Life Changes Flashcards
Why are life changes so stressful?
They involve a significant change from our normal daily routines, which requires a lot of ‘psychic energy’, leaving us exhausted and less able to cope with the demands of every day life.
Describe how Holmes & Rahe went about constructing the Social Readjustment Rating Scale.
They were 2 medical doctors who reviewed the medical records of 5000 patients. They found that certain life events that are associated with stress seemed to occur before illness. They then used a sample of 394 people and asked them to rank a list of events in order of how stressful they were. Based on these rankings, Holmes & Rahe gave each event a value called a life change unit (LCU) which represented how much stress an event caused. E.g divorce = 73, death of a spouse = 100, etc. They gave 43 life events LCUs and used them to construct the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS). They suggested that a score between 200 and 300 means the person has a 50% chance of becoming ill. A score of over 300 means that the person has an 80% chance of becoming ill.
Explain the procedures, findings and conclusions of Rahe’s study using the social readjustment rating scale.
Rahe used 2500 American sailors. He asked each of them how many stressful life events they had experienced in the last 6 months. He recorded an SRRS score for each of them. Each sailor was then monitored over their next 6 month tour of duty, and detailed health records were kept for each of them.
Rahe found that there was a positive correlation of 0.118 between LCU scores and illness scores.
This suggests that experiencing life events increases the chances of a stress related health breakdown, so stress management techniques are very important when going through life changes. However, as the correlation wasn’t perfects, life events cannot be the only contributing factor to illness.
Evaluate the Social Readjustment Rating Scale.
It has high external reliability. It has been used in over 1000 studies around the world, and the results are all very similar. However, many psychologists argue that the SRRS is now dated. An example of this is that it only asks about ‘marital separation/divorce’ instead of asking about long-term relationship break ups, which are very common today.
It doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative life events, e.g ‘change in financial state’ could be either positive or negative.
The SSRS asks people to recall events, and due to the inaccuracy of memory, it is possible that the results of both the SSRS and the research that uses it are inaccurate.
It ignores individual differences. Some people may respond differently to certain life events than others. A person’s personality (Type A/Type B) may impact on how stressful they perceive something to be.
