daily hassles B1: stress

Who was one of the first psychologists to argue that big infrequent life events are not the main source of stress

Lazarus

What does Lazarus argue about daily hassles

He argues that it is the everyday irritations and frustrations that can get on top of us and cause us to feel stressed (daily hassles)

Primary appraisal

when an individual determines whether a situation or event is significant to them and stressful or not

Secondary appraisal

the second step in assessing a threat, which involves estimating the resources available to the person for coping with the stressor

What do primary and secondary appraisals show us about stress

That how we interpret the meaning of the hassle makes it stressful not that they hassle is necessarily stressful meaning that how we think about stress and are able to cope with them are very important

Who developed the hassle scale

Kanner (1981)

What does the hassle scale involve

It has 117 daily hassles from seven categories: work, health, family, friends, environment, practical considerations and chance occurrences.

How are you meant to use the hassle scale

Each day u select all the hassles u have experienced that day and also indicate the severity of the hassle on a scale of 1 to 3 then u add up the severity scores and get a total for that day or period of time

What other scale did kanner make

An uplift scale

What is an uplift

Small daily boosts that make us feel better. They counteract the effects of hassles to some extent

How do daily hassles threaten our health

Because we experience a lot of them and their effects add up. They can also make us ill through their link with life events Becayse a life event can disrupt our normal daily routines

What are life events an indirect source of

Stress

What do life events and indirect stress cause

More hassles

Why are hassles stressful

Because we experience them directly

Kanner et al (1981) aim

investigate the question of whether daily hassles or life events were a better procedure of psychological ill health

Kanner et al (1981) procedure

The researchers devised the hassles and uplifts scale. A total of 100 participants (45 to 65 years old) completed the scale every month for 9 months. At the same time they completed the Hopkins symptom checklist. This measures psychological symptoms of anxiety and depression. They also completed a measure of life events on two occasions - one month before the study began and in the tenth month

Kenner et al (1981) findings

There were significant positive correlations between hassle frequency and psychological symptoms at the start and end of the study. Hassles were a significantly stronger predictor of symptoms than life events, at both the start and end of the study

Kenner et al (1981) conclusions

Concluded that daily hassles are a more reliable predictor of psychological symptoms of illness than life events. Daily hassles overload considerably with life events. But the contribution of hassles to symptoms was strong even when the effects of life events were removed statistically