Stress Reactivity: What Pushes Us Higher, Faster, and Longer—and Why It Matters

Brief everyday stressors can provoke cardiovascular, hormonal, and immune changes, with considerable variation in the magnitude and duration of these responses. Acute responses to daily stressors can vary widely among individuals experiencing the same stressor, and these physiological responses may not align with stress appraisals. This review highlights individual and dyadic factors that may heighten and prolong stress reactivity, and their implications for health. We discuss depression, rumination, early life adversity, and social evaluation as individual level factors, and interpersonal stress processes and relationship quality as dyadic level factors that may influence physiological stress responses. Heightened and prolonged stress reactivity can provide a gateway to the physiological dysregulation that underlies depression and chronic disease, which themselves alter stress reactivity - a vicious cycle. Interventions that may dampen physiological stress reactivity include yoga, meditation, health behaviors (diet, exercise, and sleep), and cognitive behavioral therapy.