What is Stress?
Stress: Any circumstances that can threaten or are precieved to threaten ones well being and thereby tax ones coping abilities
Stress is Subjective and can include:
- Sudden trauma experience
- Continuing pressures that seem uncontrollable
- Small irritations that wear you down
Stress As An Everyday Event:
- Stress comes from a series of stressors or daily hassles
- Stress reaction to hassle = ones reaction to stress in everyday life
Major Types of Stress
Acute Stressors: Threatening events that have a relatively short duration and a clear endpoint
Chronic Stressor: Threatening events that have a relatively long duration and no readily apparent time limit
Stress Appeaisal Process:
Primary Appraisal: Initial evaluation of whether a event is:
a. Irrevelant to you
b. Relevant but not threatening
c. Stressful
Secondary Appraisal: Evaluation of your coping resources and options for dealing with the stress
Major Types of Stres:
Frustration: Occurs when pursuit of some goal is thwarted
Conflict: Occurs when two or more incompatiable motivations of behaviourial impusles compete for expression
Approach-approach conflict: need to choose between two attractive goals
Avoidance-avoidence Conflict: need to choose between two unattractive goals
Approach-avoidence conflict: need to decide whether to pursue a single goal that has both attractive and unattractive goals
Life Changes: any noticeable alteration in ones living circumstances that require adjustment
Homles and Rahe: Social and Readjusment Rating Scale (SRRS)
- A stress scale that rates the degree to which life events are stressful
Pressure: Expectations or demands that one behave in a certain way
Emotional Responses to Stress:
- Annoyance, anger, and rage
- Apprehensive, anxeity, and fear
- Dejection, sadness and greif
Stressful situations can also trigger positive emotions:
- 9/11 study: After the terrorist attacks, participants who reported positive emotions like graditude and renewed love for family and friends were more likely to be resilent and “bounce back”
Broden and
Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotion
Fight or Flight Response: When an organism perceives a threat, the body is rapidly aroused and motivated to either attack the threat or flee
Physical Response to Stress:
Stress-illness Mystery:
Stressors can increase illness when they:
- Servely distrupt a person’s life
- Uncontroliable
- Chronic
The Physiology of Stress:
[chronic stressors] = [Physiological alarm and exhaustion] = Illness
General adaptation syndrome [Selye’s Theory]
Three phases in responding to stressors:
- Alarm
- Resistance
- Exhuastion
Goal: min wear and tear on the system
Sex Difference in Physiological Responses to Stress:
Males: Stress is more intense than females
The Effects of Stress:
The Effects of Stress on Psychological Functioning
l Impaired Task Performance
¡ Pressure can interfere with performance by elevating self-consciousness
¡ Anxiety distracts attention from task
¡ Test anxiety
l Writing about fears and anxiety before an exam can improve performance
l Optimism: general expectation that overall, things will go well; expect the best
l Pessimism: general expectation that things will not go well for them; expect the worst
Explanatory Style and Stress
l Defensive Pessimism: The tendency to attend to and worry about failure on upcoming tasks in a strategic effort to motivate oneself to do well
Explanatory Style and Stress
l Defensive Pessimism Study
¡ Defensive pessimists and optimists were told that they would be tested on mental arithmetic problems
¡ Half of the participants were told to list their thoughts and feelings about the upcoming test; half were asked to do a distractor task
¡ Measured:
l Anxiety level
l Arithmetic score
l Personality and Stress
l Type A Personality: determined to achieve, impatient, competitive, angry and hostile; results in continual stress
l Type B Personality: calmer and less intense; experience less stress
l Type C Personality: difficulty expressing or acknowledging negative feelings; particularly vulnerable to stress
l Social Support and Stress
l Social Support
¡ People with network of close connections live longer than those who do not
¡ After heart attack, those with no close contacts were twice as likely to die
l Coping
Coping Stress
l Coping: cognitive and behavioural strategies to manage stress
¡ Lashing out: psychological or physical
¡ Self-defence: defensive, avoidant behaviours to protect oneself from stress
¡ Self-indulgence: alcohol, drugs, overeating
l Coping with Stress
l Constructive Strategies:
¡ Problem-focused coping: Take care of the problem causing the anxiety
¡ Emotion-focused coping: Reduce emotional distress
Stress and Health
l Interaction between psychological and biological factors
¡ Coronary heart disease
l Psychological (e.g., Type A) and biological (e.g., obesity)
Stress and Health
l Stress and the immune system
¡ Psychoneuroimmunology: studies links between stress, the immune system, and health
¡ Immune system: organs, tissues, and cells that identify and fight bodily invaders (e.g., viruses, bacteria, cancer cells)
¡ Lymphocytes: white blood cells, key in fighting bacterial and viral invaders
Stress and the Common Cold l Stress and Health l Depression and Disease ¡ Depression roughly doubles one’s chances of developing heart disease ¡ Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
How Much Control Do We Have over Our Health?
l Link between stress and illness is not straightforward and direct
l Public might be oversimplifying message in health psychology research
¡ Factors that produce good health are not entirely psychological or entirely under our control
¡ How Much Control Do We Have over Our Health?
3 strongest predictors of living a long, healthy life
¡ not smoking, eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly
