II-2- What makes events stressful?

Question 1

Describe the methods that are commonly used as indicators of stress (4)

Answer 1

1. Self-reports of perceived stress, life change, and emotional distress.
2. Behavioral measures, such as task performance under stress.
3. Physiological measures of arousal, such as heart rate and blood pressure.
4. Biochemical markers, especially elevated catecholamines and alerations in the diurnal rhythm of cortisol or cortisol responses to stress.

Question 2

List the methodological problems associated with stress indicators.

Answer 2

Catecholamine secretion is enhanced by a number of factors other than stress. Self-report measures are subject to a variety of biases, because individuals may want to present themselves in as desirable a light as possible. Behavioral measures are subject to multiple interpretations. For example, performance declines can be due to declining motivation, fatigue, cognitive strain, or other factors.

Question 3

Identify the population for which positive life events are more stressful than negative ones.

Answer 3

Among people who hold negative views of themselves, positive life events can have a detrimental effect on health, whereas for people with high self-esteem, positive life events are linked to better health.

Question 4

five characteristics of events that are likely to be appraised as stressful.

Answer 4

Negative events: Many negative events have the potential to be stressful because they present people with extra work or special problems that may tax or exceed their resources.
Uncontrollable events: Uncontrollable or unpredictable events are perceived and actually are more stressful than controllable or predictable ones. When people feel that they can predict, modify, or terminate an aversive event or feel they have access to someone who can influence it, they experience it as less stressful, even if they actually do nothing about it.
Ambiguous events: Ambiguous events are often perceived as more stressful than are clear-cut events. When a potential stressor is ambiguous, a person has no opportunity to take action. He or she must instead devote energy to trying to understand the stressor, which can be a time-consuming, resource-sapping task.
Overwhelming events: Overloaded people are more stressed than are people with fewer tasks to perform. People who have too many tasks in their lives report higher levels of stress than do those who have fewer tasks.
Events involving central life tasks: People may be more vulnerable to stress in central life domains than in peripheral ones because important aspects of the self are overly invested in central life domains.

Question 5

chronic strain

Answer 5

A stressful experience that is a usual but continually stressful aspect of life.

Question 6

post-traumatic stress disorder

Answer 6

A syndrome that results after exposure to a stressor of extreme magnitude, marked by emotional numbing, the reliving of aspects of the trauma, intense responses to other stressful events, and other symptoms, such as hyper-alertness, sleep disturbance, guilt, or impaired memory or concentration.