Brosschot (2017). Exposed to events that never happen: Generalized unsafety, the default stress response, and prolonged autonomic activity.

Question 1

three prevalent conditions are vulnerable:

Answer 1

(1) ‘Compromised bodies’: in conditions with reduced bodily capacity, namely obesity, low aerobic fitness and older age, GU is preserved due to its evolutionary survival value;
(2) ‘Compromised social network’: in loneliness the primary source of safety is lacking, i.e. being part of a cohesive social network;
(3 ‘Compromised contexts’: in case of specific stressors (e.g. work stressors), daily contexts that are neutral by themselves (e.g. office building, email at home) may become unsafe by previously being paired with stressors, via context conditioning.

Question 2

Generalized Unsafety Theory of Stress:

Answer 2

• The stress response is a default response, it is ‘always there’; it is not generated but disinhibited.
• This default response is under tonic prefrontal inhibition as long as safety is perceived; and the conditions of safety are learned during an individual organisms lifespan.
• This tonic inhibition is reflected by high tonic vagally mediated heart rate variability, and is relatively energy-economic. Thus, the inhibition of the default stress response when safety is perceived, may take time to be established, but it is not costly to prolong it. On the contrary, its disinhibition takes little time, but is costly, and when prolonged it may lead to biological dysregulation and disease.
• Chronic stress responses are due to generalized unsafety (GU) rather than stressors.
• GU is present in many other conditions, including obesity, old age and loneliness.