Chapter 61: The Psychophysiology Of Stress Flashcards
What is a stressor
It is a physiological response to physical and psychological demands.
What is physical tension
Living bodies maintain a degree of physical tension where the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of autonomic nervous system are responsible for physical tension in the body.
Sympathetic stimulation determines the level of physical tension in the body. Sympathetic activity can be more dominant than parasympathetic activity. Sympathetic activity is higher if it’s greater than parasympathetic activity and lower than one if sympathetic activity is less than parasympathetic activity.
When is our level of physical tension high.
When were active. The physical tension of an alert body is higher than that of a relaxed body where the difference in physical tension is referred to as body’s level of physical arousal.
What is a second way that people react to incoming stimuli
Individuals have a labile nervous system while others have a more stable one. If your nervous system is labile you likely to react more quickly and intensely to stimuli because balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic is disturbed easily. Your nervous system has a lower degree of autonomic homeostasis and is aroused more quickly.
If your nervous system is more stable your physical tension is less likely to be disturbed as severely as a labile system. Your nervous system has a higher degree of autonomic homeostasis and body isn’t easily aroused.
What is emotional tension.
Physical tension together with cognitive content of threat leads to conscious experience of feeling tense and this tenseness about a situation is emotional tension.
How is emotional tension experienced
It’s related to our autonomic homeostasis of our nervous system. If you have a high degree of autonomic homeostasis your physical arousal is smooth and steady and likely to experience less emotional tension that someone with low degree of autonomic homeostasis.
Our level of physical arousal together with amount of threat a situation holds determine degree of emotional tension we experience meaning emotional tension varies as physical arousal and perception of threat change. The difference between a feeling of no emotional tension and emotional tension experienced is an indication of level off psychological arousal in a situation.
What is psycho physiological arousal
It consists of physical arousal and psychological arousal.
