Social Psychological Explanations-Life Events Flashcards
What is the definition of a life event?
It is an event which requires a readjustment of our lives
What does SRRS stand for?
Social Readjustment Rating Scale
What is the SRRS?
A list of 43 life events which are given a score , in Life change units (LCU’s)
Who originaly used the SRRS and realised that significant life events effect our lives negatively?
Holmes and Rahe (1967)
What are three critismes of Rahe et als (1970) research?
A very weak correlation was shown (0.118)
Very bias sample - ethnocentric as only American Naval men and 2500 of them
Causalilty can’t be imvestigated as its a test of correlation
Who supported the idea that life events have effects on health?
Nuckolls et al (1972)
What did Nuckolls et al (1972) find in her study on pregnant Women?
That 90% of women with high score in the SRRS and a low social support score suffered complications during pregnancy
Compared to 33% of Women with high score in the SRRS and a high social support score
What did Nuckolls et al (1972) research suggest?
That social support acts as a buffer from effects of life changes
What are the 4 evaluation points for Life events?
Suppprting evidence, correlation and causation, issues in recall, cultural differences and bias
Which research supported the idea that life events effect physical health?
Nasal drop study - Cohen et al (1993)
Who’s research supports the idea that there is issues with previous research (correlations)
Nuckolls et al (1972) - shows that SRRS score has no effect on physical health alone , social support is a more important variable
What study supports the idea that issues with recall may effect SRRS score?
Raphel et al - a group of women were asked to record life events in a diary over a 10 month period, after this period only 25% of the events that were recorded could be recalled
What supports the idea that there is a cultural bias in the SRRS?
Different cultures will rank life events differently - supported by Chinese participants ranking the death of a family higher than divorce (Zheng and Lin 1994)
