HYPOTHESES RESULTS CONT. Psychological Resilience: The Impact of Affectivity and Coping on State Anxiety and Positive Emotions During and After the Washington, DC Sniper Killings Lauren A. Fowler, Philip J. Moore, Jeffrey Chrabaszcz, Cynthia Rohrbeck, Nathan Cronin, Ilana Petrescu The George Washington University  Participants were undergraduates in the Washington, D.C. area  Surveys were completed at three separate times  Time 1: Within two weeks of the first shooting  Time 2: Two weeks after suspects were captured  Time 3: Six months after Time 2  Measures Affectivity: Goldberg’s 10-item subscale of neuroticism (Goldberg, 1999). Coping: Constructive Thinking Inventory (CTI) (Epstein & Meier, 1989). State Anxiety: Spielberger’s 10-Item State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) (Spielberger, 1983). Positive Emotions: Positive States of Mind (PSM) scale (Horwitz, Adler, & Kegeles, 1988).  Affectivity will be positively related to state anxiety and inversely related to positive emotions during, immediately following, and six months after the Washington, DC sniper killings.  Coping will be inversely related to state anxiety and positively related to positive emotions during the sniper killings, but unrelated to either anxiety or positive emotions immediately following and six months after the killings.  State anxiety and positive emotions will be significantly associated during the sniper killings, but unrelated to immediately following and six months after the killings. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION  More negative affectivity was associated with less affective coping during, right after, and six months following the shootings. During the sniper killings, participants with more positive coping reported significantly less state anxiety than more negative copers.  Moreover, participants’ state anxiety was highly and negatively associated with their positive emotions during the sniper attacks, although it disappeared immediately following the attack and remained insignificant six months later.  The findings of this study support a functional distinction between affectivity and coping dispositions, as well as the mechanisms stipulated by the Dynamic Theory of Affect.  Results show that stress effects operate on a continuum for the effects of affectivity and coping on emotional responses. As such, our three hypotheses were supported by the results of our surveys, indicating the relationship between positive and negative affect as a function of psychological stress.  Future research should examine a larger, more diverse study pool, as well as look into other traumatic events that may cause similar stress and coping responses. Psychological resilience is not simply a homogenous construct. Rather, it is multifaceted process consisting of many related elements. Although tragic in its nature, these high-stakes events allow for the rare opportunity to research this topic, which may be crucial for improving resilience and reducing debilitating personal, social, and economic costs of psychological stress. METHODS RESULTS INTRODUCTION The negative mental, behavioral, and physical effects of stress have been studied and observed across a wide range of populations (Ong, Bergman, & Boker, 2009). Resilience deals with an individuals’ response to such stress and has often been indicated by two individual characteristics: affectivity and coping (Rutter, 2000). Affectivity describes an individual’s fundamental behavioral and mental qualities that are present in both stressful and non-stressful situations and influence that person’s responses (Matthews & Gilliland, 1999). Coping, meanwhile, is a specific response to a stressful situation and an individual’s coping ability has been shown to be an effective measure of how well (or poorly) one deals with stress. This study focused on stress, affectivity, and the coping response of individuals present during the Washington, DC sniper killings in STATISTICAL ANALYSES After means for the study variables were computed for Times 1, 2 and 3, correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the impact of affectivity and coping on anxiety and psychological health for each time period. Time was dummy coded (with values 1,2,3) and multiplied by, respectively, affectivity and coping to create two interaction variables. After including its main effects (i.e., time and affectivity or coping), each interaction variable was added to regression models predicting anxiety and psychological health. Resulting standardized beta coefficient for each of these interaction terms represents the degree of difference in their respective slopes over time. Significant betas indicate that the strength of that correlation changed significantly between those two time periods. Table 1. Descriptive values for primary study variables during the Washington, DC sniper shootings (Time 1), immediately afterward (Time 2), and six months after (Time 3). Table 2. Relationships between neuroticism, CTI and emotional outcomes for participants who responded within and between all three time periods. Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Mean (SD)nMean (SD)nMean (SD)n ___________________________________________________________________ Neuroticism2.62 (0.71) (0.49) (0.69)43 CTI 3.28 (0.63) (0.67) (0.72)43 STAI 2.36 (0.81) a (0.41) b (0.53) c 43 PSOM 3.01 (0.62) x (0.56) y (0.64) x,y 43 Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 _________________ _________________ _________________ Relationships r p n r p n r p n ______________________________________________________________________________ Neuroticism-STAI 0.43< < < Neuroticism-PSOM-0.45< < < CTI-STAI -0.44< CTI-PSOM 0.43< STAI-PSOM -0.54< Time 1 vs. Time 2 Time 2 vs. Time 3 Time 1 vs. Time 3 _________________ _________________ _________________ β t p β t p β t p ______________________________________________________________________________ Neuroticism-STAI Neuroticism-PSOM CTI-STAI < CTI-PSOM < STAI-PSOM < Epstein, S., & Meier, P. (1989). Constructive thinking: A broad coping variable with specific components. 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