Psych Unit 16 Flashcards
Stress
the physical and psychological response to enteral or internal stressors
ex: the physical and psychological response to a quiz = stress
external: bear coming at you
internal: concerns about finances and how you will pay your taxes
- both internal and external stress can accumulate and have effects on health
- excessive stress can have bad effects on health
Stressors
the thing that is stressing us out
- specific events or chronic pressures that place a demand on us or threaten our well-being
ex: divorce, death, hating your job, being fired from your job, financial problems
Selye’s General Adaptation Response Model
- they exposed rats to stressors to see what they would do
- how we respond to stressors
alarm reaction: fight or flight
- your reaction hearing there’s a pop quiz
- your autonomic nervous system activates the sympathetic division, which releases adrenaline — preps you to deal with a stressor
- drop in stress resistance (our ability to respond to the stressor decreases)
Resistance: longest phase
- secondary appraisal – what resources do we have to cope with the stressor
- we fight the stressor and manage it to no longer be a stressor
- stress resistance increases because we’re using resources to fight the stressor and our body is releasing cortisol
*usually we can resolve the stressor in this phase
Exhaustion: last phase
- rare for people to reach this stage
- our reserves our depleted
- organ failure and body shuts down because of stress
Amygdala Fear Response
when we receive a stimulus (shock or tone), it immediately comes into the thalamus
- tone = tone goes into the auditory part of the thalamus
- shock = shock goes into the somatosensory part of the thalamus
- the thalamus ships the info to the amygdala
*amydala is a huge part of stress response
damage to the amygdala in rats:
- they don’t show the same fear response that rats with a normal amygdala show
ex: if a rat was conditioned to expect a shock when they heard a tone, and the researchers ablated its amygdala (removed or destroyed it), the rat wouldn’t have a fear response to the shock or tone
Sympathetic Adrenal Medullary System (SAM)
occurs during primary appraisal (fire alarm)
- we perceive a stressor and with the cerebral cortex we make a decision (lion will eat me - I should run)
- physcial rediness for immediate action
**responds to immediate fight or flight to stress
**effects: rapid heartbeat, increased blood flow, heightened alertness
- sets off a chain of events from the hypothalamus to the hippocampus, and then to the sympathetic nerve
- causes the adrenal glands to secrete (produce and discharged) epinephrine
Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal System (HPA)
longer-term stressors (stressors that last more than a minute) – happens during secondary appraisal
- starts with the hypothalamus
- the hypothalamus tells the pituitary gland to secrete ACHT (a hormone that causes the secretion of cortisol) – cortisol suppresses your immune system
- your immune system becomes weaker when stresses because of cortisol
effects:
- increases blood sugar
- suppresses non-essential functions (digestion)
**responds to longer-term stressors – body isn’t moving as quickly because it needs to sustain itself
Abott Study
the study looked at if subordinate monkeys are more stressed than dominate monkeys
lower ranked monkeys = omegas
- the omegas can be scapegoats and targets of aggression
**results:
- in some species, researchers found that the omegas (subordinate monkeys) had higher levels of cortisol than the dominate monkeys
- in other species, it was the opposite
**they thought this happened because being dominant is stressful and difficult
- some species didn’t have a difference in cortisol levels between dominant and subordinate because of social support
- when subordinates had higher rates of stressors, their cortisol levels were higher
Type A Behavior
- impatient people – have a sense of time urgency
- very competitive even when they don’t need to be
**people with increased hostility, have an increased likelihood of having a heart incident
Stress Interpretations
stress is in the eye of the beholder
- it’s not what happens to you, but how you appraise it, that determines your stress
Stress Appraisals: primary
primary appraisal: the interpretation of a stimuli as stressful or not
- when you have a stressor you have to appraise it
- knee-jerk reaction to the stressor
Stress Appraisals: secondary
Secondary Appraisal: determine if the stressor is a threat or a challenge
- if you have the resources to meet the needs of a stressor = a challenge
ex: being stressed about a pop-quiz but having studied well - if there’s too much of a gap between or you don’t have the resources to manage the stressor, it becomes a threat
Stress Appraisals: negative
Negative Appraisals: the response to a stressor as a threat or assuming the outcome will be negative
- occurs with threats when we don’t have enough resources
ex: experiencing a negative stressful event and not having the resources to deal with it
Stress Appraisals: positive
Positive Appraisal: the response to a stressor as a challenge
- you have the resources to cope/manage the stressor
Repressive Coping
avoid situations or thoughts of a stressor
- evoking denial
- by avoiding the stressor, you have an artificial positive viewpoint
ex: you’re stressed about a paper, so you just put it off because it stresses you out
ex: someone died but you don’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with it, so you just focus on something else
Rational Coping
facing a stressor head-on and working to overcome it
ex: you lose your job so you look for a new job
**more focused on emotionally processing it
Types of Cognitive Coping: Problem-Focused Coping
problem-focused coping:
address specific problems by finding specific solutions
ex: you lost your job so you take steps to fix it – fill out job applications and work to get hired somewhere
**more focused on take active steps
Types of Cognitive Coping: Emotional-Focused Coping
targets negative emotions and tries to reduce them
ex: venting about losing your job and telling your friend about it
**idea is by talking about it, the negative emotions are held in
Types of Cognitive Coping: Relationship-Focused Coping
maintain and protect social relationships
ex: asking friends for social support when stressed
*about social support
Perceived Control
**it’s not about what happens to you, but your perception of it
**we can only control our perception of the stress
- perceived control over the stress can decrease how stressed you feel
- perceived lack of control over the stress can make you feel more stressed — especially if you don’t see an end in sight
Positive Psychology
- focus on the positive aspects of life – what are things you can do to increase happiness
- what helps us find happiness?
- treatment for depression to increase positive mood by focusing on positive emotion
Positive Psych Exercises: Obituary/Biography
you imagine that you have passed away and there’s an obituary about your life
- what would you want it to say?
- you write an essay about what you would like to be remembered by
Positive Psych Exercises: Active/Constructive Responding
you react in a visibly positive/enthusiastic way to good news from someone else
- recommended to do this at least once a day
- helps us reduce stress and reduce the stress of the people reporting the good news
Positive Psych Exercises: Savoring
once a day you take time to enjoy/savor something that you normally rush through
ex: you enjoy eating lunch instead of rushing through it
- then write down what you did and how it made you feel
Positive Psych Exercises: Blessings
instead of focusing on the negatives of that day, write down 3 positive things that happened that day
- then write down why you think those things happened that way
*not focusing on negative events and changing them to positive – this is only focusing on positives
Positive Psych Exercises: Gratitude Visit
Think of someone you are grateful for but haven’t properly thanked
- you write them a letter with gratitude
- then come back to the letter and maybe give it to them
Kelly McGonigal Video
she used a study and tracked adults on how much stress they experienced in the last year and if they thought stress was bad for their health
**people who were stressed and believed stress was bad for their health had a big increase of dying – BUT people who were stressed and didn’t think stress was bad for health didn’t have an increase of death
**if you can change your mindset about stress, you can be healthier
- participants who changed their view on stress still had heart racing but their blood vessels didn’t contract (they stayed relaxed)
- having contricted blood vessels can cause a heart attack – having stressed people stay stressed but have relaxed blood vessels didn’t increase their chance of dying
*stress makes you social – when oxytocin (stress hormone) is released, it motivates you to seek support (empathy, social interaction)
*oxytocin strengthens your heart (helps heart cells to heal)
*people who helped others didn’t increase their risk of death
McGonigal Takeaways
Reframing has benefits - important to think of something as a challenge that you can handle vs. something you can’t handle
Changing your mindset about stress has physiological benefits (doesn’t restrict blood vessels)
Strong body-mind connection - if you think a certain way about your body, your body conforms
Social support is important - the connection between physiological connection and your heart emitting oxytocin
Stress Cross-Generational Effects
stress can have long-term and generational effects
ex: a mom who was pregnant during 9/11 and traumatized had a baby who also had long-term, chronic stress
- kids who were born by moms who had PTSD from 9/11 were more aggressive and had higher reactivity to stimuli
- cortisol and other stress hormones crossing the placenta is why stress starts prenatally
Gender Differences in Stress
- females are more unlikely to do fight-or-flight easily
- females are more likely to do tend-and-befriend (sooth people, hide, make social alliances)
- tend-and-befriend hormones = oxytocin
Socioeconomic Status Differences in Stress
people with lower socioeconomic status have worse health
- this happens because poor people hear more noise, exposed to more toxins, violence, have fewer resources and more drug abuse
- people with lower socioeconomic status are more stressed than others
Epigenetics Effects on Stress
epigenetics = influence on traits by factors that determine how a gene performs
- severe stress early in life causes increased HPA responses to stress – hyperactivity in the norepinephrine system, reduced volume in the hippocampus and heightened response to stimuli
- genes and life stress cause MDD
- gene stress tells us how some people are more vulnerable to life stress
Immune System Effect of Stress
- short-term stress can boost the immune system
ex: participating in a stressful memory task improves the immune system
long-term stress negatively affects the immune system
ex: people studying for finals are at more of a risk for viruses
- happens because stress hormones suppress the white blood cells from working to protect us
Stress Effects on Mood, Sleep, and Weight
- long-term stress can cause change in mood, sleep, and apetitie
- sleep disruptions are bad for health
- stress can cause depressed mood
- high levels of cortisol make sleep quality worse
- stress can cause weight gain or weight loss
- fat cells grow in number and size when stressed
ex: dieters who ate the same but slept better lost more weight than dieters who didn’t sleep well
Resilience
resilience: ability to adapt to challenges in a positive way
- people with low resilience have higher stress
- resilient people don’t ignore stress but are optimisic
- people with low resilience use negative coping strategies (alcohol)
- people who are hardy (can withstand difficulty) have less disruption in response to stressors
Positive Psychology and Happiness
emphasizes normal behaviors and human strengths
ex: seeing a glass as half full rather than half empty
hedonic approach: focus on obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain
- taking a nice vacation to relax
eudaimonic approach: focus on meaningfulness and self-realization
- looking within in more effective for happiness
- interpersonal relationships can make us happier
Flow
flow: people are absorbed in their current activity (usually work-related, problem-solving, or creative)
- experiences qualify as altered states of consciousness
ex: video games flow because there are clear goals, opportunities, action and awareness, distortion of time, feedback, difficulty, and sense of personal control
