Stress, Burnout, and Managing Life's Challenges

Introduction to Reading Week 4: Stress, Burnout, and Managing Life's Challenges

• College students face pressure from exams, tuition, debt, and job prospects.
• Non-traditional students deal with additional stressors like raising children and working full-time.
• Life challenges such as financial security, relationships, and lack of time contribute to stress.
• Even minor hassles like losing things or traffic jams can compromise well-being.
• Scientific interest in stress adaptation and coping has a long history in psychology.
• Chapter aims to examine stress, its psychological and physiological natures, causes, consequences, and steps to master it.

14.1 What Is Stress?

• The term "stress" emerged in scientific literature in the 1930s and became popular in the 1970s.
• Stress is often used to describe unpleasant feeling states like frustration, anger, or fatigue.
• Stress is a vague concept with no precise definition; researchers struggle to agree on an acceptable definition.
• Stimulus-based definitions: Characterize stress as a demanding or threatening event, such as a high-stress job or overcrowding.
• Problem: Fails to recognize individual differences in reacting to challenging situations.
• Response-based definitions: Describe stress in terms of physiological responses like increased arousal.
• Hans Selye defined stress as the body's response to any demand, pleasant or unpleasant.
• Problem: Physiological reactions can occur in non-stressful situations (e.g., receiving good news).
• A useful definition views stress as a process involving individual perception and response to overwhelming or threatening events (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
• Appraisal of stressors:
• Primary appraisal: Judging the degree of potential harm or threat to well-being.
• Stressor seen as a threat if it could lead to harm or loss.
• Stressor seen as a challenge if it carries potential for gain or personal growth.
• Secondary appraisal: Judging available options to cope with a stressor and their effectiveness (Lyon, 2012).
• Self-efficacy, one’s belief in his ability to complete a task, is important (Bandura, 1994).
• A threat is viewed as less catastrophic if one believes something can be done about it (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
• Stress results if an event is appraised as harmful and demands exceed available resources.
• Environmental events trigger stress reactions through interpretation and assigned meanings.
• Stress is largely in the eye of the beholder; it’s how one responds to events (Selye, 1976).

Good Stress?

• Stress can motivate individuals to act in their best interests, like studying or exercising.
• Selye (1974) argued that stress isn't always harmful; It can be a positive, motivating force.
• Eustress: Good stress associated with positive feelings, health, and performance.
• Moderate stress can be beneficial in challenging situations (e.g., pregame stress for athletes).
• Research indicates that moderate stress can enhance recall of educational material (Hupbach & Fieman, 2012).
• Figure 14.4 illustrates the relationship between stress, performance, and well-being.
• As stress increases to an optimal level, performance peaks and the person feels energized and focused (eustress).
• Distress: If stress exceeds the optimal level, it becomes excessive and debilitating.
• Burnout occurs, leading to fatigue, exhaustion, and declining performance.
• Health may erode if excessive stress persists (Everly & Lating, 2002).

The Prevalence of Stress

• Stress is widespread and increasing, as shown in Figure 14.5 (Neelakantan, 2013).
• Stress feels like a burden and is experienced in various situations (e.g., driving in a blizzard, job interview).
• Stress evokes physiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses.
• Stress, while sometimes positive, can negatively impact health, contributing to physical illnesses and diseases (Cohen & Herbert, 1996).
• Health Psychology: The study of how stress and psychological factors impact health (Taylor, 1999).
• Health psychologists investigate lifestyle choices (e.g., smoking), design interventions, and identify at-risk groups.
• Figure 14.6 shows stress levels among demographic groups from national surveys (Cohen & Janicki-Deverts, 2012).
• Women report higher stress than men.
• Unemployed individuals experience high stress.
• Lower education and income are linked to higher stress.
• Retired persons report the lowest stress levels.
• Stress levels increased among men, Whites, those aged 45–64, college graduates, and those with full-time employment from 2006 to 2009, potentially due to the economic downturn.

Early Contributions to the Study of Stress

• Scientific interest in stress dates back nearly a century.
• Walter Cannon, an American physiologist at Harvard Medical School, identified the body’s physiological reactions to stress.
• Cannon and the Fight-or-Flight Response
• Cannon proposed the fight-or-flight response occurs upon experiencing strong emotions, especially those associated with a perceived threat (Cannon, 1932).
• The body is rapidly aroused by the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system.
• This prepares the person to fight or flee from the threat.
• The fight-or-flight response maintains homeostasis, stabilizing physiological variables optimal for survival.
• Cannon viewed the fight-or-flight response as adaptive, enabling adjustment to changes in surroundings.

Selye and the General Adaptation Syndrome

• Hans Selye became an expert in the study of stress (Figure 14.9).
• Selye discovered that prolonged negative stimulation (stressors) in rats caused adrenal enlargement, thymus and lymph node shrinkage, and stomach ulceration.
• These responses were triggered by a coordinated series of nonspecific physiological reactions.
• General adaptation syndrome: the body’s nonspecific physiological response to stress.
• Shown in Figure 14.10, it consists of three stages: alarm reaction, stage of resistance, and stage of exhaustion (Selye, 1936; 1976).
• Alarm reaction: Immediate reaction upon facing a threat or emergency, analogous to Cannon’s fight-or-flight response.
• Stage of resistance: Initial shock wears off; the body adapts to the stressor.
• The body remains on alert but with less intensity.
• Stage of exhaustion: Occurs after prolonged stress; the body cannot adapt.
• Ability to resist becomes depleted, leading to illness, disease, or permanent damage.
• Selye’s syndrome suggests stressors tax the body via a three-phase process, which ultimately lays the groundwork for serious health problems and death.
• Selye’s model focuses exclusively on the body’s physical responses, but it has had an enormous impact as it offers a general explanation for how stress can cause physical damage and disease.