Individual Differences Explanations

Question 1

What do individual differences explanations propose about stress?

Answer 1

Behaviour is caused by differences between people and these different account for the resulting differences in whether we become stressed as a result of environmental demands.

Question 2

What are the two individual differences explanations?

Answer 2

1. Hardiness
2. Personality Type A/B/C/D

Question 3

How can 2 people respond to the same stressor

Answer 3

Two people can experience the same stressor e.g an exam but respond in different ways.
One may perceive an exam like a challenge another may perceive it as a threat.

Question 4

How do hardy people respond to stress?

Answer 4

They respond positively to stress and survive difficult situations

Question 5

Who looked at the hardy personality in 1979?

Answer 5

Kobasa and Maddi 1979
-studied 800 executives
-found that some of these were very resilient to the effects of stress in their lives and thrived in stressful circumstances

Question 6

What did Maddi find about personality differences

Answer 6

-looked at personality differences between those who coped well with stress and those who didn’t and found those who coped well had a particular personality made up of the 3 Cs.

Question 7

What 3 characteristic beliefs make up a hardy personality?

Answer 7

1. Control
2. Commitment
3. Challenge

Question 8

Control

Answer 8

-in charge of their own lives rather than viewing themselves as victims who are helpless and at the mercy of external conditions
-they have internal locus of control (belief you are in control of things.)
-if they don’t have the skills they need to do something they will go out of their way to get them e.g reading an extra book to learn how to do something.

Question 9

Commitment

Answer 9

-feel they have a sense of purpose in their life
-engaged in life
-when things are hard tackle them head on rather than avoiding them
-curious and willing to take risks and believe you must remain an active participant in your own life rather than withdrawing or alienating yourself from a situation
-throws themselves wholeheartedly into what they do

Question 10

Challenge

Answer 10

• views things as challenges rather than difficulties and perceives stressful situations as an opportunity to grow and develop
  -have a growth mindset and devote time and energy to solving a problem to achieve rather than giving up because they can’t do them easily
  -e.g revising harder topics.
  -accept the uncertainty and unpredictability of life and view stress and change as normal part of life and see life as a learning curve both full of success and failure.

Question 11

Why are hardy personalities resistant to stress?

Answer 11

They have resilience
-personality acts as a buffer to stress protecting them from harmful effects
-can cope effectively with stress and utilise range of coping strategies. For example…
-identifying stressful circumstances
-analysing what can be done to resolve them
-seeking social support
-ensuring self care: healthy diet, lifestyle and adequate relaxation

Question 12

Why are people with low hardiness more prone to stress?

Answer 12

Use avoidance techniques such as overspending, gambling, feel victimised by those around them, have poor diet and low levels of exercise.

Question 13

If hardy personality are less likely to experience high levels of stress what does this mean for their physical health?

Answer 13

Less of a physiological response to stress such as increased heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol production

Question 14

What research was carried out in 1987

Answer 14

Maddi 1987
Research on Bell Téléphone Company during a stressful period of redundancies and restructure
Assessed personality and found 1/3 of sample possessed hardy personality
Those with a hardy personality suffered less stress related illnesses e.g heart problems, mental health issues etc than those without hardy personalities
Shows that personality types offer protection against stress.

Question 15

Supporting Evidence Bartone 1999

Answer 15

-studied military personnel in a range of different activities such as peacekeeping and combat
-found that military personnel with low levels of hardiness had increased vulnerability to stress and ptsd

Question 16

Supporting Evidence Research on Norwegian Navy Cadets

Answer 16

Found those with unbalanced personality profiles e.g high levels of commitment and control but low levels of challenge were more likely to experience immunosuppression than those cadets with all three components.
-shows that hardiness with all three components does have the ability to protect from negative effects of stress.

Question 17

Alternative evidence issues with validity

Answer 17

Evidence to support hardiness explanation is correct is largely correlational-cause and effect conclusions cannot be drawn
Lack internal validity
Dependent on self-report questionnaires
Subject to social desirability bias
Compromises internal validity explanation of stress
Shows that hardiness explanation is incomplete

Question 18

Alternative evidence other explanations

Answer 18

biological explanation shows that stress is an evolutionary response to threats with essential changes in our physiology occurring for the purpose of survival
-unclear how the hardy personality fulfills this survival response
-offers incomplete explanation
-hardiness does not provide comprehensive explanation and is too simplistic in its assumptions.

Question 19

Usefulness hardiness training

Answer 19

US navy seals and other elite military units are scanned for hardiness therefore concept is used in job selection
Hardiness not seen as innate personality style, training programmes have been developed to teach people how to enhance the 3 Cs
-training is widespread to US military and in society and broadly educates people to change their perception of events from threat to challenge
-increases sense of control by developing problem-focused strategies so there are real world benefits from applying this theory to reduce stress

Question 20

Nature vs Nurture Hardiness

Answer 20

Embraces nurture component.
Salvatore Maddi suggests key components of hardiness are learnt in childhood but acknowledges they can be learnt at any point during our lives
-this can be seen in hardiness training programmes that aim to equip individuals that are stressed to see stress as a challenge rather than a threat
-new learning can empower an individual to change their behaviour and how they respond to stress as well as increasing control

Question 21

Nomothetic Hardiness Kobasa and Shepperd

Answer 21

Hardiness explanation of stress dictates that those individuals with 3 Cs will respond more positively to stress. General rule ignores individual differences e.g gender and variation in personality type
Original research carried out by Kobasa 1999 used male and sample lacked population validity
Shepperd 1991 found inconsistencies in the hardy personality between male and females and that the control and commitment element acted as a much greater buffer to males to females showing clear gender differences in hardy personality

Question 22

What did Maddi find in 2013

Answer 22

Suggested that all 3 components of the hardy personality are required in order to buffer an individual from stress.
-but other research shows this might not be the case

Question 23

What did Sandvik find in 2013

Answer 23

-examined 21 Norwegian candidates who all scored highly in terms of hardiness
-some balanced (scored highly on all 3 components)
-some unbalanced (scored highly on some components but lower on others e.g challenge)
-found that the overall cadets in the unbalanced group showed more damaging immune response to stress thus showing that certain elements of the hardy personality play a more significant role in protecting than others.

Question 24

What do these nomothetic examples show

Answer 24

we cannot universally adopt the hardy personality explanation as individual differences play a role.

Question 25

When did research into the influence of personality type begin

Answer 25

In the 1950s when cardiologists Freidchman and Rosehan observed a waiting room and noticed how some individuals showed behaviours seeming anxious and tense while others seemed relaxed.

Question 26

What personality types did Freidchman and Rosehan identify?

Answer 26

Type A and B Each personality type responds to stress differently

Question 27

List all the personality types

Answer 27

Type A Type B Type C Type D Type T

Question 28

Type A Characteristics

Answer 28

Competitive and a perfectionists Highly strung Impulsive and hostile Critical of themselves and have a chronic sense of urgency Goal focused and workaholics but experience no joy in the process of accomplishment Easily wound up and get angry easily

Question 29

Type A Health Risks/ Stress Risks

Answer 29

more likely to experience the fight or flight response thus more likely to experience acute or episodic-acute stress -thus high blood pressure and increased risk of coronary heart disease.

Question 30

Type B Characteristics

Answer 30

Laid back Calm and relaxed Expressive happy to delegate

Question 31

Type B Health/Stress Risk

Answer 31

Least prone to stress and thus stress-related illness.

Question 32

Type C Characteristics

Answer 32

Identified by Greer and Morris in 1975 Keep tight control over their emotions Don’t tend to express them and bottle them up whenever anything upsets or annoys them.

Question 33

Type C Health/Stress Risk

Answer 33

Associated with the increased risk of cancer.

Question 34

Type D Characteristics

Answer 34

Identified by Denollet in 1998 D stands for distress caused by 2 characteristics 1. A tendency towards a negative emotional state (worry, gloominess, irritability) 2. Social inhibition (don’t disclose feelings and lack of confidence in social situations)

Question 35

Type D Health Risk/Stress Risk

Answer 35

makes them more prone to chronic stress and stress related illness

Question 36

Type T Characteristics

Answer 36

adrenaline and thrill seeking

Question 37

Type T Health Risk/Stress Risk

Answer 37

makes them a high risk of accidents and stress as the stress response is often activated.

Question 38

Supporting Evidence personality type : What did Friedman research in 1975 ?

Answer 38

she asked participants to complete an unsolvable puzzle in a very stressful noisy environment in return for a reward to support the view that personality type effects an individual’s response to stress.

Question 39

Supporting Evidence: What did Freidchman observe about Type A individuals

Answer 39

They behaved in a more stressful way than Type B individuals. They were outwardly annoyed, hostile and angry. They showed higher levels of adrenaline during the task despite having similar levels to type B before the task

Question 40

Supporting Evidence What does Freidchman’s research illustrate?

Answer 40

Type A/B personality explanation is correct as Type A personalities physiologically respond differently to stress and are more at risk of developing stress-related illnesses such as CHD.

Question 41

Alternative Evidence: Transactional Model of Stress

Answer 41

-suggests personality type theory is incomplete Transactional model suggests that stress does not exist solely within the environment nor solely within the person built in the transaction between the 2. The response to stress relates to an individual’s appraisal of the situation and their ability to cope with it and this is what determines the impact the stressor will have. -Thus because Type A/B personality only considers factors within the person. It cannot provide a complete picture.

Question 42

Usefulness

Answer 42

Strategies are employed to reduce Type A behaviours and Hadmani et al 2022 found this was effective in reducing stress in adolescents. -specific programmes such as AMPS that can reduce Type A behaviours e.g anger and Trimble evaluated the effectiveness in violent offenders and it was found to significantly reduce expression and experience of hostility -Theory has practical benefits to enable people to modify their personality and therefore stress levels in the real world.

Question 43

Conclusion

Answer 43

-individual differences lead to some people being more prone to stress than others -relationship between personality and stress is complex with many intervening factors e.g culture and age -managing our stress is increasingly importance in the workplace so organisations can develop wellbeing strategies for all employees to work with their own individual differences And to maximise their ability to manage stressors and enable a more successful and productive workforce.