Cognitive mediation of responses to life stress

Cognitive theories of psychopathology argue that thoughts play an active role between external events and subjective experience. These approaches suggest a "mediation hypothesis": adaptive thoughts should serve as buffers against life stresses. In the present study, we gathered data from 125 subjects regarding (1) the levels of stress they had experienced in the recent past; (2) their current feelings of anxiety and depression; and (3) the extent to which they endorsed illogical, unrealistic views of life. Contrary to the mediation hypothesis, no differential impact of environmental stress was found across levels of adaptive cognitions. Rather, adaptive cognitions emerged as a powerful independent variable, showing strong direct relations with measures of distress. It is argued that improved measures of environmental distress will be necessary to provide a more powerful test of the mediation hypothesis.