5. stress Flashcards
Problems with Cannon’s and Selye’s biological models of stress
Described stress within a straightforward stimulus–response framework, where the individual responds automatically to an external stressor. Ignore individual variability and psychological factors.
Both also described the physiological response to stress as consistent, regardless of the nature of the stressor. This is reflected in the use of the term ‘arousal’ which has been criticized by more recent researchers.
Individuals described as passive and as responding automatically to their external world.
Types of stress
Eustress: perceived as manageable
Promotes personal growth
Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
Distress: uncontrollable, prolonged, or overwhelming
Acute stress: immediate response to a threat or challenge
Chronic stress: ongoing exposure to stress, may seem unrelenting
which 3 characteristic ways of thinking affect peoples ability to handle stressors in their lives:
Dispositional optimism/pessimism
Hardiness
Sense-making
what is the process of the stress response
Stress activates the amygdala, an area of the brain that contributes to emotional processing, which initially sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. This area of the brain functions like a command center, activating the sympathetic nervous system by sending signals through the autonomic nerves to the adrenal glands. These glands respond by pumping adrenaline into the bloodstream, bringing on a number of physiological changes.
what medicl illnessess can arise if the stress system is activated for a long period of time
Anxiety
Depression
Alcoholism
Substance abuse
Insomnia
Irritable bowel syndrome
Fibromyalgia
Decreased sex drive
explain the direct effect stress and the type a personality has on heart disease
A behavioral pattern or personality style traditionally linked to CHD is the type A pattern (Friedman and Roseman, 1950s):
Longitudinal study followed 3000 middle aged participants for 8 years (Friedman and Roseman, 1976): type A men had twice as many heart attacks or other forms of CHD as men not type A, even when smoking, age, diet, hypertension were controlled.
Subsequent studies (with lawyers, physicians) show that especially hostility as a personality trait is associated with CHD:
through hyperresponsivity of the sympathetic nervous system to stressful situations: blood pressure, heart rate increase more.
more interpersonal conflict and less social support.
The indirect effect of stress on health
Most of the diseases people die from in industrialized countries are heavily influenced by health-related behaviors and when we are stressed, we are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors:
we stay up a night, staying up just two nights significantly reduces performance in math and creative tasks
skip meals, live on junk food
drink more, smoke more
stop exercising, become sedentary
drinking more makes coping even more difficult: induced fatigue, modified perception
explain the Role of Genetics and Development in mediating the stress response
Genes control the stress response as There is a genetic component to: fearful behavior, anxiety disorders and neurobiological response
therfore, Individuals have different responses to stress
development: Life experiences can affect a person’s stress response. eg amount of Social support, protective: profound effect on life expectancy, patients have better outcomes with strong social support
Early life stress increases stress reactivity as an adult
explain how which factors
affect responses to stress
People vary greatly in how they respond to stress. Some of bounce back quickly, some even choose to put themselves in stressful circumstances, others might become ill.
these diffeerences can be accounted for by:
-Appraisals (how to they perceive the situation)
-Dispositional optimism/pessimism, hardiness, sense-making (how to they handle the situation?)
explain how Appraisals affect stress responses
primary appraisal process: determines whether the environment is perceived as psychologically threatening, harmful, or challenging to the person.
secondary appraisal process: a complex evaluative process in which a person considers resources available to cope with the primarily appraised stressor.
explain how Dispositional optimism and pessimism affect stress
Positive beliefs and humor are associated with :
well being; cognitive reframing; positive thinking
refuting negative thinking
Pessimism affects health:
directly: higher blood pressure, poorer immune functioning
indirectly: reducing our tendency to engage in health-promoting behaviors (Cohen et al., 2010 found smoking and poor diet in pessimistic CHD patients)
explain how the characteristic pf ‘finding meaning or ‘sense making’ affects the ability to handle stressors in their lives:
Many people confronted with a major trauma say that their lives have changed in positive ways as a result of the experience – saying that they grew in character; discovered new strengths; made major changes in their lives
- Recently bereaved people who found meaning in their loss showed less depression and fewer symptoms of PTSD than those who did not (Davis et al., 1998).
how is finding meaning linked to hardiness
among US soldiers participating in a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, those who scored high on measures of hardiness were more likely to believe they had obtained benefits from the mission (Britt et al., 2001).
how can coping behaviours be catagorised
Problem-focused: changing our environment to reduce the stress
Emotion-focused: changing our response to the stress, the strategy can be behavioral or cognitive
Behavioral techniques to help coping: biofeedback
patients learn to control bodily processes that are normally involuntary, such as muscle tension, blood pressure, or heart rate
feedback on: skin temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar, muscle tension (EMG), brain wave activity (EEG)
can alleviate high blood pressure, tension headache, and migraine headache
e.g. tension headaches: electrodes attached to forehead, so any muscle contraction can be detected and fed back to the patient as an auditory signal. By learning to control the pitch of the tone, the individual learns to keep the muscle relaxed
