Health Psychology Flashcards
define stress
- Pattern of physiological, cognitive, emotional and behaviour response to real or imagined stimuli that are perceived as preventing a goal or endangering or otherwise threatening wellbeing
- The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events or stressors that we view as challenging or threatening
define stressors
- Events or circumstances or unrealistic thoughts that cause stress
- Not all stressors are undesirable e.g. sports competition
- Depending on circumstances next to anything could be a stressor
basis of stress
Walter Cannon: ‘fight or flight’
- Physiological reactions to dangerous situation
- Preparation to fight or run away
When stressful situations are longer lasting physiological reactions have adverse effects
source of stress
Choices: how to do something and when?
Approach-approach: choice between two desirable outcomes e.g. short-term vs long-term reward e.g. spending money now vs saving for retirement
Approach-avoidance: one outcome is desirable, the other is not e.g. wanting to visit a friend but being afraid of her dog
Avoidance- avoidance: both outcomes are undesirable e.g. at dentist, root canal or tooth extraction
Selye’s general adaptation syndrome (GAS)
- Alarm
- Shock phase
- The body’s first reaction (fight or flight) - Resistance:
- Occurs with continued exposure
- Adaptation begins when the body starts to benefit from the increased access to the energy reserves provided by the alarm reaction - Exhaustion
- Physiological resources are depleted
- Acquired adaptation is lost and exhaustion sets in
criticism of Selye’s GAS
- Little consideration of psychological factors e.g. cognitive appraisal
- Assumed that all responses to stress are uniform
- Failed to consider that individual responses are influenced by personality, perception and biological constitution
- Failed to consider the specificity of challenges - Stress is assessed as an outcome
- What about anticipation of a stressful occurrence?
cognitive appraisal
- Our own reactions/ the way we interpret what is happening also affects stress (Robert Lazarus)
o Stage 1: evaluations of the threat… if perceived as real then stage 2
o Stage 2: determination if sufficient resources availble to cope with stress (individual differences) - Hardiness: some people view stressors as challenges and meet them head on, felt they had control over stressors
o Result: less illness due to long-term stress - Perceived control: situations that allow some form of control produce less signs of stress (also magic charms etc – illusion of control)
social support
- Social support – the help we receive from others
- Social support seen as helpful for stress:
o Benefit form learning others how they coped with stress
o Others can provide encouragement and incentives - Empirical results of the effect of social support: mixed
- Brown et al. (2003): compared social contact, receiving social support and giving social support
Brown et al. (2003)
Participants: elderly couple
Time 1: participants asked:
- How much instrumental support they have gave/ received? E.g. providing transporation
- How much emotional support they gave to their spouse/ received from their spouse? E.g. make spouse feel loved and care for
- Assessment of control variables e.g. age, gender, health, mental health, personality variables
Time 2 (five years later): mortality
Results:
- When controlling for all variables including giving and receiving emotional support they found receiving instrumental social support increased the odds of mortality and giving instrumental social support decreased the odds of mortality
- When controlling for dependence they found giving emotional support to a spouse decreased the odds of mortality
Lazarus & Folkman (1984): different types of coping responses
- Problem focused coping: directed towards the source of the stress
o E.g. stress is job-related acquire skills and get new job
o Good to use when stress-evoking problem has a solution - Emotion-focused coping: directed towards one’s own personal reaction to the stressor
o E.g. seek comfort in the presence of friends
o Only option if stress-evoking problem has no solution
Coping: cognitive reappraisal
- Reappraisal means that when a stressor is re-evaluated as less threatening then stress should be reduced
- Example: exam
- Initial response: that test is going to be too hard
- Reappraisal: the test will be difficult, but I am ready for it
Coping: progressive relaxation
- Same principle as cognitive reappraisal: substitute incompatible response for the stress reaction
- Steps:
1. Recognising body’s signals for stress
2. Signals as cues to begin relaxing
3. Relaxing by focusing attention to muscle groups: start with head/neck. Then arms. Legs
other forms of coping
- In clinical settings: stress inoculation training as problem-focused coping strategy
- Disclosure interventions: write about stressful experiences
- Hypnosis
- Conditioning interventions: neutral stimulus paired with immune system facilitator
do coping strategies work?
- Mixed results
- One study looked at relaxation interventions, disclosure interventions, hypnosis and conditioning intervention~:
- Found little evidence of success on immune response level for relaxation
- Modest evidence for disclosure, hypnosis and conditioning
- Different strategies might work for different types of situation or individuals
