Latent types of frustration triggers and their links to psychopathology in young adults
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Frustration is a central construct in theory, research, and practice concerning irritability across multiple forms of psychopathology. However, little is known about individual differences in what drives frustration. To address this gap, we investigated self-reported frustration triggers and their associations with psychopathology symptoms.Young adult participants (N = 536; ages 18-25; 61.7% female; 72.2% White; 23.1% Hispanic/Latino) completed symptom rating scales measuring anxiety, depression, irritability, anger, oppositionality, and inattention/hyperactivity. They were also asked to describe three situations that cause them to feel frustrated. Analyses used latent Dirichlet allocation to identify qualitative themes in frustration triggers and linear and logistic regression models to examine how different types of frustration triggers were correlated with different types of symptoms.Results supported four latent topics: “Other People” (capturing 48.6% of frustration triggers, reported by 79.1% of participants), “Effort and Performance” (27.2%, 54.5%), “Unmet Expectations” (15.2%, 33.0%), and “Friends and Plans” (9.0%, 21.3%). Across multiple phases of analysis, Other People frustration triggers predicted irritability and oppositionality, while Unmet Expectations predicted anxiety and depression. Interestingly, Effort and Performance predicted lower levels of irritability. There were no significant associations for anger, inattention/hyperactivity, or the Friends and Plans latent topic.Frustration triggers varied meaningfully across individuals and showed differential associations to psychopathology dimensions. Externalizing symptoms (oppositionality, irritability) were linked to external frustrations attributed to other people, whereas internalizing symptoms (anxiety, depression) were linked to internal frustrations defined by unmet expectations. Probing idiographic variation in frustration could help advance clinical and translational research toward more targeted interventions for irritability.
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Authors: Spencer C. Evans, Shannon Shaughnessy, Hannah Grassie, Patricia Gao, Jill Ehrenreich-May, Kiara Timpano
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7167925167