title: Poverty and involuntary engagement stress responses: examining the link to anxiety and aggression within low-income families.
abstract: Families living with the burdens of poverty-related stress are at risk for developing a range of psychopathology. The present study examines the year-long prospective relationships among poverty-related stress, involuntary engagement stress response (IESR) levels, and anxiety symptoms and aggression in an ethnically diverse sample of 98 families (300 individual family members) living at or below 150% of the US federal poverty line. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) moderator model analyses provided strong evidence that IESR levels moderated the influence of poverty-related stress on anxiety symptoms and provided mixed evidence for the same interaction effect on aggression. Higher IESR levels, a proxy for physiological stress reactivity, worsened the impact of stress on symptoms. Understanding how poverty-related stress and involuntary stress responses affect psychological functioning has implications for efforts to prevent or reduce psychopathology, particularly anxiety, among individuals and families living in poverty.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, USA. bwolff@du.edu
authors.forename: Brian C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Wolff
authors.forename: Catherine DeCarlo
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Santiago
authors.forename: Martha E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Wadsworth
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D017028:Caregivers; D002648:Child; D003120:Colorado; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008297:Male; D008484:Medicaid; D011203:Poverty; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*; D014481:United States