Stress moderators
Psychological and social factors that seem to modify the impact of stressors on the individual
Social support
comfort, caring, or help available to a person from other people or groups
Types of social support
- Emotional/esteem support: empathy, caring, positive regard towards a person; appears to protect from negative emotional consequences of stress
- Tangible or instrumental support: direct assistance (ie. Giving money)
- Informational support: giving advice, directions, or feedback
- Companionship support: spending time with a person
What influences provision of effective social support?
- People unlikely to receive support if they’re unsociable, don’t help others, and don’t let others know when they need help
- Providers of support may not have resources needed, may be insensitive, or may need support themselves
Effect of social support on psychological distress, physiological and neuroendocrine responses, and illness and health
- Social support reduces stress and psychological strain, typically reduces reactivity, leads to lower rates of developing heart disease, and lower mortality rates
- However, this is correlational, so we can’t say social support causes good health
Social support: Direct effects vs. Buffering
- Direct effects: social support benefits health regardless of amount of stress (by creating strong feelings of belongingness and positive outlook)
- Buffering: social support protects people against negative effects of high stress/strong stressors (by changing their appraisal and response to stressor)
how does the stress prevention model explain the relationship between stress and health?
- Suggests social support may be helpful because it can provide advice and resources to minimize exposure to stressful events
- Ex. Supportive friends and family help us make good choices about avoiding conflict
why does social support not always reduce stress?
Not helpful if we don’t feel it’s supportive, we don’t want it, or it’s insufficient
Personal control
feeling like you can take action to produce desirable outcomes and avoid undesirable ones -> high personal control = less strain from stressors
3 aspects of personal control
- Behavioural control: ability to take concrete action to reduce impact of stressor
- Cognitive control: using thought processes to modify impact of a stressor
- High personal control leads to better ability to maintain health and promote rehabilitation once they get sick
Internal vs. external locus of control
- Internal LOC: believing you have control over your own successes and failures
- External LOC: believing their lives are controlled by forces outside themselves
Self-efficacy
- belief that we can succeed at a specific activity we want to do
- comprised of outcome expectancy – would it have favourable outcome? And self-efficacy expectancy – can we actually do it?
- People with high self-efficacy have lower stress
how is a sense of personal control developed?
- Based on our successes and failures throughout life
- Social learning
- Socialization (ie. Due to gender and culture)
Helplessness and learned helplessness
- When people experience high levels of stress and feel nothing they do matters, they feel helpless
- People who attribute negative events as stable, global, and internal (vs. Unstable, specific, and external) more helpless
- When people believe they have no control over events in their life and stop exerting control even when they could succeed, they have developed learned helplessness
Hardiness
- 3 components: control (belief they have it), commitment (people’s sense of purpose in events in their lives), challenge (viewing change as opportunity rather than threat)
- Influences who gets sick under stress
- Stamina is similar to hardiness for people in old age (triumphant, positive outlook during adversity)
Sense of coherence
tendency of people to see the world as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful -> reduced stress and illness
Optimism
good things likely to happen -> less stress, better health habits, recover faster
Resilience
high self-esteem, personal control, and optimism (bounce back quickly from adversity)
4 aspects of personality that can influence vulnerability and resilience to stress/illness
- hardiness
- sense of coherence
- optimism
- resilience
4 characteristics of Type As
- Competitive achievement orientation (constant competition with others)
- Time urgency (impatient with delays, multitaskers)
- Anger/hostility
- Vigorous vocal style (loud, rapid, controlling speakers)
Type As and stress
- Type As react more quickly and strongly to stressors – see them as threats; are more exposed to stressors because they choose more demanding activities and evoke anger in others
- Type A’s have higher risk of coronary heart disease
Diathesis-Stress model
people’s vulnerability to disorder depends on their predisposition to it (diathesis) and the amount of stress they experience
How does behaviour influence stress/illness?
People who experience high levels of stress tend to behave in ways that increase their chances of illness (ie. Drink more alcohol)
relationship between cardiovascular activity and illness
Increases in risk of cardiovascular illness as you age; high reactivity early in adulthood associated with higher risk of cardiovascular illness
