What is Stress?
the constellation of cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral reactions the organism experiences as it interacts with perceived threats and challenges
Fight or Flight
- Concept coined by Walter Cannon
- The body’s physiological response to fight a stressor or flee from it
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
- Selye 1956
- Three stages of Chronic Stress:
1) Alarm
2) Resistance: depleting protection/ natural resources against stressors
3) Exhaustion: immune systems breaking down; illness and death more accesible
Distress
Negative Stress
Eustress
Positive Stress
Hazards and Uplifts Scale
- Lazarus (1984)
- Stress Scale that measures for irritants and pressures and positive encounters and experiences
Appraisal
- Judgement about the relative significance of the event and evaluate as a threat or challenge (subjective vs objective)
- example: being cut off in traffic results in anger
- Primary: person evaluates present and potential harm or loss from event
- Secondary:person evaluates coping resources; if not enough resources are available, threat is experienced
Biopyschosocial Model of Health
Newer model of health that views stress and health as a product of biological, psychological, and social influences
- sees mind and body act as an interactive whole
Biomedical Model of Health
Model of health that focuses on the biological facts; binary view of health (health and illness are separate)
mind and body are separate entities
Sense of Coherence
From Antonovsky’s Salutogenic Model
3 main factors:
- Comprehensibility: the degree to which we can make cognitive sense of stimuli we perceive
- Manageability: our ability to access internal and external coping resources and use them when we need them
- Meaningfullness: our ability to emotionally make sense of demands and to perceive them as challenges rather than burdens
Hedonic Adaption
s the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.
