Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Department

Psychology

Reader 1

Lahnna Catalino

Reader 2

Egamaria Alacam

Abstract

College students experience high levels of stress, yet not all stress leads to negative outcomes. This study examines how personality and coping resources contribute to eustress—a positive, motivating form of stress—by investigating whether resilience mediates the relationship between openness to experience and eustress. Undergraduate participants completed baseline measures of openness and resilience before engaging in either a high-demand mental arithmetic task or a low-demand control task. Following the task, participants reported their emotional and behavioral responses using the Measure of Emotional, Physical, and Behavioral Markers of Eustress and Distress (MEDS). Consistent with expectations, individuals higher in openness were predicted to report greater eustress, suggesting that curiosity and cognitive flexibility may shape more adaptive stress appraisals. Additionally, resilience was expected to mediate this relationship: higher openness was anticipated to predict greater resilience, which in turn was expected to predict higher eustress. The stress manipulation was also expected to produce higher perceived stress in the high-stress condition, confirming its effectiveness. These anticipated findings highlight a potential pathway through which personality traits foster adaptive psychological responses and underscore the importance of resilience in transforming stressful situations into opportunities for engagement and growth. Understanding these processes may inform interventions aimed at strengthening resilience and promoting positive stress experiences among college students.

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