Pearlin’s Stress Process Model

The stress process model was first published by Pearlin and his colleagues in 1981 and has since shaped sociological research on this question: its focus on the impor-tance of social structure introduced a change in paradigm in the study of mental health, stirring away from an exclusive focus on pathology (Avison et al. 2010).

Over the last three decades Pearlin’s sustained interest in the concept has led him to continue writing about it at several instances. In a book chapter entitled ‘The stress process revisited’, he humbly states that no single pathway of stress has been identi-fied to guide all research in social sciences but rather, ‘the stress process should be regarded as an orienting framework that can guide the thinking of researchers about potentially stressful circumstances, and suggest to them fruitful lines of analysis and interpretation of their effects. It is intended to be of special use to sociologists who seek to incorporate and emphasize features of social and economic life into accounts of (…) well-being of people’ (Pearlin 2006, p. 396). The explicit purpose of the stress process model ascribed to it by its originator is very well aligned with our research questions, which center on measures that are capable of capturing low levels of economic quality of life. We will draw on Pearlin’s model because of its heuristic qualities not because of its etiological potential. In contrast to the explicit purpose of the stress process model, our objective is not primarily the analysis of the economic stress process but the theoretical and empirical inquiry of the added value of combining objective, self-assessed, and perceived measures to capture multiple expressions of economic vulnerability. As outlined earlier, we assume that the causal pathways through the interaction between multiple risk factors happened ex- ante the measurement via our three measures of economic vulnerability and can therefore only be deduced indirectly. However, the model can gainfully be applied to explain divergence between the three measures of vulnerability in the same individual.

In his original model, Pearlin distinguishes between three main conceptual domains that constitute the stress process: the source of stress, the mediators, and the manifestation of stress. Among the sources of stress, Pearlin differentiates between the direct impact of life events and the indirect influence via changes in the self-concept or through challenges to the social role. The literature we have reviewed on the theory of reference utility suggests that both of these types of influences emerge in an appraisal process to which the individual is not exogenous but the degree of financial strain is evaluated relative to an individual frame of reference.

Moreover, people who report income inadequacy may have very different emotional responses: when confronted with an objectively similar situation and even when self-assessing it in a similar manner, some individuals experience more stress than others. According to Pearlin’s stress model, if people able to preserve their sense of self, they are likely to be less worried about income inadequacy. In contrast, if the economic vulnerability results in role strains, and/or the individual experiences a diminishment of self, there is a higher probability of experiencing stress and more intense levels thereof. Concerning the global concept of diminishment of self, he identifies two subordinate concepts that are particularly relevant: mastery and self- esteem. Mastery refers to the sense of being in control of one’s life. By self-esteem Pearlin means a person’s judgment of his or her own self-worth. The erosion of self-esteem and mastery are seen as the final step in the process leading to stress because ‘hardships that are an enduring testimony to one’s lack of success or to the inadequacy of one’s efforts to avoid problems would seem to pose the most sus-tained affront to one’s conceptions of self-worth and of being in control over

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personal destiny’ (Pearlin et al. 1981). With regard to role strains,¹ Pearlin’s own research showed that life events provoke an intensification of preexisting strains or the emergence of new strains² which have their own direct effect on stress (Pearlin and Lieberman 1979). In that way, role strains represent the missing link that com-bines with life events to create chronic stressors. In this context, living in or close to poverty is mentioned as a chronic stressor that cuts across different social roles and affects people in all of their relationships (Pearlin 1989).

According to Pearlin’s stress model,³ whether a person is able to avoid stress when faced with economic hardship depends critically on counteracting role strains and the diminishment of self and this, in turn, depends on the quality of support and coping resources a person has at his/her disposition.⁴ These ‘mediators’ as Pearlin calls them are, on the one hand, a kind of social support that is characterized by high quality relationships, more so than by the mere size of the social network. On the other hand, Pearlin differentiates between two types of coping that differ by their function, one that is oriented towards the problem and the other that is of a cognitive order, modifying the interpretation of the situation or managing the negative emo-tions it causes.

At this point it becomes obvious that in Pearlin’s model some aspects of coping are impossible to separate from the actual activity of appraisal (Alley and Kahn 2012), which is at the core of our research question. Indeed, appraisal represents an iterative process over time, taking into account past and current situations, expected possibilities in the future as well as personality and values (Monroe and Kelley 1997). Richard Lazarus, one of the most widely acknowledged experts of the mea-surement of appraisal, describes it as a cognitive process by which people con-stantly evaluate the realities of their experience with respect to its significance to personal well-being: appraisal provides a means for protecting themselves from

1 Examples for role strains include interpersonal conflicts, role captivity and role restructuring (Pearlin 1989, p. 245)

2 In later articles, he modifies the original model by adding so called ‘secondary stressors’, that is stressors that are the direct consequence of ‘primary stressors’ and are therefore second in sequence but that, in terms of their impact, may be just as strong as primary stressors (Pearlin 1989). In a more restricted sense they are present in the original model in form of ‘role strains’. Since the vulnerability framework takes into considerations this type of downward spiral by assuming that any manifest outcome potentially becomes a new starting point (exposure) we refrain from going into a very detailed account of all possible components that could interfere in the stress process and focus on those that bring an added value to our final theoretical model.

3 Pearlin uses the example of job loss to illustrate the direct and indirect factors that lead to low levels of psychological well-being. Estimating several path models he showed that economic strain functions as a mediator of the effect of job loss on depression. Economic strain was operational-ized by the self-assessed difficulty in acquiring necessities of life and items that reveal a high standard of economic quality of life. He went on to demonstrate that part of the influence of eco-nomic strain on depression is indirect as it is mediated through the respondent’s self-concept, operationalized by a scale of mastery and a measure of self-esteem.

4 While in the original stress process model, self-concept is mentioned among ‘sources of stress’

Pearlin categorizes it later as a mediating resource alongside with coping and social support. There are arguably pertinent reasons for both conceptualizations.

5.1 Pearlin’s Stress Process Model

threats but can also result in a change in perspective so that a threat may begin to appear more like a challenge that can be tackled (Lazarus and Folkman 1984, p. 22, p. 34). Despite the closeness of the two mechanisms in everyday experience, it is important to theoretically distinguish between appraisal and coping when studying the stress process (Lazarus and Folkman 1984). For the sake of disentangling the two in our own research, we deem it necessary to expound briefly on Lazarus theory of appraisal before returning to the outline of our theoretical framework based on the stress process model.