week 10 - stess and wellbeing Flashcards
what are three stressor responses
- Emotional / affective response
- Nervous system activity
• Transient or Sustained - Changes in information processing
• Where performance may or may not degrade
what are psychological costs of stress
- Emotional / affective response
- Emotional / affective response
• Anxiety • Depression • Burnout: • Emotional exhaustion (EE) • De-personalisation (DP) • Low personal achievement (PA)
What is a measure to assess burnout
Maslach Burnout Inventory (1996) • 22-item questionnaire • Three subscales (EE, DP, PA) • 7-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (‘never’ experienced) to 6 (experienced ‘every day’)
what are the physiological costs of stress
2. Nervous system activity • Adaptive responses to acute (short & sudden) stress • Fight or flight reaction 1. Flee! 2. Fight! 3. Freeze
General adaption syndrome and stress ( 3 stages)
- Alarm reaction stage – Fight or flight, stress
hormones released - Resistance stage – Cope with the original source of
stress - Exhaustion stage – Resistance drops, long term
consequences
Stress induced hormonal changes can lead to
• Ulcers, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis,
arthritis, kidney disease,and allergic reactions
- Decreased immune functioning
• Increased risk of heart disease
• Psychosomatic diseases:
Stomach acidity, migraines,back problems
Chronic stress is detrimental to cognition - give exmamples
- changes in information processing • Memory • Suggested link with age-related cognitive decline • Sustained attention • Judgement biases
Explain arousal theory
- Level of activity (e.g. in behavioural state or in subjective experience)
Measured: Heart rate, Pupil diameter, or the output
of catecholamines - Arousal increases when you work harder/expend more
effort
what are the positive ways to manage stress
- probem solving
- seek social support
what are the negative ways to manage stress
- withdrawal
- presenteesim
- reduced performance
- using substances
- violent behaviour
psychological responses to managing stress
Defence Mechanisms:
• Attempts to reduce anxiety by rationalizing, blaming
others, compensate, etc.…
Emotional responses:
• Irritability, anger, insomnia, depression
Lazarus and Folkman’s (1987) Coping theory
Emotion-focused Coping:
• Positive type: Maintain optimism, accept the situation,
reframe the situation
• Negative type: Deny the problem, quit, blame someone
else or oneself, ruminate
Problem-focused Coping
- Managing or altering the stressor (can work when you have control over the stressor)
- E.g., seek help, plan and take action, remove obstacles
what type of probelm solving works best?
- problem focused methods in relation to health outcomes
- emotion focused methods in situations beyond the individuals control to remove the source of stress
what are individual differences that moderate stress
- locus of control (internal/external)
- resilience
- level of self esteem
what is a persons that is type A behavious pattern like
Type A: alert, ambitious, competitive, impatient,
aggressive, always “on”, overload themselves and
work long hours, need to control everything
what is a persons that is type B behavious pattern like
easy going, less ambitious, not aggressive, patient, calm
what are the costs to health people that have type A behaviour
• Are more likely to develop heart disease
• Have more heart attacks
• Consistently have higher
heart rates and BP
what are the benefitys to health people that have type A behaviour
- Hard-working
* Performance is higher
what are three ways to manage stress at work
1- primary (tackle the source)
2- secoundary (modify the response to stressors)
3- tertiary (heal the consequences)
what are ways to improve primary stress at work
- task design
- work environment design
- train managers
what are ways to improve secondary stress at work
- Cognitive-behavioural skills training
- Relaxation & biofeedback techniques
- Social support
- Promote healthy lifestyle behaviours
what are ways to improve tertiary stress at work
Focused on healing negative effects of stressors
• Employee assistance programs (EAPs)
define negative stress
Distress:
• Stress resulting from chronically demanding
situations that produce negative health outcomes
define positive stress
Eustress
• Stress that provides challenges that motivate
individuals to work hard and meet their goals
what are 5 common workplace stressors (internal)
- Lack of Control/Predictability (autonomy)
- Interpersonal conflict
- Role Stressors
- Work–Family Conflict
- Emotional labour
workplace stressors - lack of control
Jobs vary based on how two dimensions: Demand (workload) and Control (autonomy)
- Control seems to affect cardiovascular measures
- Low job control related to low social participation
• Crossover effect to spouses
workplace stressors - interpersonal conflict
- Organisations are filled with competition and conflict
- Conflict substantially influences individual, group and organizational effectiveness
- Conflict is a ‘process’
workplace stressors - interpersonal conflict in the workplace
- Elevated stress levels
- Elicits negative emotions (anger, disgust, fear)
- Can threaten self-esteem
- Requires cognitive resources to cope with
workplace stressors - interpersonal conflict health effects
- Stress
- Burnout (exhaustion particularly)
- Increased likelihood of psychiatric diagnosis
What are three role stressors
1- Role ambiguity
2- Role conflict
3- Role overload
3 types of work family conflict
• Time-based conflict (distribution of time, energy and
opportunities between work and family)
• Strain-based conflict (negative spill-over between roles)
• Behaviour-based conflict (incompatible sets of
behaviours)
work family conflict and dual career couples
- Role overload as the number of roles played by the couple increases
- Conflict from interfering/competing demands
- Addressing conflict requires adapting to transitions in work, personal, and family lives
what are job charactersitics associated with work family conflict
- Time spent working
- Regular/predictable work hours
- Schedule favourability (e.g. weekends, shift-work)
- Work role conflict
- Job insecurity
define emotional labour
• Defined as regulating your emotions to meet job/
organizational demands
two ways to regulate emotions
- Surface acting
• Displaying an emotion you don’t feel (faking)
• More draining over long run (esp. for introverts) - Deep acting
• Changing how you really feel to match what is required by the job
• Initially takes more effort, but in the long run it is
less draining
