PSYC 2301 INTRO TO PSYC

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PSYC 2301INTRO TO PSYC

• Chapter 13Stress, Health, and Coping

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What is Stress

• Stress-a negative emotional state occurring in
  response to events that are perceived as taxing
  or exceeding a persons resources or ability to
  cope
• Stressor-events or situations that produce stress

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Health Psychology

• Focus on stress and how psychological factors
  influence health, illness, and treatment
• Biopsychosocial model-health and illness are
  determined by the complex interaction of
  biological, psychological, and social factors

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Sources of Stress

• Life events and change
• Holmes and Rahe-Social Readjustment Rating Scale
• People who had more than 150 life change units
  within a year had an increased rate of physical
  or psychological illness

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Life Events Approach

• Problems
• Scores are not very good predictors
• Not take into account a persons subjective
  appraisal of an event, response to that event, or
  ability to cope with the event
• Assumes that change in itself, whether good or
  bad, produces stress

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Daily Hassles

• Ordinary irritations in daily life
• Cumulative

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Conflict

• Feeling pulled between two opposing desires,
  motive, or goals
• 3 basic types of conflicts
• approach-approach
• avoidance-avoidance
• approach-avoidance

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Social and Cultural Factors

• When people live in an environment that is
  inherently stressful, they often experience
  ongoing, or chronic, stress. People in the
  lowest social economic levels of society tend to
  have highest levels of psychological distress,
  illness, and death
• Stress can also result when people encounter
  different cultural values

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Physical Effects on Stress

• Stress can indirectly affect a persons health by
  prompting behaviors that jeopardize physical
  well-being
• Stress can directly affect physical health by
  altering body functions, leading to symptoms,
  illness, or disease

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Stress and the Endocrine System
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General Adaptation Syndrome

• Alarm stage-intense arousal occurs as the body
  mobilizes internal physical resources to meet the
  demands of the stress-producing event.
• Resistance stage-the body actively tries to
  resist or adjust to the continuing stressful
  situation
• Exhaustion stage-symptoms of the alarm stage
  reappear, only now irreversibly.

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Stress and the Immune System

• Stress can diminish the effectiveness of the
  immune system. The most important elements of
  the immune system are lymphocytes--the
  specialized white blood cells that fight
  bacteria, viruses, and other foreign invaders.

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Ader and Cohen

• Conditioning the immune system
• Challenged the prevailing scientific view that
  the immune system operated independently of the
  brain and psychological processes
• Triggered interest in other possible influences
  on the immune system, including the effects of
  stress and emotional states

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Psychoneuroimmunology

• The scientific study of the interconnections
  among psychological processes, the nervous and
  endocrine systems, and the immune system.
• The central nervous system and the immune system
  are directly linked
• The surfaces of lymphocytes contain receptor
  sites for neurotransmitters and hormones,
  including catecholamines and cortisol
• Lymphocytes themselves produce neurotransmitters
  and hormones

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Stressors That Can Influence the Immune System

• Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and husband, immunologist
  Ronald Glaser, found that even commonplace events
  can adversely affect the immune system

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Factors That Influence the Response to Stress

• Psychological factors
• Personal Control
• Explanatory Style Optimism vs. Pessimism
• Chronic Negative Emotions
• Type A Behavior and Hostility

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Factors That Influence the Response to Stress

• Social Factors
• Social support benefits health
• Relationships with others also can be a
  significant source of stress
• Gender differences in the effects of social
  support

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Coping

• The ways we try to change circumstances, or
  interpretations of circumstances, to make them
  less threatening.
• Problem-Focused
• Emotion-Focused

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Coping How People Deal with Stress

• Problem-Focused
• Confrontive Coping
• Planful problem solving

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Coping How People Deal with Stress

• Emotion-Focused
• Escape-avoidance
• Seeking social support
• Distancing
• Denial
• Positive reappraisal

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Culture and Coping Strategies

• Individualistic
• Emphasize personal autonomy and personal
  responsibility in dealing with problems favor
  problem-focused strategies
• Collectivistic
• Emphasis is placed on controlling personal
  reactions to a stressful situation favor
  emotion-focused strategies