Stress
What is stress?
Stress can be defined as a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation. This means stress is subjective.
Stressor: something that causes stress which can be either physical or psychological.
Acute stress: stress that is caused by something temporary, therefore it passes relatively quickly such as not being able to find your phone in your bag.
Chronic stress: stress that is more long term, which can be caused by a distressing event such as going through a divorce.
The General Adaption Syndrome
Developed by Hans Seyle (1936) who argued there was one general response to stress. If we follow his theory, this means that it doesn't matter what the stressor itself is because we will respond to all of them in the same way. The reason for this being, the response itself is when we try to adapt to the stress.
3 stages of GAS
Alarm reaction: flight or fight response
Resistance: we try to adapt to the situation at hand and appear to be coping. This results in us using up all of our resources for our stress response to always be activated, so we're ready.
Exhaustion: when we fail to adapt, our resources run low and a stress related illness may develop.
Evaluation of GAS
+: Seyle (1936)exposed rats to a number of different stressors and found that they responded the same to all of them which supports the 'general' part of the theory.
Seyle's work is seen to be very influential as it paved the way for us to develop our understanding of the difference between stress and illness.
-: Mason (1971) exposed monkeys to 7 different stressors and found that they responded to them differently so it is not true that we respond to all stressors in the exact same way.
- Much of the research into GAS is carried out on animals and thus cannot be generalised to humans.
Stress pathways
Sympathomedullary pathway (SAM) - acute stressors
Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal system (HPA) - chronic stressors
Higher brain centre - notices stress and sends message to
Hypothalamus, activates the ANS, sympathetic branch
Sympathic ANS: sends signal to the adrenal medulla
Adrenal medulla: releases adrenaline/noradrenaline which has an instant effect on our system.
Higher brain centre detects change and sends a message to the hypothalamus again which causes the release of CRF (corticotrophin releasing factor).
Due to the presence of a negative feedback loop, ACTH (adrenocortrophin hormone) is released which triggers the adrenal cortex to release cortisol.
The effect of cortisol on the body: provides body with steady supply of fuel, conserves salt and water, mobilises protein reseveres, conserves glucose and supresses the immune system.
Adaptive Value: calms down effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline, ensures the person has enough energy to deal with the stressor to ensure they have enough resources.
Evaluation of the physiology of stress:
The role of stress in illness
Gender differences in coping with stress
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Kiecolt and Glaser - the study wanted to test the effects of stress on immunosuppression. It included 75 female medical students. They each had a blood test before the test and on the day of the test. The blood test showed that on the day of the test, the students had high levels of natural killer cells which portrays the negative effect of stress on health.
Strengths of this study
- natural experiment thus is very high in mundane realism
- very low chance of demand characteristics influencing results as they were testing something biological and not behavioural.
Limitations of the study
- biased sample and small sample size of 75 medical students - all females thus findings cannot be generalised to males. Beta bias - minimises the differences between women and men.
- students may have become ill and thus the higher levels of natural killer cells may have been due to an illness and not stress.
Harburg et al - study carried out in high stress and low stress areas in Detroit. It was found that in high stress areas of Detroit, individuals were more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease (CHD) supporting the role of stress in developing CHD.
Yusuf et al (2004) - compared people with heart attacks. People who had chronic stress were more likely to experience chronic stress.
Immediate stress: adrenaline an cardiovascular disorders. Stress is actvated by the autonomous nervous system which means it releases adrenaline, high levels will have the following effects: increased heart rate, increased blood pressure which causes blood vessels to wear away and may cause a heart attack or stroke.
Williams et al 2000 investigated whether anger was linked to heart disease as anger also activates the SNS. 13,000 people completed a 10 question anger scale with questions like whether or not they were hot-headed. 6 years later, 256 experienced heart attacks, those who scared the highest on the scale 2/3 of the time suffered from a heart attack.
Strengths of research into stress related illness is the applications it has to real life treatments. Understanding the effects of stress on illness allows us to develop treatments such as benzodiazepines and beta blockers which help calm down the symptoms of stress.
However, limitations of research into stress related illness is that other extraneous variables may be influencing cardiovascular disease as opposed to stress is that it may have been caused by diet or genetics.
Sources of stress
Life changes
Life changes refers to big events that have an impact on our life, which may require a transition to adapt to the new situation. Holmes and Rahe (1967) created a scale to help measure it called the Social Readjustment Ratings Scale (SRRS). The scale has 43 events on there in total and requires individuals to recall major life events over the past year of their life, this being measured by life changing units (LCUs).
Rahe et al (1970) adapted the SRRS slightly into the SRE to investigate the relationship between stress and illness. This study made a comparison between the 'normal' population and those who were already ill in hospital. Sample: 2,664 men who served in the navy or marines for 3 years in the US. They were asked to recall SRE for events from the past 2 years and it was adapted specifically for them. Findings: significant positive correlation between LCU score and illness score. It was concluded that the amount of 'psychic energy' required to deal with an event is what caused stress.
Cohen et al 1993 gave nasal drops to pps which contained the common cold virus and assessed their life changes based on the Schedule of Recent Experiences. They were quarantined to see if they would develop a cold. The results of this study showed that pps with a higher LCU were more likely to get infected which supports the idea of their being a link between stress and illness as well as showing that stress can lead to immunosuppression).
Daily hassels
Daily hassles are minor events that happen on a daily basis in our lives. The negative effects of daily hassles can be decreased by daily uplifts which are small positive experiences that happen to you throughout your life time.
Effect of daily hassles: accumulation and amplification. Accumulation: when minor daily stressors creates persistent irritations, frustrations and overloads which result in more serious stress reactions such as depression and anxiety. Amplification: when someone has a chronic stressors that has affected their life in some way and when they come into contact with minor stressors, it causes them to have an 'over the top' reaction to those minor stressors and be more vulnerable to daily hassles.
Kanner et al (1981) investigated if daily hassles are a better predictor of illness than the life changes approach. Sample: 100 (48 women and 52 men) aged 45-67. Each pp was given the task of competing the Hassles and Uplifts Scale, for events over the past month, and continued to fill it out for 9 months. They also completed a life events scale throughout the study. They found 5 most common daily hassles. They also found that those who had fewer hassles had higher levels of well-being and that it was a better prediction of well-being rather than life events and uplifts.
Evaluation: support for importance of daily hassles (more important than life events/changes). Ruffin 1993 found that daily hassles were linked to greater psychological and physical dysfunction than they were major negative life events. Flett et al (1995) asked individuals to rate the amount of support tht person would recieve and would seek from others, rated high.
Negative: problems with self-report as people may not report their experiences honestly due to social desirability bias, individuals differences in terms of gender may not have been accounted for (for instance with pets) and their is an issue with the reliability of recall but alternative methods such as diaries to tackle this.
Workplace Stress
Stress at work might be regarded as both a life event and a daily hassle. Th sis outlined in the job-strain model of workplace stress. This model claims that stress causes illness in two ways: high workload and low job control.
Marmot et al 1997 one on 10,000 civil servants who worked in Whitehall, London since 1985. Some pps who worked in higher ranked jobs (such as accountants) have high levels of workload and control whereas those with lower rank jobs experienced lower levels of that. Both are likely to be stressed but for different reasons. At the start they were asked to complete a questionnaire and measured for CHD 1 years later. High workload wasn't associated with CHD bt low job control was.
Johansson et al 1978 studied 28 manual labourers in sawmil. He compared the high-risk group who had high workload and low control to low-risk groups. He measured levels of adrenaline daily and obtained self-report of job satisfaction and illness. The high-risk group had higher illness rates and higher levels of adrenaline The sawyers hag greater workload and lower sense of control and their jobs were repetitive and constrained, low self-control of work pace.
Evaluation: individual differences with how people cope with stress (Lazarus 1995 transactional approach), work underload had not been researched and how it may also lead to stress, the validity of the studies that have been used to support workplace stress as they mostly use questionnaires and it has not taken into account the evolution of work and workplace stressors.
Physiological explanations for gender-differences: Shelley Taylor et al (2010). He created the tend-to-befriend response to stress suggesting that this is a response females have developed to respond to stress. For females, there was a greater adaptive advantage to have this response which makes it more common within females as it means they have different parental investment which maximises the survival of the offspring. Alongside the production of normal stress hormones, females also get oxytocin which promotes feelings of bonding and social-ness. Males get a dose of testosterone which recues the effect of oxytocin.
Psychological explanations for gender differences: Lazarus and Folkman (1984) found there was two different styles of which are problem-focused and emotion-focused coping styles. Peterson et al 2006 got 1,000 men and women seeking fertility treatment at a hospital were staff were recruited to complete several questionnaires. They found a clear gender difference where women used a style that helped to reduce the emotional impact, seek social support an avoidance compared to men. Men discarded themselves from the problem and kept a distance.
Evaluation: the tend-to-befriend response isn't as clear cut, lack of research support for coping focus (problem-focused and emotion-focused wasn't supported by research), confounding variables found that may have exacerbated the gender differences and it's reliance on self-report scales where people describe how they have dealt with the specific situations.
The role of social support in coping with stress
Social support is the help you may receive from other people at times of stress. Friends and family may be seen as sources of stress but this depends on your relationship with them. Nabi et al (2013) found that having more friends was associated with having a stronger network of social support and that it reduces stress.
Instrumental support: giving someone tangible support such as lending them some money or dropping them off somewhere.
Emotional support: helping someone cope emotionally and distracting the from the problem at hand.
Esteem support: when someone else makes you feel better about yourself to help you value yourself more, giving you the self-efficacy to cope with stress.
Effects of social support: the buffering hypothesis (suggests that social support is most effective at times of stress to protect individuals from the negative effects of stress by giving them a potential solution to their problem) and direct physiological effect (social support impacts the autonomous nervous system which helps us to relax).
Kamarck et al (1990) 39 female psychology students volunteered to perform a difficult mental task either alone or a with same-sex friend. During the task (which the friend and the pp were both completing) the friend as asked to touch their wrist. Those who were with a friend had lower blood pressure.
Evaluation: pets can provide social support as well, distinguishing the difference between the different types, cultural differences and gender.
Individual differences in stress
Hardiness: type of personality which makes them more able to resist negative effects of stress. Characteristic: having control over ones life, commitment and challenge
Kobasa 1979 aimed to investigate why osme people got ill and others didn't despite having similar levels of stress. He tested 800 middle-upper level executives and asked them to identify their life events that they experienced in the last 3 years and asked to list any illness periods during that time. He got a list of those who were high stress/low illness (86) and high stress/high illness (75). The high stress/low illness scored high on the hardiness test. Maddi 1987 and Lifton et al 2006 both conducted similar experiments and found similar things.
Evaluation; real world applications (Maddi), the 3 elements of hardiness are not equally important, problems of measurement and direct effects.
Cortisol and immunosuppression: cortisol reduces the body's response in the immune system.
Drug therapies
Benzodiazepines: used to treat anxiety and stress. It works by enhancing the action of GABA neurotransmitters (a neurone transmitter responsible for anxiety relief). About 40% of neurons respond to this messenger which affects other neurones in turn too, calming effect. It opens a chloride ion channel which releases the ions into the postsynaptic neurone. This makes the neurone more negative which makes it harder to fire at the next one which is what makes oyu feel less anxious and relaxed.
Betablockers: block sites that are normally activated by adrenaline/noradrenaline. Stress leads to sympathetic arousal which is what triggers the release of those hormones. Beta Blockers bind to receptors in the cells of the heart and prevent adrenaline or noradrenaline from having such a strong effect. This lowers heart rate and pressure and the person feels calmer and less anxious.
Evaluation: ease of use from therapy, addiction, side effects and treating the symptoms rather than the problem