Chapter 14

Question 1

What is Stress?

Answer 1

Stress: Any circumstances that can threaten or are precieved to threaten ones well being and thereby tax ones coping abilities

Stress is Subjective and can include:

1. Sudden trauma experience
2. Continuing pressures that seem uncontrollable
3. Small irritations that wear you down

Stress As An Everyday Event:

• Stress comes from a series of stressors or daily hassles
• Stress reaction to hassle = ones reaction to stress in everyday life

Question 2

Major Types of Stress

Answer 2

Acute Stressors: Threatening events that have a relatively short duration and a clear endpoint

Chronic Stressor: Threatening events that have a relatively long duration and no readily apparent time limit

Stress Appeaisal Process:

Primary Appraisal: Initial evaluation of whether a event is:

a. Irrevelant to you
b. Relevant but not threatening
c. Stressful

Secondary Appraisal: Evaluation of your coping resources and options for dealing with the stress

Major Types of Stres:

Frustration: Occurs when pursuit of some goal is thwarted

Conflict: Occurs when two or more incompatiable motivations of behaviourial impusles compete for expression

Approach-approach conflict: need to choose between two attractive goals

Avoidance-avoidence Conflict: need to choose between two unattractive goals

Approach-avoidence conflict: need to decide whether to pursue a single goal that has both attractive and unattractive goals

Life Changes: any noticeable alteration in ones living circumstances that require adjustment

Homles and Rahe: Social and Readjusment Rating Scale (SRRS)

• A stress scale that rates the degree to which life events are stressful

Pressure: Expectations or demands that one behave in a certain way

Emotional Responses to Stress:

• Annoyance, anger, and rage
• Apprehensive, anxeity, and fear
• Dejection, sadness and greif

Stressful situations can also trigger positive emotions:

• 9/11 study: After the terrorist attacks, participants who reported positive emotions like graditude and renewed love for family and friends were more likely to be resilent and “bounce back”

Broden and

Question 3

Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotion

Answer 3

Fight or Flight Response: When an organism perceives a threat, the body is rapidly aroused and motivated to either attack the threat or flee

Physical Response to Stress:

Stress-illness Mystery:

Stressors can increase illness when they:

1. Servely distrupt a person’s life
2. Uncontroliable
3. Chronic

The Physiology of Stress:

[chronic stressors] = [Physiological alarm and exhaustion] = Illness

General adaptation syndrome [Selye’s Theory]

Three phases in responding to stressors:

1. Alarm
2. Resistance
3. Exhuastion

Goal: min wear and tear on the system

Sex Difference in Physiological Responses to Stress:

Males: Stress is more intense than females

The Effects of Stress:

The Effects of Stress on Psychological Functioning

l Impaired Task Performance
¡ Pressure can interfere with performance by elevating self-consciousness
¡ Anxiety distracts attention from task
¡ Test anxiety
l Writing about fears and anxiety before an exam can improve performance
l Optimism: general expectation that overall, things will go well; expect the best
l Pessimism: general expectation that things will not go well for them; expect the worst

Explanatory Style and Stress
l Defensive Pessimism: The tendency to attend to and worry about failure on upcoming tasks in a strategic effort to motivate oneself to do well

Explanatory Style and Stress
l Defensive Pessimism Study
¡ Defensive pessimists and optimists were told that they would be tested on mental arithmetic problems
¡ Half of the participants were told to list their thoughts and feelings about the upcoming test; half were asked to do a distractor task
¡ Measured:
l Anxiety level
l Arithmetic score
l Personality and Stress
l Type A Personality: determined to achieve, impatient, competitive, angry and hostile; results in continual stress
l Type B Personality: calmer and less intense; experience less stress
l Type C Personality: difficulty expressing or acknowledging negative feelings; particularly vulnerable to stress
l Social Support and Stress
l Social Support
¡ People with network of close connections live longer than those who do not
¡ After heart attack, those with no close contacts were twice as likely to die
l Coping

Question 4

Coping Stress

Answer 4

l Coping: cognitive and behavioural strategies to manage stress
¡ Lashing out: psychological or physical
¡ Self-defence: defensive, avoidant behaviours to protect oneself from stress
¡ Self-indulgence: alcohol, drugs, overeating
l Coping with Stress
l Constructive Strategies:
¡ Problem-focused coping: Take care of the problem causing the anxiety
¡ Emotion-focused coping: Reduce emotional distress

Question 5

Stress and Health

Answer 5

l Interaction between psychological and biological factors
¡ Coronary heart disease
l Psychological (e.g., Type A) and biological (e.g., obesity)

Stress and Health
l Stress and the immune system
¡ Psychoneuroimmunology: studies links between stress, the immune system, and health
¡ Immune system: organs, tissues, and cells that identify and fight bodily invaders (e.g., viruses, bacteria, cancer cells)
¡ Lymphocytes: white blood cells, key in fighting bacterial and viral invaders

Stress and the Common Cold
l	Stress and Health
l	Depression and Disease
¡	Depression roughly doubles one’s chances of developing heart disease
¡	Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

How Much Control Do We Have over Our Health?
l Link between stress and illness is not straightforward and direct
l Public might be oversimplifying message in health psychology research
¡ Factors that produce good health are not entirely psychological or entirely under our control
¡ How Much Control Do We Have over Our Health?

3 strongest predictors of living a long, healthy life
¡ not smoking, eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly