Trait Mindfulness Moderates the Association Between Stressor Exposure and Perceived Stress in Law Enforcement Officers

Shuanghong Chen, Daniel W Grupe, Shuanghong Chen, Daniel W Grupe

Abstract

Objectives: To test the magnitude of the relationship between self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress in police officers using a novel measure of daily work events, and whether dispositional mindfulness and resilience moderate this relationship.

Methods: A total of 114 law enforcement officers from a mid-sized Midwestern US city completed daily logs of job stressors and associated perceived stress, as well as additional self-report measures of perceived stress, trait mindfulness and resilience, and demographics and work information. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to cluster job stressors into a smaller number of components in a data-driven manner. Linear mixed-effects models were used to test the relationship between stressor exposure and perceived stress for each component, and the moderation of this relationship by trait mindfulness and resilience.

Results: The PCA categorized stressor exposure into three components: (1) acute or traumatic line-of-duty stressors, (2) routine daily stressors, and (3) interpersonal stressors. Results of mixed models showed robust positive relationships between self-reported stressor exposure and corresponding perceived stress across all 3 components. Dispositional mindfulness (but not resilience) moderated the association between stressor exposure and perceived stress for routine stressors, such that individuals with higher dispositional mindfulness showed a relatively attenuated relationship between exposure to routine daily stressors and resulting perceived stress.

Conclusions: Police officers high in dispositional mindfulness may experience daily routine stressors as less stressful, which can reduce the accumulation of general stress in the long term and which could help buffer against negative health outcomes associated with perceived stress.

Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03488875.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12671-021-01707-4.

Keywords: Law enforcement officers; Mindfulness; Perceived stress; Resilience; Stressor exposure.

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of InterestThe authors declare no competing interests.

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Associations between exposure and perceived stress for each component on the work events log. Each line represents the estimated linear relationship between exposure and perceived stress for each participant across 4–6 days
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Interaction of routine stressor exposure and mindfulness on perceived stress from the work events log. For acute/traumatic stressors (component 1), there were no effects involving trait mindfulness. For routine stressors (component 2), the significant interaction between mindfulness and exposure reflected relatively attenuated perceived stress with increasing exposure for individuals with higher levels of trait mindfulness. For interpersonal stressors (component 3), there was a significant main effect of mindfulness, with lower perceived stress for individuals higher in trait mindfulness. Each panel reflects mean-centered exposure scores and predicted values of perceived stress at different levels of trait mindfulness from mixed regression models (see Table 4)

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