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01-12-2018

Self-compassion, chronic age-related stressors, and diurnal cortisol secretion in older adulthood

Authors: Heather Herriot, Carsten Wrosch, Jean-Philippe Gouin

Published in: Journal of Behavioral Medicine | Issue 6/2018

Abstract

Many older adults experience chronic age-related stressors (e.g., life regrets or health problems) that are difficult to control and can disturb cortisol regulation. Self-compassion may buffer adverse effects of these stressful experiences on diurnal cortisol secretion in older adulthood. To examine whether self-compassion could benefit older adults’ cortisol secretion in the context of chronic and largely uncontrollable age-related stressors, 233 community-dwelling older adults reported their levels of self-compassion, age-related stressors (regret intensity, physical health problems, and functional disability), and relevant covariates. Diurnal cortisol was measured over 3 days and the average area-under-the-curve and slope were calculated. Higher levels of self-compassion were associated with lower daily cortisol levels among older adults who reported higher levels of regret intensity, physical health problems, or functional disability (βs < − .53, ps < .01), but not among their counterparts who reported lower levels of these age-related stressors (βs < .24, ps > .28). These results suggest that self-compassion may represent an important personal resource that could protect older adults from stress-related biological disturbances resulting from chronic and uncontrollable stressors.

We note that our study also included a measure of daily perceived stress, which was assessed on 3 days and could involve both transient and addressable stressors or chronic and uncontrollable stressors. Since our theoretical approach focused on specific chronic and uncontrollable stressors, daily perceptions of stress were not considered for the study hypotheses. However, we acknowledge that supplemental analyses, using an average score of daily perceived stress, did not show significant interactions involving daily stress and self-compassion predicting cortisol level (β = − .22, p > .05) or slope (β = − .00, p > .05). In addition, there were no significant main effects of the daily stress predicting cortisol level (β = .10, p > .05) or cortisol slope (β = .00, p > .05). Further, including daily stress into the reported models as a covariate did not change any of the reported results.

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Title: Self-compassion, chronic age-related stressors, and diurnal cortisol secretion in older adulthood
Authors: Heather Herriot
Carsten Wrosch
Jean-Philippe Gouin
Publication date: 01-12-2018
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Behavioral Medicine / Issue 6/2018
Print ISSN: 0160-7715
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3521
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-018-9943-6

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Self-compassion, chronic age-related stressors, and diurnal cortisol secretion in older adulthood

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