The perception of life events in two different cultural settings

The perceived stressfulness of 63 life events was compared in a North Italian and a South Italian sample, using a 0-20 equal-interval scale. Each sample comprised 48 psychiatric patients and 34 relatives. Three-way analyses of variance for each event showed that South Italians consistently rated events as more upsetting, while patient or relative status and item order of the life event list did not affect the ratings. Multiple regression analysis showed that sociodemographic variables were not related to overall mean scaling scores with the exception of marital status which revealed a significant interaction with the city of residence. Southern Italians scaled recent events as more upsetting than events which had not occurred. This was not the case for the North Italian sample.