Lecture 7-Psychosocial Factors of stress Flashcards
what is the popular concept of stress
Pressure Strain Anxiety Tension Wound up Stressy Overwhelmed Stressed out Things piling up Too much to manage Cant cope Under pressure
Definitions of Psychosocial Stress
the condition that results when person-environment transactions lead the individual to perceive a discrepancy - whether real or not - between the demands of a situation and the resources of the person’s biological, psychological, or social systems’ (or all 3) (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984)
Transaction between the individual and their environment individual differences.
May seem stressful for one person but not another
All to do with subjective perception
Types of stress
Major life event e.g. death, divorce, moving house
Minor life event e.g. changing job, graduation, relationship breakup
Daily hassle e.g. losing something, being late for a lecture
Perceived stress ie overall sense of feeling overwhelmed
In a life event schedule, these are normally rated the highest.
Even positive life events often have stressful life events
Daily hassles, can become major life events cause extreme stress over time.
Questionnaires to measure all of these
Is stress always bad for you?
Can be a motivator get you to revise under pressure Eustress Good stress Positive mood states Improved performance Need level of stress to help you perform but also need to be able to manage the stress after the event ie running a race To help you go back to normal Good stress rather than distress
what are the 2 types of stress?
Acute: short lived - lasting minutes, hours, days…
Chronic: long term (enduring) – lasting weeks, months, years …
what’s the difference between the 2 types of stress?
The distinction between acute and chronic stress is based on intensity (how intense is the initial burst?) and duration (how long does that last?) of the stressor
Stressor characteristics 4 main aspects
Unpredictable- natural disasters
Produce an acute stress response
Uncontrollable- perceive that they are unable to do anything about it.
Social Evaluative Threat-social judgement, feeling that people are going to judge you for your decisions/how you are performing
Time pressure- Feeling of having to do it under a deadline
In planning you improve take away some of the stress characteristics.
All of these are ingredients for stress, you can ease the stress by factoring in these things, and then being able to eliminate some of them.
Experimental Social Stress Testing: Stress Reactivity
Allen, A. P., Kennedy, P. J., Dockray, S., Cryan, J. F., Dinan, T. G., & Clarke, G. (2017). The Trier Social Stress Test: Principles and practice.
Has a panel of people, who look serious ‘threatening’
They’re evaluating you
Camera set up recording you, they’re taking notes
Given a period of time to prepare to give a speech cant take notes in to make the speech
Triggers social evaluative threat
Panel is silent
If they stop/don’t know what to say the panel wait in silence
Brief surprise math’s task with no preparation ie count backwards from 104479 in 13’s
Synonymous with regular every day stressors to try and replicate everyday stress.
Can look at how diff personalities cope, look at coping mechanisms used.
Lots of versions of the stress test used, one of the ways that it has been changed is to use this in children, but it produces less consistent responses in children
The Bath Experimental Stress Test for Children (BEST-C)
Cheetham, T. and Turner-Cobb, J.M. (2016). Panel manipulation in social stress testing: the Bath Experimental Stress Test for Children (BEST-C)
What happens if you were to match the panel with the participants?
What if you put children aged 7-11 on this panel?
Reduced time for children
Had to give a talk about their favorite subject in class
As an adult it is hard to do with children as you have to maintain the protocol with the children/stay poker faced no matter what they do?
If you expect children to deliver the same protocol every time then it is unlikely that they will be able to!!
Making it more meaningful to the children
One of them would stare directly at the children, some may be looking out of the window/yawning/looking bored all characteristics are stressful
Interviewed kids after the experiment
BEST-C salivary cortisol reactivity and recovery across three patterns of response
Some said that they feel quite stressed after the experiment
Some people thought it was rubbish and they didn’t feel stressed
When cortisol level was looked at they matched their subjective levels! (how stressed they said they were matched the levels of cortisol)
Often doesn’t happen in adults, as subjective reporting of stress is likely to be reduced
Boys generally had higher stress levels than the girls
If you matched the panel that had an effect on the children
Most of the work looks at changing the work/task or environment that the participants were in.
Social Evaluative Threat (SET) – The robot study…
Aim & Hypotheses:
To conduct a proof of concept study to assess whether a non-human robot audience used in a social stress testing setting could induce a psychosocial stress response in human participants
The robot audience would be capable of inducing a stress response in humans as seen in heart rate and cortisol reactivity, indicative of SET
Degree of incongruity between objective stress measures and subjective verbal reports of the experience
Methods:
Participants
19 healthy adults (F=16); 21–57 years (M=29.7)
Measures:
Modified TSST (adults)
Salivary cortisol measured at baseline, pre task anticipatory, and 10, 30, & 40 mins post task
Heart rate assessed via Mio Link devices
Questionnaire assessment of Perceived stress (PSS-10) and coping responses (Brief-COPE)
Post test interview to assess subjective stress experience
Induced a significant effect on cortisol response over time (p=.035)
Point to point differences between Anticipatory to Peak; and Recovery1 to Recovery2.
What is stress?
stress as a physiological response
Sympathetic Adrenal M system (autonomic nervous system) and HPA axis (central nervous system) activated:
Adrenaline (end product of SAM)/noradrenaline
Glucocorticoids – cortisol (end product of HPA)
Dual system of the stress response
- Autonomic nervous system - sympathetic nervous system innervation via catecholamines: Sympathetic adrenomedullary system (SAM)
adrenaline and nor-adrenaline - Corticotrophin releasing factor (CRH) from hypothalamus sets off chain of hormone releases: Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis releasing corticosteroids
Cortisol stress hormone that you often think about
The Nervous System
Central
Role of the Hypothalamus:
Emotions & motivation e.g. eating, drinking & sexual activity
Homeostasis - physiological balance
Stress response – H of the HPA axis
Peripheral
Somatic NS (sensory & motor function/skin & skeletal muscles)
Autonomic NS (activates internal organs and reports activity to brain)
Sympathetic - energy expending activities -> adrenaline & noradrenaline (SAM)
Parasympathetic – energy conserving activities
explain the bodies response to stress
Cortisol reaches peak about 20 minutes after the impact of stress
Dual impact-two arms act together
Cognitive response to stress
Sympathetic adrenal medullary system -> adrenaline/noradrenaline
Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) axis -> corticosteroids (cortisol)
Autonomic
Sympathetic activation -
energy expending activities -> adrenaline & noradrenaline (SAM)
Parasympathetic - energy conserving activities
