Sources Of Stress: Daily Hassles Flashcards
What did Kanner et al design?
Hassles and uplift scale (HSUP)
What are daily hassles?
Irritating, frustrating, distressing demands that to some degree characterise everyday transactions with the environment
What are the explanations of the effect of daily hassles?
Accumulation
Amplification
How does accumulation explain the effect of daily hassles?
The accumulation of minor daily stressors creates persistent irritations, frustrations and overloads which then result in more serious stress reactions such as anxiety and depression (Lazarus)
How does amplification explain the effect of daily hassles?
Chronic stress due to major life changes may make people more vulnerable to daily hassles. As the person is already in a state of distress, the presence of associated minor stressors may in fact amplify the experience of stress. The presence of major life stress may also deplete a person’s resources as they feel unable to cope with the minor stressors than they would under normal circumstances.
What are some examples of daily hassles and daily uplifts on the HSUP?
Daily hassles - weight, rising prices, home maintenance, losing things, physical appearance, crime.
Daily uplifts - recreation, relations with friends, good weather, job promotion, eating out, getting enough sleep
What did Kanner et al study?
Studied whether it is daily hassles rather than major life events that are the most stressful
What was Kanner et al’s procedure?
An opportunity sample of 100 American participants, including 52 women and 48 men, all white, well educated and middle class. Asked them to circle the events in both scales that they have experienced the previous month and rate each according to severity for the hassles and frequency for the uplifts and continue to do so once a month for 9 months. Each participant also completed a life events scale. Two measures were used to assess the psychological well being, the Hopkins symptoms checked and the bradburn morale scale.
What were Kanner et al’s findings?
They found the hassles scale tended to be a more accurate predictor of stress related problems such as anxiety and depression than the SRRS. Uplifts had a positive effect on the stress levels of women, but no men
What was Kanner et al’s conclusion?
In conclusion, this study suggests that daily hassles have a more accurate representation of stress than major life events and that women deal better with uplifts than men.
finish the evaluation: self report methods
The role of daily hassles in illness is a limited explanation due to its use of self report methods. Kanner et al carried out a study asking people to fill in the scales based on the stress they had experienced. This is a problem as it relies on the participant and thus means it is difficult to determine the validity of their responses due to demand characteristics.
finish the evaluation: importance of daily hassles
Flett et al found that people who experienced major life events and had stress were more likely to seek help than people who experienced stress due to daily hassles. This therefore means that because we don’t receive help for stress caused by daily hassles it may infact cause us more stress
finish the evaluation: reliability of recall
One limitation of the roe of stress illness is it’s over reliance of recall of previous events. For example, in Kanner’s study, participants had to report their stress for events several months in the past, so they may remember these events as more or less stressful than they actually were. Therefore studies such as Kanner’s may be limited to how they receive the information of these daily hassles
finish the evaluation: individual differences
One limitation is that not everyone has the same view as to what a hassle and an uplift is, for example, a daily hassle of house maintenance for one person may be enjoyable to another person, thusly the same task for one person can cause stress and not for another. Therefore, Kanner et al’s daily hassles and uplift scale doesn’t take into account individual differences and thusly cannot be generalised to a whole population.
finish the evaluation: correlation
The study is correlations. Variables haven’t been manipulated and the study merely shows a relationship between daily hassles and stress levels. We therefore can’t determined a cause and effect. Therefore it doesn’t take into account that other factors may also play a role.
