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Sticky Situations and Sticky Thoughts: Investigating Stress, Coping, and Thoughts

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 2 - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm PST, Salon D.

Cecilia Liu¹ (), Mason Liu¹, Julia Kam¹; ¹University of Calgary

Our thoughts are influenced by the context of our daily lives, especially when we experience stressful events. Thoughts that are difficult to disengage from and occur outside of our control, also known as sticky thoughts, are often related to these stressors. Importantly, the strategies that individuals employ to cope with their stress might make them more likely to think about the stressor rather than their task at hand, which may modulate their experience of sticky thoughts. We therefore examined how individual differences in coping strategy usage predict stickiness of thoughts after a stress-inducing task. Participants first completed the Brief-COPE scale, capturing how often they use certain coping strategies. Next, they wrote about a recent stressful event in their life. Afterwards, they completed a simple attention task while answering intermittent probes asking how sticky their thoughts were. Heart rate variability (HRV) was measured at baseline, post-writing task, and at the end of the session to assess physiological stress level. Preliminary analyses found that individuals who used more problem-focused and less emotion-focused coping strategies reported more sticky thoughts after the writing task, suggesting that problem-focused copers might be more likely to continue thinking about the stressful event. Furthermore, individuals who had more sticky thoughts had higher baseline HRV, indicative of better stress resilience, suggesting that these sticky thoughts may be adaptive in certain situations. Future work clarifying how different types of thoughts relate to coping strategy use may inform interventions that help people become more successful at coping with stress.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions