Chapter 3 Flashcards
Stress
circumstance where transactions lead a person to perceive a discrepancy between the physical or psychological demands of a situation and the resources of their biological, psychological, or social systems
Stressors
physically or psychologically challenging events or circumstances
Person-environment fit
whether the demands of the situation and the resource of the person match
Appraisal of stress
- comprised of Primary and Secondary appraisal
- Appraising events as stressful depends on factors that relate to the person (ie. High self-esteem = less stress) and the situation (strong, imminent demands = more stressful)
Primary Appraisal vs. Secondary Appraisal
- Primary appraisal: assessing the meaning of a potentially stressful circumstance for our well-being -> is it irrelevant, good, or stressful?
- If stressful, we appraise it further: harm-loss (how much damage has already occurred?), threat (is there future harm?), challenge (can I grow/profit if I meet this demand?)
- Secondary appraisal: assessing the resources we have for coping -> if we judge something as stressful, do we have the means to cope?
- If resources are sufficient to meet demands, we have little or no stress (and vice versa)
Dimensions of stressful events
- Biopsychosocial
- Biological: Reactivity (physiological response to stressor); different stressors elicit different reactivity (ie. Different hormone secretions); often depends on effort and distress involved
- Psychosocial: Cognition, emotion, social aspects
physiological response to stress
- Sympathetic nervous system takes over (heart rate increases, digestion suppressed, etc.)
- Endocrine system secretes adrenalin
Cannon’s fight-or-flight response
- Body mobilizes to defend against stress through activation of sympathetic nervous system and adrenalin secretion
- Adaptive in life-or-death situations, but not with stress we typically experience, like traffic
Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome
- 3 stages
- Alarm reaction (fight or flight response; body mobilized to defend against stressor)
- Resistance (arousal high as body defends and adapts to stressor)
- Exhaustion: (resources limited, resistance may collapse)
Relationship between stress and cognition
- Cognitive appraisal plays a role in people’s physiological reaction to stressors
- High levels of stress affect people’s memory and attention -> disrupt cognitive processes
- Rumination/worrying about threats can maintain elevated stress response
Relationship between stress and emotion
Cognitive appraisal of a stressor can influence your emotions (ie. Fear, anger, depression)
Relationship between stress and social behaviour
Some stressors increase social behaviour, whereas some stressors (ie. ones that elicit anger) make people more hostile
Gender differences in stress
- Women generally report experiencing more major and minor stressors than men (especially interpersonal strains and home-based stressors)
- May be because they are more willing to report, but typically women do have more stress b/c of “second shift”
- Men show more reactivity to stress than women, and take longer to return to baseline after
- This does depend on type of stress though: Men show greater reactivity when competence is challenged; women show greater reactivity when love/friendship is challenged
- Men’s responses = fight or flight, women’s responses = tend and befriend (increase effort to maintain social ties)
Sociocultural differences in stress
- Being poor or part of a minority group also increases stressors people experience, which is related to those groups also experiencing greater health difficulties
- Blacks and aboriginals show greater reactivity than whites
- Adults with low income and education report more chronic stress and major stressors
Sources of stress within person
- illness
- conflict
- Social motives (ie. Motives about interactions and relationships with others)
- Unattainable goals
3 types of conflicts
- Approach-approach: 2 appealing goals that are incompatible (ie. Wanting to lose weight but wanting to eat cake)
- Avoidance-avoidance: choice between 2 undesirable situations (ie. Choosing between 2 treatments with negative side effects); very stressful – people often postpone choice, change their mind, or get someone else to decide
- Approach-avoidance: single goal has unattractive and attractive features (ie. Wanting to quit smoking to improve health, but getting cravings)
Sources of stress within family
- Adding a new family member (especially if the baby has a difficult temperament); stress can also lead to prematurity, which leads to more stress
- Marital conflict and divorce: frequent and severe conflict leads to high stress and sleep difficulties, making recovering from stress harder; divorce produces many stressful transitions for all family members
- Illness and death in family: chronic illness leads to chronic stress (for kids, caregivers, etc.)
- Age sometimes influences stress (ie. Young children don’t fully understand death, so may not be as stressed)
Sources of stress in community and society
Jobs and stress (many people report jobs as main source of stress)
Factors that make jobs stressful
- Demands of the task (high workload, resources like having authority over others, repetitive manual labour)
- Responsibility for people’s lives -> can cause burnout
- Physical environment (ie. Extreme levels of noise, light, temperature, etc.)
- Perceived insufficient control over aspects of the job
- Poor interpersonal relationships with coworkers/customers
- Perceived inadequate recognition or advancement
- Job loss and insecurity
Environmental stress
noisy, crowded environments, ones with serious threats of violence or harm, poorer neighbourhoods, rural, discriminatory places = high stress
3 ways of measuring stress
- Measuring physiological arousal (heart rate, skin response, blood pressure, etc.; assessing hormones in blood and urine, etc.)
- Measuring life events: Social readjustment rating scale (giving stressful life events a value of stress and asking people to check off ones that have happened to them to get a stress score)
- Measuring daily hassles:
- Hassles scale (indicating which hassles occurred in past month, rating their stress; related to health) and uplifts scale (had no association with health status)
Strengths and weaknesses of the 3 ways of measuring stress
- Physiological measures: reliable, direct, objective, but expensive and potentially stressful for the person (ie. When drawing blood) and can be influenced by age, gender, etc.
- Social readjustment rating scale: represents a wide range of stressful events, easy to fill out, but can be vague/ambiguous, disregards age and personal characteristics, some items could be desirable, emphasize single (not chronic) events
- Daily life events: measuring is important and simple, but people aren’t always accurate in remembering
Benefits of stress
- Some people function best at a level of arousal that’s optimal for them
- Cognitive appraisal is important in determining experience of stress
- Eustress = good stress (distress = bad stress)
- Everyone is different in their susceptibility to effects of stress
Is stress an objective or subjective experience?
- there are objective elements (ie. Major stress affects people similarly)
- but a lot is subjective (ie. Cognitive appraisal; individual susceptibility)
Characteristics of stressful experiences
Life transitions, difficult timing (ie. Having a baby at 16), ambiguity, low desirability, low controllability
allostatic load
effects of the body adapting repeatedly to stressors that accumulate over time; creates wear and tear on body
4 important factors in overall amount of physiological stress burden
- Amount of exposure
- Magnitude of reactivity
- Rate of recovery
- Resource restoration
Spillover vs. Crossover
- Spillover: when the individual carries their job stress home and become more stressed
- Crossover: when that stress has an effect on someone else in the home
