobiological connections and coordination between the HPA axis and the sympathetic nervous system (e.g., in the paraventricular nucleus and locus coeruleus), no work has tested whether an HPA MGPS influences sympathetic nervous system reactivity to stress. We investigated whether an HPA MGPS moderates the relation between lab-based stress and: (1) HPA activity indexed by cortisol, and/or (2) sympathetic activity indexed by salivary alpha-amylase, sAA. Emerging adults (N = 152; mean age = 19.5, largest subsample 44.4% Black/African American) were randomly assigned to one of two Trier Social Stress Test variations, a non-evaluative control, or an explicitly negative-evaluative condition. Participants provided DNA and repeated saliva samples for sAA and cortisol. The HPA MGPS did not significantly moderate the relationship between stress condition and cortisol or sAA reactivity, respectively; moreover, post-hoc tests highlight that individual polymorphisms showed non-significant effects in opposite directions from each other, cancelling out in aggregate. Findings suggest that the HPA MGPS's associations with cortisol reactivity are not as straightforward as initially believed. We speculate that the relationships of some HPA variants to biomarker reactivity may vary between modest lab-based stressors and the explicit negative-evaluative induction used here.

Though sexual minority adolescents face a wide array of deleterious stressors, few studies have examined the role of specific types of stress exposure (i.e., chronic vs. episodic, interpersonal vs. non-interpersonal) on mental health disparities. This study utilizes a contextual threat-based assessment to (a) compare levels of stress exposure types between sexual minority and non-sexual minority adolescents, and (b) examine stress type as a mediator between sexual orientation and two outcomes: depressive symptoms and emotion dysregulation. Data comes from a longitudinal sample (14–17 years-old, N = 241; 17.6

Emotion differentiation (ED; the ability to distinguish discrete internal emotion states) may reflect or benefit from knowledge of linguistic labels. The present study uses natural language processing to examine how emotion vocabulary (EV; diversity of unique emotion terms within active vocabulary) relates to ED and depression in an adolescent sample. We tested two competing preregistered (https://osf.io/4j75w/) models regarding the EV-ED link. In the lexical facilitation hypothesis, we posited that larger EV may inform ED, perhaps resulting in larger EVs being associated with greater ED. In the emotional concision hypothesis, we theorized that ED may reflect narrower emotional experiences that are more succinctly labelled, which could result in larger EV being associated with lower ED. A community sample of adolescents (N = 241, ages 14-17, predominantly White) completed interviews, self-report measures, and ecological momentary assessments as part of a larger study conducted between 2014 and 2016. EV was derived using speech samples from transcribed recordings of life stress interviews. In line with the emotion concision hypothesis, EV and ED were inversely related for negative emotions. Moreover, larger negative EV and lower negative ED were each uniquely associated with depression, casting further doubt on whether diverse negative EVs within spontaneous language are fundamentally adaptive for emotional functioning. Replication in more diverse samples is needed to extend generalizability.

Background: Efforts to identify risk and resilience factors for anxiety severity and course during the COVID-19 pandemic have focused primarily on demographic rather than psychological variables. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a transdiagnostic risk factor for anxiety, may be a particularly relevant vulnerability factor.Method: N = 641 adults with pre-pandemic anxiety reported their anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty, and other pandemic and mental health-related variables at least once and up to four times during the COVID-19 pandemic, with assessments beginning in Summer 2020 through Winter 2021. Analyses were preregistered on the Open Science Framework.Results: Higher intolerance of uncertainty at the first pandemic timepoint predicted more severe anxiety, but also a sharper decline in anxiety across timepoints. This finding was robust to the addition of pre-pandemic anxiety and demographic predictors as covariates. Younger age, lower self/parent education, and experience of COVID-19 illness at the first pandemic timepoint predicted more severe anxiety across timepoints, but did not predict anxiety trajectory.Conclusions: Differential levels of IU at the outset of the pandemic prospectively predicted more severe anxiety and a sharper decrease in anxiety over time. This finding was robust to the inclusion of covariates, including pre-pandemic anxiety and various demographic characteristics.

The ability to make fine-grained distinctions between discrete negative emotions-termed negative emotion differentiation (NED)-is important for emotion regulation and psychological well-being. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with elevated trauma-related negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger, guilt, shame) and self-reported difficulty identifying feelings, suggesting that low NED may be a feature of PTSD. PTSD is also characterized by overreliance on avoidance as an emotion regulation strategy-a characteristic that could be influenced by low NED. Here, we examined whether NED is reduced in PTSD and the role NED plays in the association between trauma-related avoidance and other PTSD symptoms (traumatic reexperiencing, negative alterations in cognition and mood, alterations in arousal and reactivity). Hypotheses were tested using 3 days of ecological momentary assessment (up to 17 prompts per day) in 80 trauma-exposed participants (39 with PTSD, 41 without PTSD; total completed surveys = 2,158). NED was reduced and self-reported difficulty identifying feelings was elevated in those with PTSD, and both predicted PTSD severity (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale-5 score) and momentary PTSD symptoms. Furthermore, low NED, but not difficulty identifying feelings, predicted a stronger association between momentary trauma-related avoidance and PTSD symptoms. Results suggest that NED is involved in the emotional processing of trauma by decreasing the negative impact of avoidance behavior on other PTSD symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Stress generation theory initially posited that depression elevates risk for some stressful events (i.e., dependent events) but not others (i.e., independent events). This preregistered meta-analytic review examined whether stress generation occurs transdiagnostically by examining 95 longitudinal studies with 38,228 participants (537 total effect sizes) from over 30 years of research. Our multilevel meta-analyses found evidence of stress generation across a broad range of psychopathology, as evidenced by significantly larger prospective effects for dependent (overall psychopathology: r = .23) than independent (overall psychopathology: r = .10) stress. We also identified unique patterns of effects across specific types of psychopathology. For example, effects were larger for depression than anxiety. Furthermore, effects were sometimes larger in studies with younger participants, shorter time lags between assessments, checklist measures of stress, and for interpersonal stressors. Finally, a multilevel meta-analytic structural equation model suggested that dependent stress exacerbates psychopathology symptoms over time (β = .04), possibly contributing to chronicity. Interventions targeting the prevention of stress generation may mitigate chronic psychopathology. Conclusions of this study are limited by the predominance of depression effect sizes in the literature and our review of only English language articles. On the other hand, the findings are strengthened by rigorous inclusion criteria, lack of publication bias, and absence of moderating effects by publication year. The latter underscores the replicability of the stress generation effect over the last 30 years. Taken together, the review provides robust evidence that stress generation is a cross-diagnostic phenomenon that contributes to a vicious cycle of increasing stress and psychopathology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The stress generation hypothesis suggests that some individuals contribute more than others to the occurrence of dependent (self-generated), but not independent (fateful), stressful life events. This phenomenon is commonly studied in relation to psychiatric disorders, but effects are also driven by underlying psychological processes that extend beyond the boundaries of DSM-defined entities. This meta-analytic review of modifiable risk and protective factors for stress generation synthesizes findings from 70 studies with 39,693 participants (483 total effect sizes) from over 30 years of research. Findings revealed a range of risk factors that prospectively predict dependent stress with small-to-moderate meta-analytic effects (rs = 0.10-0.26). Negligible to small effects were found for independent stress (rs = 0.03-0.12), and, in a critical test for stress generation, most effects were significantly stronger for dependent compared to independent stress (& beta;s = 0.04-0.15). Moderation analyses suggest effects of maladaptive interpersonal emotion regulation behaviors and repetitive negative thinking are stronger for interpersonal (versus non-interpersonal) stress; effects of repetitive negative thinking and excessive standards for self may be inflated by overreliance on self-report measures that fail to isolate psychological distress from objective experience. Findings have key implications for advancing stress generation theory and informing targets for intervention.

Maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) strategies are important predictors of stress generation-the process by which individuals with certain traits are likely to experience higher levels of dependent (self-generated), but not independent (fateful), stressful life events. Positive affect (PA) dampening, the tendency to downregulate positive moods by reducing their intensity and duration, may weaken interpersonal ties and therefore increase vulnerability to stress generation, particularly in the interpersonal domain. The present study examined longitudinal associations between PA dampening and stress generation in an adolescent sample (N = 241, Mage = 15.9, 51.8% female) assessed at baseline and at follow-up 1.5 years later. Dampening was assessed with a self-report questionnaire and stress exposure was assessed using contextual threat-based interview methods. Preregistered analyses revealed that PA dampening did not prospectively predict episodic interpersonal or non-interpersonal dependent stress; instead, dampening was associated with greater episodic independent stress, inconsistent with the stress generation model. Higher dampening at baseline also predicted increases in chronic stress in both interpersonal and non-interpersonal domains over follow-up. Findings suggest that PA regulation strategies may contribute to sustained stressful contexts, rather than discrete life events.

Research links life stressors, including acute, chronic, and early life stress, to the development of ruminative brooding. However, singular forms of life stress rarely occur in isolation, as adolescents typically encounter stressors that vary on important dimensions (e.g., types, timings, quantities) across development. The current study employs latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify natural clusters of life stress that, over time, may be differently associated with ruminative brooding. Evaluations of episodic, chronic, and early life stress were conducted with community-recruited mid-adolescents (N = 241, M-age = 15.90 years, 53% female) and their parents using the UCLA Life Stress Interview and lifetime adversity portions of the Youth Life Stress Interview. Analyses identified four distinct patterns: low stress, high peer stress, moderate home / family stress, and multifaceted / high school stress. Adolescents in the high peer stress and moderate home / family stress profiles were at highest risk for developing a brooding style over time. Despite high overall levels of stress, teens in the multifaceted / high school stress profile were at not at elevated risk for developing a brooding style. Findings demonstrate the utility of person-centered approaches to identify patterns of stress exposure that heighten risk for brooding over time.

Existing research supports competing hypotheses about the link between negative emotional (NE) reactivity to daily events (e.g., hassles and uplifts) and depression. Some have suggested that depression is associated with blunted reactivity, and others have suggested that depression is associated with heightened reactivity. In this study, we tested linear and nonlinear associations, cross-sectionally and longitudinally, between NE reactivity and depression among a sample of 232 adolescents. Participants completed lab-based assessments of depression then rated their experience of emotions, daily hassles, and uplifts three times per day for 7 days. Interviews were readministered 1.5 years later. Results show a significant U-shaped relationship between NE reactivity to hassles and depression symptoms cross-sectionally, which suggests that depression is more severe at the extremes of NE reactivity. NE reactivity to daily uplifts showed significant linear associations, but not quadratic associations, with depression such that heightened reactivity to uplifts was associated with more severe depression symptoms concurrently and predicted worsening of depression longitudinally.