JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

This study is investigating the relationship between the level of the DT and the life satisfaction as a start to enhance the individual’s life by understanding the effect of stressful life incidents. This study is conducted to research more from this perspective the association between distress tolerance and how it affects people’s satisfaction with life, in order to meet the demands of the psychology industry. Furthermore, by raising awareness of the impact of stressors and the techniques that can aid in increasing an individual's distress tolerance. Tolerance of stressful events would aid in maximizing a person's ability to function effectively. Distress tolerance (DT) defined as the individual’s ability to withstand psychological stress or endure negative emotions (Zvolensky et el., 2010). Different studies investigated DT in many different aspects, for its relationship to psychopathology, personality features, mood states, and behaviors (Simons & Gaher, 2005; Anestis et al., 2007; Bernstein et al., 2011; Alaeddine, 2016; Felton et al., 2018; Ay & Aytas, 2018; Altairi, 2018; Houam & Zatout, 2018; Arici-Ozcan et al., 2019; Lass & Winer, 2020; Ghanbari et al., 2020). It could be explored more in several appraisals including tolerability, perception of acceptability, attentional interference, and regulation of the emotion (Simons & Gaher, 2005). People in general face a wide range of stressful events throughout their lives, ranging from minor annoyances to major life events such as job loss, divorce, or the death of a loved one. The individual’s ability to tolerate the stress can play a role of managing the distress and functioning positively. “Distress tolerance is related to mood and anxiety disorders, poor quality of life, as well as maladaptive behaviors “(Anestis et al., 2012), and the effects of distress tolerance increase unhealthy, risky behaviors and impulsiveness, if they have difficulties in identifying the nature of their negative emotions and what can highlight the significance of investigating more intensely in how DT can affect the individual’s life (Simons et al., 2018). Life satisfaction is the cognitive component of the individual’s subjective well-being and a representative of quality of life, it is conscious evaluation process allow individuals to assess their overall range of quality of life as whole or about specific domains (e.g. family, friends, school) based on a presumed standard set of criteria that meets the expectation of the individual. The satisfaction judgements are based on the person’s comparisons between self-imposed criteria and their perceived life circumstances (Mohamad et al., 2016). Psychological research has explored the sources of people’s life satisfaction particularly the overall health satisfaction (Sousa, & Lyubomirsky, 2001). Life satisfaction is the cognitive evaluation of the individual’s perceived level of satisfaction related to how happy someone is with his/her life holistically and based on the person’s chosen criteria in despite how it has been achieved (Rustoen et al., 2010). Studies have investigated on life satisfaction in numerous directions. In association with quality of life, happiness, hope or with psychopathology, substance abuse and psychological distress (Rustoen et al., 2010; Bernstein et al., 2011; Aboalshamat et al., 2018; Altairi, 2018; Ghanbari et al., 2020). The purpose of the study is to explore the level of distress that the individuals are tolerating and the high standard of the quality of the one’s life and due to the rapid life changes, that could cause a high level of distress. Also, the target age range of the study will be young adults between the age of 20-30 years old as a population because of the nature of the changes during this period of the individual’s life. Social and behavioral scientists frequently discuss such social functioning in terms of five major role transitions of young adulthood—leaving home, completing school, entering the workforce, forming a romantic partnership, and transitioning into or moving toward parenthood. The change of responsibility, role and goals in life can cause distress (Bonnie, 2015). Regional studies had investigated the distress tolerance and life satisfaction in isolation from each other but with other variables like discrimination, personality characters, resilience, happiness, family income, social support, perceived stress and depression (Altairi, 2018; Houam & Zatout, 2018; Aboalshamat et al., 2018; Khusaifan & El Keshky, 2016; Yildirim & Alanazi, 2018; Al-Juhani & Abu Asaad, 2019). The following chapter will discuss precisely the procedure of this study. In the second section will be a review to the related literatures that discussed the DT and life satisfaction discretely. Third section will specify the methodology used in this study, DT will be measured by the distress tolerance scale (Simons & Gaher, 2005) and the life satisfaction scale (Pavot and Diener, 1993). Fourth section explains the study’s data that had been collected, reports the empirical results and discussion. The final section provides concluding remarks and recommendations based on the results.

Objective:

To identify the relationship between distress tolerance and if it’s interfered with the individual’s satisfaction of life. By understanding the nature of this relationship and if there are any gender differences in comparison between males and females. This will be a starting point to raise the awareness of the effect of distress tolerance level on people’s lives satisfaction. The objectives of the study are exploring the level of distress tolerance and life satisfaction among young adults. To find the correlation between the distress tolerance and life satisfaction among young adults in Saudi Arabia and compare distress tolerance and life satisfaction levels between males and females. Finally, explore if distress tolerance had an effect on the individual’s life satisfaction.

Methods:

3.3 Measurements: 3.3.1 Sociodemographic information Sheet (Appendix C): The sociodemographic sheet was self-developed for the purpose of the study and it consists of 5 questions. nationality, gender, age, marital statues and educational level. Nationality and age group helps to identify the eligibility of the participants based on the inclusion\exclusion criteria. The gender item to help understanding the gender differences between the participants responses, the marital statues and educational level were selected to explore if they had an effect on the study variables. 3.3.2 Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS) (Appendix D): Distress Tolerance Scale is valid and reliable scale developed by Simons & Gaher in 2005 to measure the individual’s level of tolerating distress. The scale consist of 15 items were generated based on theoretical relevance and review of related scales. Also, it divided into four types of items based on perceived ability to tolerate emotional distress (e.g., I can’t handle feeling distressed or upset), subjective appraisal of distress (e.g., My feelings of distress or being upset are not acceptable), attention being absorbed by negative emotions (e.g., When I feel distressed or upset, I cannot help but concentrate on how bad the distress actually feels) and regulation efforts to alleviate distress (e.g., When I feel distressed or upset I must do something about it immediately). The participants can answer the scale by self-report on rating the items on a 5-point likert scale: (5) Strongly disagree – (1) Strongly agree. Item 6 is reverse scored and the scores ranging from 15 to 65. The mean of the items is used to determine subscale ratings. The mean of the four subscales is used to create the higher-order DTS. High scores represent high tolerance for emotional distress. The DTS has demonstrated high internal consistency (α = 0.89) as well as adequate test-retest reliability (r = 0.61) (Simons & Gaher, 2005). The license translation rights for the DTS were obtained from the author. Upon authorization, proficient in the English language translated the original English items into Arabic. The Arabic translation independently evaluated by three bilingual PhD holders in the psychology field. The final wording was obtained after consensus among the three researchers. 3.3.3 Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Appendix E): The SWLS developed by Diener et al., consists of 5-items that require a rating on a 7-point Likert scale. The SWLS measure satisfaction with overall perspective with those specific domains that a person considers important. Life satisfaction is one factor in the more general construct of subjective well-being, which has at least 3 components: positive affective appraisal, negative affective appraisal, and life satisfaction and is distinguished from affective appraisal in that it is more cognitively than emotionally driven (Pavot and Diener, 1993). Items of the SWLS are summed to create a total score that can range from 5 to 35. Relatively higher scores would indicate that a person perceives areas of their life they consider important to be going well. Low scores would indicate the opposite. With a Cronbach's alpha of 0.87 and test-retest reliability of 0.82, it has been shown to have high internal consistency and moderate temporal stability (Pavot and Diener, 1993). The permission for SWLS were provided by the author of educational purposes. The original English items were translated into Arabic by an expert in the English language. Three bilingual PhD holders in psychology independently analyzed the Arabic translation. The three researchers came to an agreement on the final wording.

Results:

Discussion: This study examined the correlation between distress tolerance and life satisfaction among young adults in Saudi Arabia and investigate if there are any gender differences in distress tolerance levels or life satisfaction levels. On the other hand, the study examined the effect of distress tolerance on life satisfaction. The findings revealed coefficient values indicating significant relationships between the variables (DT and LS). First of all, the study suggests that there is an ability to tolerate emotional distress and high overall scores of life satisfaction among the targeted population. Also, the study disclosed coefficient positive association between distress tolerance and life satisfaction as had been assumed, people who have the ability to tolerate and adapt distressful emotions are more likely to be satisfied with their lives. By relying on the suggestion of previous studies (Anestis et al., 2007; Felton et al., 2018; y & Aytas 2018; Lass & Winer, 2020) that discussed the association between DT and psychopathology (depression and eating disorders) life stressors, resilience and happiness (Satici, et al., 2020; Aboalshamat et al., 2018; Claydon et al., 2020; Lass & Winer, 2020; Felton et al., 2018; Anestis et al., 2007). Although, life satisfaction levels are positively associated with resilience, happiness, gratitude and social support (Aboalshamat et al., 2018; Khusaifan & El Keshky, 2016; Yildirim & Alanazi, 2018; Al-Juhani & Abu Asaad, 2019) and negatively related to perceived stress and depression (Khusaifan & El Keshky, 2016; Yildirim & Alanazi, 2018). That can explain the findings of the study that there is an association between distress tolerance and life satisfaction. Secondly, previous studies suggest that there are gender differences regarding both DT and LS. Females have higher levels of resiliency, and resiliency is linked to a higher level of life satisfaction (Aboalshamat et al., 2018). Distress tolerance was found to be substantially higher in men than in women. Men showed higher distress tolerance than women, implying that gender differences exist in either tolerating emotional distress or self-reporting emotional distress tolerance (Simons & Gaher, 2005). Otherwise, this study examines the gender differences, and the results indicates that there are no significant differences between males and females, that can be explained by the sample size and assigned to the variation in the sample number between males and females (females represent 77.2% of the sample). However, there was a difference between males and females regarding the emotional regulation subscale. Thirdly, the study beside discussing if distress tolerance associated with life satisfaction but also discussed if there is liner regression between them. The results of the study indicate that distress tolerance level effect the satisfaction with life. Which mean if the individuals had difficulties in tolerating distressful emotions that might lead for less satisfaction of the individual’s life. 7. Limitations: There are a few limitations in this study. First and foremost, since this research is aimed at humans, there are several variables that can influence the results. Second, using self-report measures may allow for the emergence of social desirability effects in participants' responses, respondents may not provide truthful answers to the survey questions. As a consequence, socially favorable responses could have had a negative impact on the results' reliability. Third, there were more female participants than male participants, which may have skewed the findings in terms of a potential gender effect. Despite the above-mentioned limitations, the current research has a range of advantages. One of them is that there are few Saudi studies on distress tolerance and life satisfaction, so the current research could shed light on the relationship between distress tolerance and life satisfaction. Second, this research added to our knowledge of the connection between distress tolerance and life satisfaction, especially in terms of gender differences in emotional regulation. The impact of distress tolerance on life satisfaction is also explored.

Conclusions:

The study focused on exploring the level of emotional distress that the individuals can tolerate and if it is interfering with the high standard of the one’s life and satisfaction with life. Now days changes and formed rapidly which can cause high levels of distress among individuals specially in the transitions of young adulthood (Bonnie, 2015). Since previous studies investigating distress tolerance and life satisfaction in many different aspects like psychopathology, eating disorders, depression and life transition, without discussing them together and examining if there is an association between, so them this study is driven from this point. The study assumption formed that there is relationship between distress tolerance and life satisfaction, gender differences regarding the proposed study problem and if the distress tolerance effect the life satisfaction levels among people. The findings of study suggest that there is a positive association between distress tolerance and life satisfaction among young adult without any support of gender differences. Although, if the individual’s ability to tolerate distress decreased and the satisfaction with life decreased. The results of this research could aid in meeting the demands of the psychology industry. Additionally, by growing people's understanding of the effects of stressors and take this effect in account by providing training on strategies that can help increasing the individual’s ability to tolerate distress. Tolerance to stressful situations will help a person's ability to function more efficient.