problem 1 - stress Flashcards
2 components of the condition of stress
Physical: involving direct material or bodily change
Psychological: involving how individuals perceive circumstances in their lives
what are the 3 ways to examine the components of stress?
Environmental approach: stress is seen as a stimulus
* e.g. when we have a demanding job or experience severe pain from arthritis or a death in the family
Response approach: stress seen as a response → focuses on people’s reactions to stressors
* e.g. when people use the word stress to refer to their state of tension
Process approach: describes stress as a process that includes stressors & strains, but adds an important dimension; the relationship between the person and the env
* interactions between person & env = transactions
what is stress?
the circumstance in which transactions lead a person to perceive a discrepancy between the physical/psychological demands of a situation and their resources
* A demand, resource, or discrepancy may be real or just believed to exist
* Stress often results from inaccurate perceptions of discrepancies between env demands & the actual resources
what is primary appraisal?
When we encounter a potentially stressful circumstance, we first try to asses the meaning of the situation for our wellbeing
leads to 1 of 3 judgements:
1. It is irrelevant - if you had similar symptoms of pain & nausea before that only lasted a short while
2. It is good - might be your appraisal if you wanted to use the pain as an excuse to skip work
3. It is stressful - if you feared the symptoms were of a serious illness
*example: feeling pain or nausea
what happens when we appraise a situation as stressful?
it recieves further appraisal for 3 implications:
1. Harm loss: refers to the amount of damage that has already occurred - e.g. when someone is in pain following a serious injury
2. Threat: involves the expectation of future harm - e.g. when hospitalized patients contemplate their medical bills, difficult recovery and loss of income
3. Challenge: the opportunity to achieve growth, mastery or profit by using more than routine resources to meet the demand - e.g. a promotion
what are the 3 primary appraisal judgements?
example: feeling pain or nausea
- It is irrelevant - if you had similar symptoms of pain & nausea before that only lasted a short while
- It is good - might be your appraisal if you wanted to use the pain as an excuse to skip work
- It is stressful - if you feared the symptoms were of a serious illness
what is secondary appraisal?
Our assessment of the resources we have available for coping
Occur continuously in our transactions, but we are especially aware of them when we judge a situation as potentially stressful to determine whether out resources are sufficient to meet harm, threat or challenge we face
what is cognitive apprasisal
by Lazarus
a mental process by which people asses 2 factors:
1. Whether a demand threatens their physical or psychological well-being (primary) and;
2. The resources available for meeting the demand (secondary)
personal factors that lead to stressful appraisals
intellectual, motivational and personality characteristics
* Many people have irrational beliefs that increase their stress - these people are likely to appraise almost any sort of inconvenience as threatening
* E.g. self esteem: if people with high self esteem perceive an event as stressful, they may see it as more of a challenge than a threat
characteristics of stressful events
factors of the event that may lead to stressful appraisals
- Events that involve very strong demands and are imminent - tend to be seen as stressful
- Life transitions: passing from one life condition or phase to another
- Difficult timing: events that happen earlier or later in life than usual or expected
- Ambiguity: a lack of clarity in a situation
- Low desirability: some circumstances are undesirable to most people in virtually all respects
- Low controllability: circumstances that seem to be outside the person’s behavioral or cognitive influence
what is allostatic load?
the effects of the body’s having to adapt repeatedly to stressors that accumulate over time
creates wear & tear on the body, & impairs its ability to adapt to future stressors
what are 4 important factors in the overall amount of physiological stress?
- Amount of exposure: when we encounter more frequent, intense, or prolonged stressors - likely to respond with a greater total amount of physiological activation
- Magnitude of reactivity: in response to any particular stressor some will show large increases in blood pressure or stress hormones while others show much smaller changes
- Rate of recovery: physiological responses return to normal quickly for some, but stay elevated for a longer time for others
- Resource restoration: the resources used in physiological strain are replenished by various activities - sleep may be the most imp of them
what did Selye believe about GAS’s specificity?
Selye believed that the GAS is non specific with regard to the type of stressor → the physiological reactions that GAS describes will occur regardless of where stress comes from
but there are problems with this - now general consensus is:
basic structure of GAS appears to be valid, but it assumes that all stressors produce the same physiological reactions + fails to include the role of psychosocial factors in stress
what are 3 problems with the notion of nonspecificity of GAS?
- Some stressors elicit a stronger emotional response than others
-Researchers have not found evidence that any single hormone responds to all stimuli in an absolutely non-specific way - The pattern of physiological arousal under stress depends on the combination of 2 factors - effort & distress
- Cognitive appraisal processes play a role in people’s physiological reaction to stressors
what are cytokines?
a group of peptide hormones that are released by many cells & participate in many physiological & immunological responses - cause inflammation & fever
are now classified with the adrenal hormones as major stress hormones