Responding to the World

Question 1

Which part of the brain helps turn short term memories into long term memories?

Answer 1

Hippocampus

Question 2

How is the hypothalamus involved in regulating emotions?

Answer 2

• When it comes to emotion, the hypothalamus regulates the ANS by controlling the endocrine system, by triggering the release of hormones into the bloodstream
  
  • Some of these hormones that are triggered to release are things like epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine
• Also involved in regulating other basic drives, such as hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex

Question 3

Which hemisphere is more involved in positive emotions?

Answer 3

Left Hemisphere

Positive emotions evoke more electrical activity on the left than on the right

Question 4

Which hemisphere is more involved in negative emotions?

Answer 4

Right hemisphere

Negative emotions evoke more electrical activity on the right than on the left

Question 5

What are the 3 main components of emotion?

Answer 5

​Physiological

Behavioral

Cognitive

Question 6

What are the universal emotions?

Answer 6

Happiness

Sadness

Fear

Disgust

Anger

Surprise

Question 7

James-Lange Theory of Emotion

Answer 7

• Hypothesizes that the experience of emotion is due to the perception of your physiologic responses
• Event → Physiological Response → Interpretation of Physiologic Response → Emotion

Question 8

Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

Answer 8

• Hypothesizes that the physiological responses and the experience of emotion occur simultaneously
• Event → Physiological Response + Emotion

Question 9

Schachter-Singer Theory of Emotion

Answer 9

• Hypothesizes that physiological and cognitive responses may simultaneously form the experience of emotion; if we become physiologically aroused, we don’t feel a specific emotion until we’re able to label or identify the reason for the situation
• Event → Physiological Response →Identify the Reason for the Physiological Response and for the Event→ Emotion

Question 10

Lazarus Theory of Emotion

Answer 10

• Proposed that the experience of emotion depends on how the experience is cognitively appraised
• Event →Appraise (Label) of Event → Emotion + Physiological Response

Question 11

Lazarus determined that stress arises less from actual events, but more from what?

Answer 11

Our appraisal, or assessment, of these events

Question 12

What are the main stages of the cognitive appraisal of stress?

Answer 12

1. Primary appraisal: Initial evaluation that focuses on the threat in the present situation
2. Secondary appraisal: Evaluation of the individual’s ability to cope with the situation

Question 13

What are the 3 categories of response to the primary appraisal? Which lead to the secondary appraisal stage?

Answer 13

1. Perceived threat is irrelevant - you see the threat, but it doesn’t affect you, you’re not in danger, don’t find it to be particularly important
2. Benign/Positive response
3. Stressful/Negative: The stressor is potentially harmful, or challenging or threatening
   
   1. ​If the response is stressful/negative, move on to the second appraisal

Question 14

What are the 3 main categories of response to the secondary appraisal?

Answer 14

1. Further appraisal of harm: What damage has already been caused?
2. Appraisal of threat: What future damage could be caused?
3. Appraisal of challenge: How can the situation be overcome or conquered?

Question 15

Psychologists categorize stressors into what 4 major categories?

Answer 15

1. Significant Life Changes: A significant personal life change, such as loss of a loved one, marriage, divorce, going to college for the first time, etc.
2. Catastrophic Events: Unpredictable large-scale events that nearly everyone appraises as threatening, such as war, natural disasters (tornadoes, hurricanes), community disasters, etc.
3. Daily Hassles: The seemingly minor negative events of daily life such as aggravating roommates, long store lines, forgetting your car keys, etc.
4. Ambient Stressors: Global that are integrated into the background of the environment (For example: pollution where you live, noise/crowding; Physically perceivable, but not urgent; Hard to control, just things we put up with in our lives in the background; Can impact us without us being consciously aware of their existence)

Question 16

Cortisol

Answer 16

• Glucocorticoid produced by the adrenal cortex
• Steroid hormone
• Contributes to stress response by redistributing glucose energy in the body and suppressing the immune system

Question 17

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Answer 17

3 phases:

• 1. Alarm Phase: The stress reaction kicks in, your heart starts racing, you’re ready to fight/flight
• 2. Resistance Phase: We’re actually fighting, or fleeing, or huddling together; Our temperature is elevated, our blood pressure and rate of breathing remain high; We’re bathing our body in the stress hormones, like cortisol
     * Our bodies have reserves to react to those acute stressor in this resistance phase, but those reserves only go so far →
• 3. Exhaustion: If the resistance phase isn’t followed by recovery, the body’s stress resources get depleted and it leads to exhaustion; Our tissue/muscles become damaged; Dampened immunity can make us really susceptible to illness
     * Our bodies are well-equipped to handle short-term stress, but when we apply those life-saving stress reactions to our daily commute, and our 9-5 jobs, etc., we end up spending way too much time experiencing the negative consequences of stress, this exhaustion consequence, which has some bad consequences

Question 18

What are some negatives effects of stress on the heart?

Answer 18

• Increased blood pressure
  
  • In response to the increased force of higher blood pressure during stress, the blood vessel distend a little big (get a bit bigger) → the blood vessels respond to this distention by building up a little more muscle and becoming a little more rigid → That increased vessel rigidity requires then more force from the heart to move blood through the vessels → leads to a vicious cycle of elevating blood pressure that gets higher and higher → can lead to hypertension
• Hypertension can lead to vascular disease
  
  • When blood constantly slams against our vessels at higher-than-normal pressure, our veins and arteries experience little episodes of damage, and this leads to inflammation and plaque-buildup, and that plaque is super attracted to things like fat and cholesterol, which end up sticking to these spots and narrowing our blood vessels
  • One of the worst spots to experience this vascular disease is in our coronary arteries, called Coronary Artery Disease (CAD)
    
    • When these vessels get clogged up, the very organ that pumps oxygen and nutrients to our whole body in the form of blood is unable to keep working; It dies because it’s not getting the oxygen/nutrients it needs as a tissue
    • When heart tissue is unnourished and starts to die, we call that a heart attack

Question 19

What are some negative effects of stress on metabolism?

Answer 19

• During the fight/flight response, our body secretes hormones like cortisol and glucagon, and glucagon helps convert those glucose energy stores back into usable forms of energy
• Increase blood sugar can be very damaging
  
  • If the stress is psychosocial and we aren’t running for our lives, we don’t need all this extra energy → The extra glucose can really exacerbate metabolic conditions like diabetes, which is when we already have extra blood sugar
    
    • Very serious as rates of lifestyle-based diabetes are skyrocketing, especially in Westernized cultures
  • Extra glucose can also contribute to cardiovascular disease

Question 20

What are some negative effects of stress on reproductive abilities?

Answer 20

• In girls, reproduction is a huge energy expense, both in terms of ovulation and uterine development, but also in the prospect of pregnancy and fetal development → This exercise naturally gets shut down as a part of the stress response
  
  • With chronic stress, the hormones involved with pregnancy, like luteinizing hormone (LH), or follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), and subsequently estrogen and progesterone, can become chronically inhibited, making it harder to release eggs or nurture their growth → Reproductive abilities can be very dampened
• Boys experience a similar inhibition in hormones, particularly with testosterone, but testosterone levels are less finicky and don’t depend on the precisely-time cycles that girls experience, so it is difficult to reduce them to the point of infertility
  
  • The big stress-induced problem in men is erectile dysfunction (impotency)
    
    • When the sympathetic nervous system turns on, our peripheral blood vessels clamp down so we can keep blood in our core, so less blood is flowing to appendages, including the penis
    • The majority of ED-related doctor visits aren’t related to organic impotence, but rather psychologically-induced impotence, often related to stress

Question 21

What are some negative effects of stress on immune function?

Answer 21

• Immune system can be split into two main categories: innate and adaptive; inflammation is part of the innate immune system
• In the short-term, acute stress can lead to overuse of the immune system: We turn on this inflammation too much, and when we have too much inflammation, we can start attacking good things in our body
  
  • An example is arthritis: When our joints become overly inflamed
• If our bodies become conditioned to chronic stress, we can actually stop activating the immune system response appropriately, and our immune system can become suppressed
  • Now stress isn’t necessarily making us sick, but it is making us more susceptible to illness

Question 22

Literature suggests that which 2 particular brain areas are being activated in response to stress? Why?

Answer 22

• Hippocampus and Frontal Cortex
• The literature suggests these brain areas have the most glucocorticoid receptors
• Glucocorticoids are major stress hormones, like cortisol → These brain areas are being activated during stress
• The mechanism for stress-related damage is still unclear, but we do see atrophy of the neurons in these areas → If theses parts of the brain are damaged because of overabundance of stress, that the effects of stress can play out in our emotional and behavioral responses

Question 23

What are some major behavioral responses to stress?

Answer 23

Depression

Anger

Anxiety

Addiction

Question 24

Behavioral responses to stress: Depression

Answer 24

• Clinically validated by biology because parts of the brain, specifically the anterior cingulate (the inner part of the frontal cortex), stop making/responding to serotonin, making us feel gloomy
• The damage is compounded by the fact that without good serotonin response, we perceive more stressors
• “Learned Helplessness” Describes the relationship between chronic stress and major depression: You learn, from having the control ripped out of your hands, that you don’t have control, and this leads you to take less and less control over your life → You lose the ability to identify coping mechanisms to respond to stress because you’re taking less control over your life/outcomes of your life and the cycle just continues downwards into major depression

Question 25

Behavioral responses to stress: Anger

Answer 25

• Study done by Meijer Freeman and Ray Roseman in which they tested the notion that stresses is associated with increased vulnerability to heart disease (a physical effect). As part of the assessment, they interviewed the participants and categorized them as Type A and Type B. Type A were the reactive, aggressive, competitive, easily angered individuals, and the easier-going participants were considered Type B
  
  • The majority of those participants over 9 years that suffered from heart attacks had been considered type A
• The studies that followed/clarified this study determined that the real toxic component of type A personality was this being prone to hostility and anger
  
  • Stress initiates the fight or flight response, and anger naturally accompanies that fight part, so anger is often a behavioral response to stress

Question 26

Behavioral responses to stress: anxiety

Answer 26

• This centers around the amygdala, which has a lot to do with our fears and phobias
• Fear is related to the flight aspect of the fight or flight response
• As you perceive stressors, it’s like you’re working out your “amygdala muscle” and you perceive more things as fearful, which increases your anxiety

Question 27

Behavioral response to stress: addiction

Answer 27

• For example, alcohol is often abused, particularly by men, as a coping mechanism, and is associated with high rates of addiction
• Many people become addicted to tobacco or other illicit drugs as a coping mechanism to stress
• Something that compounds the relationship between stress and addiction is the impairment to the frontal cortex
  
  • Frontal cortex is involved in reasoning/planning → Impaired judgment can increase the likelihood of becoming consumed by these inappropriate coping mechanisms with addiction

Question 28

Coping with stress: perceived control

Answer 28

• Many studies have shown that a perceived lack of control is associated with higher rates of stress. Dr. Robert Sapolsky showed this with baboons, who have social hierarchy structures that are quite similar to humans. Based on blood samples and studying stress hormone levels, he determined that the primates at the bottom of the barrel socially experience much more stress than the ruling elite baboons.
• Similarly, a human study called the White Hall study showed the exact same effect in humans based on relative rank in the workplace in Britain
• Lack of control = perceived threat
• Sapolsky’s Suggestion: Look for areas of your life where you can take a little bit of that control back

Question 29

Coping with stress: Optimism

Answer 29

• Many studies have connected humor and optimism with decreased stress
• Nurturing an optimistic outlook can be a great way to cope with stress

Question 30

Coping with stress: Social support

Answer 30

• One of the best coping mechanisms of stress because deep connectedness allows us to confide those painful or difficult feelings, and that allows us to understand that we’re not alone in many of those feelings → Can contribute to our perception of control and our optimism
• Supportive communities are associated with better eating, exercise, and sleeping patterns
• Examples of social support that has been verified by studies to positively benefit stress coping: Marriage, domesticated animals (puppies, cats), and close friendships

Question 31

Managing stress: exercise

Answer 31

• Gives us the ability to decrease our chance of cardiovascular disease, because it contributes to increased cerebral vascular health with our brain and our hearts and blood vessels, and increases neurogenesis
• Need to exercise daily; 20-30 minutes daily is suggested in order to get those cardiovascular effects we want
• Regular exercise, especially for stress relief, requires a good amount of planning because you have to push aside stressors you’re combating to make room for time to exercise

Question 32

Managing stress: meditation

Answer 32

• Helps lower heart rate and blood pressure and our cholesterol
• The literature is still out on the persistence of these effects related to meditation
• It’s somewhat obvious that the kind of people who choose to meditate are already responding to stress a bit differently
• But still, it has shown great results in combating the negative cardiovascular effects of stress

Question 33

Managing stress: religious faiths and beliefs

Answer 33

• Might be correlated with a generalized healthier lifestyle because excessive alcohol and tobacco use are generally frowned upon by many of the big world religions
• Social supports associated with places of worship

Question 34

Managing stress: cognitive flexibility

Answer 34

• Gives us the ability to take one step back and reformulate the way we’re approaching the stress if it’s not working
• The benefit of perspective change is huge in our body’s perception of stressors, of what is stressing us out and how we’re responding with our stress reaction
• Often the limiting reagent is wisdom
  
  • A good way to work on this is with outside help, especially someone that’s professionally trained in psychological healthcare