Stress and Health (Ch. 11)
Stress
The term used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging.
• Stressors – events that cause a stress reaction.
1. Distress – the effect of unpleasant and undesirable stressors.
2. Eustress – the effect of positive events, or the optimal amount of stress that people need to promote health and well-being.
Causes of Stress
• Catastrophe
An unpredictable, large-scale event that creates a tremendous need to adapt and adjust as well as overwhelming feelings threat.
• Major Life Events
Cause stress by requiring adjustment.
o Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) – assessment that measures the amount of stress in a person’s life over a one-year period resulting from major life events.
o College Undergraduate Stress Scale (CUSS) – assessment that measures the amount of stress in a college student’s life over a one-year period resulting from major life events.
• Hassles
The daily annoyances of everyday life.
Everyday Sources of Stress
• Pressure
The psychological experience produced by urgent demands or expectations for a person’s behavior that come from an outside source.
• Uncontrollability
The degree of control that the person has over a particular event or situation. The less control a person has, the greater the degree of stress.
• Frustration
The psychological experience produced by the blocking of a desired goal or fulfillment of a perceived need. Possible reactions:
o Aggression – actions meant to harm to destroy.
o Displaced Aggression ¬– taking out one’s frustrations on some less threatening or more available target, a form of displacement.
o Escape or Withdrawal ¬– leaving the presence of a stressor, either literally or by a psychological withdrawal into fantasy, drug abuse, or apathy.
• Conflict
Psychological experience of being pulled toward or drawn to two or more desires or goals, only one of which may be attained.
• Suicide
Types of Conflict
• Approach-Approach Conflict
Conflict occurring when a person must choose between two desirable goals.
• Approach-Avoidance conflict
Conflict occurring when a person must choose or not choose a goal that has both positive and negative aspects.
o Double Approach-Avoidance Conflict – conflict in which the person must decide between two goals, with each goal possessing both positive and negative aspects.
Bodily Reactions to Stress
• Autonomous nervous system consists of:
o Sympathetic System – responds to stressful events.
o Parasympathetic System ¬– restores the body to normal functioning after the stress has ceased.
• General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
The three stages of the body’s physiological reaction to stress, including alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
Stress and the Immune System
• Immune System
The system of cells, organs, and chemicals of the body that responds to attacks from diseases, infections, and injuries.
o Negatively affected by stress.
• Psychoneuroimmunology
The study of the effects of psychological factors such as stress, emotions, thoughts, and behavior on the immune system.
• Heart disease, Diabetes, Cancer
Cognitive Factors of Stress
• Cognitive Appraisal Approach
States that how people think about a stressor determines, at least in part, how stressful that stressor will become.
o Primary Appraisal ¬– the first step in assessing a stress, which involves estimating the severity of a stressor and classifying it as either a threat or a challenge.
o Secondary Appraisal – the second step in assessing a threat, which involves estimating the resources available to the person for coping with the stressor.
Stress and Personality
• Type A Personality
Person who is ambitious, time-conscious, extremely hardworking, and tends to have high levels of hostility and anger as well as being easily annoyed.
• Type B Personality
Person who is relaxed and laid-back, less driven and competitive than Type A, and slow to anger.
• Type C Personality
Pleasant but repressed person, who tends to internalize his or her anger and anxiety and who finds expressing emotions difficult.
• Hardy Personality
A person who seems to thrive on stress but lacks the anger and hostility of the Type A personality.
• Optimists
People who expect positive outcomes.
• Pessimists
People who expect negative outcomes.
Stress and Social Factors
- Social factors increasing the effects of stress include poverty, stresses on the job or in the workplace, and entering a majority culture that is different from one’s culture of origin.
• Burnout
Negative changes in thoughts, emotions, and behavior as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.
• Acculturative Stress
Stress resulting from the need to change and adapt a person’s ways to the majority culture.
o e.g. Integration, Assimilation, Separation, Marginalization
• Social Support System
The network of family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and others who can offer support, comfort, or aid to a person in need.
Ways to Deal with Stress
• Coping Strategies
Actions that people can take to master, tolerate, reduce, or minimize the effects of stressors.
o Problem-Focused Coping ¬– coping strategies that try to eliminate the source of a stress or reduce its impact through direct actions.
o Emotion-Focused Coping – coping strategies that change the impact of a stressor by changing the emotional reaction to the stressor.
Meditation
Mental series of exercises meant to refocus attention and achieve a trancelike state of consciousness.
• Concentrative Meditation
Form of meditation in which a person focuses the mind on some repetitive or unchanging stimulus so that the mind can be cleared of disturbing thoughts and the body can experience relaxation.
Cultural Influences on Stress
- ¬Different cultures perceive stressors differently.
- Coping strategies will also vary from culture to culture.
Religiosity and Stress
- ¬People with religious beliefs also have been found to cope better with stressful events.
Exercise
- Raises good cholesterol and lowers bad cholesterol.
- Strengthens bones.
- Improves quality of sleep.
- Reduces tiredness.
- Increases natural Killer cell activity.
- Wards off virus and cancer.
- Reduces stress.
End of Reviewer
Updated 502d ago