Stress And Health- Week 4

Question 1

Defining stress

Answer 1

‘The concept of stress is somewhat like the illusion concept of love: everyone knows what the term means, but no two people would define it in the same way

Question 2

2 poles of opinion(Marmot 1986)

Answer 2

• the concept is too vague and general to be useful; it cannot be defined or measured adequately and thus can not be studied
• standard psychosocial instruments CAN be used, results entered in to multivariate analyses and casual inferences drawn

Question 3

Stress can be: (3)

Answer 3

• stimulus
• response
• transaction

Question 4

Stress as events, the social readjustment rating scale classic study- Holmes and rahe1967

Answer 4

1) death of a spouse 100
2) divorce. 73
3)marital separation. 65
4) vacation. 13

Question 5

Life Events theory : limitations (5)

Answer 5

• LCU assigned regardless of desirability of event
• Age bias in likelihood of life event experience
• events may simply not occur
• intertwined life events may cancel out a LCU
• fails to address the moderators of stress

Question 6

The Hassles scale (Kanner et al 1981)

Answer 6

• concerns about weight
• health of a family member
• rising prices of common goods
• home maintenance
• too many things to do
• misplacing or losing things
• missing a bus

Question 7

Uplifts for stress (5)

Answer 7

• good conversation with friends/ partner
• finishing off some task
• eating out
• visiting a friend
• gaining something/ losing weight

Question 8

What did Kanner find

Answer 8

Kanner found age/ life stage effects in weightings of life events
- the event alone is insufficient explanation of the stress response

Question 9

The three waves of the stress response

Answer 9

1) activation of the symphathetic nervous system
2) Endocrine response
3) Immune response

Question 10

The fight or flight response (8)

Answer 10

1) external event seen as a threat by individual
2) flight/ fight response activated
3) Adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol released
4) heart rate increased, breathing increased, fats and glucose released for energy, blood flow diverted from non-essential body areas to muscle and brain, perspiration increased, immune system suppressed
5) threat removed
6) Acetylcholine released
7) Adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol levels lower
8) body returns to normal

Question 11

What does the sympathetic nervous system do (6)

Answer 11

• relaxes bronchi
- accelerates heart beat
- strengthens heart contractions
- inhibits stomach activity
- stimulates glucose release by liver
- secretion of catecholamines

Question 12

What does the parasympathetic nervous system do

Answer 12

• constricts bronchi
• slows heart beat
• decreases blood pressure
• stimulates stomach activity

Question 13

Endocrine(hormonal) responses to stress: 2 main systems

Answer 13

• Sympathoadreno-medulary system (SAM)
• Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-cortical system (HPAC)

Question 14

Sympathpadreno-medulary system

Answer 14

Stress-> sympathetic nervous system-> adrenal medulla

Question 15

Sympathoadreno-medullary system, secretion of catecholamines (6)what does the body do?

Answer 15

1) heart rate increases
2) blood pressure increases
3) blood is diverted to muscle tissue
4) breathing rate increases
5) digestion slows down
6) pupils of eyes dilate
*shortlived responses

Question 16

Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal cortical system (HPAC)

Answer 16

Stress-> sympathetic nervous system-> hypothalamus-> pituitary gland-> adrenal cortex

Question 17

Hypothalamic- pituitary-adrenal cortical system. What does the body do? (4)

Answer 17

Secretion if corticosteroids
1) increases protein and fat mobilisation
2) increases access to bodily energy storage
3) inhibition of antibody formation and inflammation
4) regulates sodium retention

Question 18

What is ‘The general adaptation syndrome of Hans Selye(1950’

Answer 18

In 1936, discovered that the human body shows a non- specific, typical response to any toxic substance
- the nonspecific response of the organism to any kind of demand was defined as stress

Question 19

The general adaptation system chain

Answer 19

Stressor-> alarm-> resistance-> exhaustion-> diseases of adaptation

Question 20

Problems with Selye’s approach(5)

Answer 20

• doesn’t acknowledge that’s one stressors simply do elicit stronger responses
• doesn’t acknowledge role of cognitive appraisal I.E a persons perceptions of situation mediate their response
• it treats food or bad stressors in the same way
• only allows stress to lead to disease if the adaptive responses are required for long periods of time
• people are not as passive as Selye suggests

Question 21

Models of stress (two approaches)

Answer 21

Bottom up approach
Top- down approach

Question 22

What is the bottom-up approach

Answer 22

Eg, exercise produced pronounced cardiovascular and endocrine responses =physical stress

Question 23

Top down approach

Answer 23

Eg, mental arithmetic task, top-down activation due to intense mental effort - decreases vagal tone to the heart and increases sympathetically mediated cardiac activity, which in turn increases HR-psychological stress

Question 24

Lovallo and the psychological model

Answer 24

“The total physiological response to a behavioural challenge results from activation associated with the demands of a situation and the emotions it evokes”

Question 25

Primary appraisal

Answer 25

• demand may be
- threat
- loss/harm
- challenge

Question 26

The significance of primary appraisal classic- speisman et al study

Answer 26

• college students shown gruesome video- tribal initiation rites included genital surgery
• 4 groups/ experimental conditions
  • heard an intellectual anthropological description of the rites
  • heard a lecture that de-emphasised the pain the initiates were experiencing and emphasised the excitement they were feeling
  • heard a description that emphasised the pain and trauma the initiates were undergoing
  • no introductory information and no sound track

Question 27

Measures of speisman

Answer 27

• autonomic arousal
• self-report

Question 28

Speisman results

Answer 28

Groups 1 and 2 significantly less stress than group 3; group 3 the most stressed