Self-Focused Versus Vicarious Stressful Events: Understanding the Effect of Event-Focus on Stress Perceptions

Stressor self-focus is understudied but potentially important. Emerging adults (N=300) provided descriptions of recent interpersonal, non-interpersonal, and discrimination events and rated each on perceptual outcomes (self-blame, rejection, severity, emotional impairment). Non-interpersonal events were higher in self-focus, but self-focus tended to be associated with adverse perceptions for interpersonal and discrimination events.