title: Contextual Influences on Distress Intolerance: Priming Effects on Behavioral Persistence.
abstract: Distress intolerance (DI), the inability to tolerate stressful experiences, has been linked to multiple psychiatric conditions and maladaptive coping patterns. Although DI is often considered a trait-like variable, evidence indicates that self-report and behavioral indices of DI can be manipulated by contextual factors. Understanding such contextual influences is important given evidence of unexpected variability in these presumed trait-like measures over brief intervals. The current study examined the influence of context (manipulated by priming concepts of "Interminability" and "Brevity") in predicting behavioral persistence, in relation to self-reported DI. Results indicated that priming Brevity was associated with terminating a cold-pressor task more quickly. Self-reported DI was linked to earlier termination, but there was no interaction between self-reported DI and priming condition. Results indicate that contextual cues modulate performance on behavioral measures of DI. Hence, models of DI should consider both trait-like and contextual factors in understanding variability in DI measures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 648 Beacon St., 5 Floor, Boston, MA, 02215, United States.
authors.forename: Kristin L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Szuhany
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, 648 Beacon St., 5 Floor, Boston, MA, 02215, United States.
authors.forename: Michael W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Otto
keywords: Behavioral Persistence; Contextual Factors; Distress Intolerance; Measurement Variability; Priming