Environmental - Stressors in the Environment Flashcards
Stress and Stressors (Background)
- Stress - the response we get when the demands of our environment are greater than the capacity we have to deal with
- Stressors - any stimulus that requires an adjustment or an adaptation in order to be able to deal with it
- Internal stressors - worry or anxiety
- External stressors - noise, overcrowding or temperature
- The biological response to stress is sometimes described as the ‘fight or flight’ reflex
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) (Background)
Describes the process your body goes through when you are exposed to any stress
Stage 1: Alarm - a threat or stressor means that the body prepares itself for fight or light
Stage 2: Resistance - if the situation continues, the body tires to adapt to cope with the long term demands of the stressful situation
Stage 3: Exhaustion - ultimately the bodily resources will become depleted; this is where damage to the body starts to occur
Short term stress system; SAM (Background)
- Sympathetic-Adrenal Medullary system
- Faster system as it communicated with the brain through nerves
- Higher brain centres → Hypothalamus → ANS → Adrenal Medulla → Release of adrenaline and noradrenaline
Long term/chronic stress system; HPA (Background)
- Pituitary Adrenal System
- Slower system as it communicates with the brain through the blood
- Higher brain centres → hypothalamus → pituitary gland → adrenal cortex → release of corticosteroids
Noise as an environmental stressor (Background)
- Noise - any unwanted sound, especially one that is loud, unpleasant or that causes disturbance
- Intensity of noise is measured in decibels
Bronzaft - Noise and affect on education (Background)
- Looked at the effect on reading ability in children who had their lessons in classrooms near train tracks and found they had a significantly lower reading ability than those children on the quieter side
- After major noise reduction work had been carried out at the school, classroom location no longer had an effect on reading ability
Evans, Bullinger and Hygge - Noise and affect on health (Background)
Found that children attending a school near an airport had higher noradrenaline levels and higher BP than children in quieter areas
Noise at work (Background)
- Tornei et al (2010) - people that work in very noisy environments suffer from high BP
- Glass and Singer (1972) - when ps were exposed to loud noise they showed less ability to persist at a task when the noise was removed; cognitive overload