Chapter 3 – Stress and Its Effects

The Nature of Stress

- Stress used in different ways over years
o As stimulus event that presents difficult demands
o As response of physiological arousal elicited by a troublesome event
- Neither stimulus or response, but a special stimulus-response transaction when one feels threatened or experiences loss or harm
- Stress: any circumstances that threaten or are perceived to threaten one’s well-being and thereby tax one’s coping abilities
Stress is an Everyday Event
- Stress levels are high and on the rise
- Higher stress rates in communities affected by traumatic crises (floods, earthquakes etc)
- Major stressful events can trigger a cascade of minor events
- Minor stressors do not necessarily produce minor effects
o Daily hassles more strongly related to mental health scores than major life events
- Stressful events have cumulative or additive impact
- Hassles that evoke strong negative emotions more related to stress
Stress Lies in the Eye of the Beholder
- Primary appraisal: initial evaluation of whether an event is (1) irrelevant to you, (2) relevant but not threatening, or (3) stressful
- Secondary appraisal: evaluation of your coping resources and options for dealing with stress
- Appraisals about stressful events alter impact of events to themselves
- Anxious, neurotic people more likely to make threat appraisals as well as to report more stress than people with less anxiety
- People’s appraisals of stressful events highly subjective
Stress May Be Embedded in the Environment
- Ambient stress: chronic environmental conditions that, although not urgent, are negatively valued and place adaptive demands
on people
o Ex. excessive noise, traffic, pollution, crowding
- Association between chronic exposure to high levels of noise and elevated blood pressure
- Association between high density and increased physiological arousal, psychological distress and social withdrawal
o Crowding can be one of most critical stressors
- Those who live in places at risk for disaster (nuclear power plant, earthquakes) have higher levels of distress
- Exposure to community violence is associated with anxiety, depression, anger, and aggression among urban youth
Stress is Influenced by Culture
- Challenges in daily lives different in different societies
- Cultural change (ex increased modernization, shifting values and customs) is a major source of stress in many societies around
the world
- May experience pervasive stress that is only unique to the group
- Stressors in everyday life can only be experienced by specific cultural groups
o Racial discrimination negatively affects mental health and well-being
o Overt racial discrimination has declined, but covert expressions of ethnic prejudice continue to be commonplace
- Everyday discrimination (verbal insults (ethnic slurs), negative evaluations, avoidance etc) – subtle and ambiguous
o Perceived discrimination is linked to greater psychological distress, higher levels of depression, and decreased well-
being for a variety of minority groups including sexual minorities
- Acculturation: changing to adapt to a new culture
o Stressful and related to reduced well-being for immigrants
o What individuals expect before they immigrate and what they actually experience is related to amount of acculturation
stress they have
Major Sources of Stress
- Acute stressors: threatening events that have a relatively short duration and a clear end-point
- Chronic stressors: threatening events that have a relatively long duration and no readily apparent time limit
- Brief stressors can have long-lasting effects
- Anticipatory stressors: upcoming or future events that are perceived to be threatening
o Unique to humans
o Can affect psychologically and physically just as strongly as actual stressors do
- 4 major sources:
Frustration
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 - Frustration: occurs in any situation in which pursuit of some goal is thwarted
- When you want something and can’t have it
- May lead to aggression (even artificial frustration in labs)
- Some frustrations (failures and losses) sources of significant stress
- Most frustrations are brief and insignificant
- Frustration appears when people feel troubles by environmental stress
- Plays a role in aggressive behaviours associated with “road rage”
- Frustration in workplace can result in burnout
Internal Conflict
- Internal conflict: two or more incompatible motivations or behavioural impulses compete for expression
- Like Freud suggested, internal conflict creates psychological distress
- 3 types of conflict:
- Approach-approach conflict: choice must be made between two attractive goals
o Usually have a happy ending
o Conflicts centering around important issues may still be troublesome
- Avoidance-avoidance conflict: choice must be made between two unattractive goals
o Most unpleasant and highly stressful
o People usually keep delaying decision as long as possible, hoping they will somehow be able to escape the conflict
situation
- Approach-avoidance conflict: choice must be made about whether to pursue a single goal that has both attractive and
unattractive aspects
o Common and can be highly stressful
o Produce vacillation (going back and forth, beset by indecision that can create stress)
o Focus on positive aspects of decision once is has been made
Change
- Life changes: any noticeable alterations in one`s living circumstances that require readjustment
- Disruption of daily routines are stressful
- So even positive changes can cause stress
- Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) (Holmes and Rahe) measure life change in the form of stress
o Problems:
 Does not measure change exclusively – dominated by negative events
 May measure frustration rather than change
- Instead, researchers took into account desirability and undesirability of life changes
o Saw life change was not the crucial dimension, but negative events caused stress
- Associations between geographic mobility and impaired mental and physical health
- Desirable life changes may be stressful for some but not for others
- Little reason to believe change is inherently or inevitably stressful
Pressure
- Pressure: expectations or demands that one behave in a certain way
- 2 subtypes:
o Pressure to perform – expected to execute tasks and responsibilities quickly, efficiently, and successfully
o Pressure to conform – conform to others’ expectations
- Strong relationship between pressure and a variety of psychological symptoms and problems
o Pressure more strongly related to measures of mental health than SRRS and other established measures of stress
- Stress from academic pressure may impede academic performance and lead to problematic escape behaviours (drinking)
- Some pressure is self-imposed (high school and college students)
- Create stress by embracing unrealistic expectations for themselves, might have more control over stress than they realize
Responding to Stress
- Affects people at 3 different levels:
Emotional Responses
- Debate on how to describe and explain emotion
- Emotions: powerful, largely uncontrollable feelings, accompanied by physiological changes
- When under stress, people often react emotionally
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 o More often unpleasant emotions
- Emotional responses transcend time and culture
Negative Emotions
- No one-to-one connections between certain types of stressful events and particular emotions
- But, some strong links between specific cognitive reactions to stress and specific emotions
- May evoke many negative emotions
- Common negative emotional responses:
o Annoyance, anger, and rage
Often produces feelings of anger ranging in intensity from mild annoyance to uncontrollable rage
Frustration particularly likely to generate anger
o Apprehension, anxiety, and fear
 Evokes anxiety and fear more frequently than any other emotions
 Comes from conflict, pressure, frustration, change
o Dejection, sadness, and grief
Stress, especially frustration can bring you down
- 5 other negative emotions that come with reactions to stress (Lazarus):
o Guilt, shame, envy, jealousy, disgust
Positive Emotions
- People experience diverse array of pleasant emotions even in dire circumstances
- Frequency of pleasant emotions correlated positively with a measure of subjects’ resilience; unpleasant emotions correlated
negatively with resilience
- Positive emotions do not disappear during times of severe stress
- Plays a key role in helping people bounce back from negative emotions associated with stress
o Help contribute building social, intellectual, physical resources that can help when dealing with stress
o Allow for flourishing mental health
Effects of Emotional Arousal
- Emotional responses are natural and serve an important purpose
- Strong emotional arousal can hamper efforts to cope with stress
o Ex. test anxiety – disruption of attention to the test; perform poorly even when know all the material (poor retrieval)

Ego depletion – once distracted, do not have the self-control to get themselves back on course
- Inverted-U hypothesis predicts task performance should improve with increased emotional arousal
o There is an optimal level of arousal for a task
 Depends of the complexity of the task
o As tasks become more complex, the optimal level of arousal (for peak performance) tends to decrease
o Research says inconsistent and subject to varied interpretations
o Original hypothesis more related to animal learning than human performance
o Provides plausible model of how emotional arousal could have either beneficial or disruptive effects of coping,
depending on nature of stressful demands
Physiological Responses
The “Fight-or-Flight” Response
- Fight-or-flight response: physiological reaction to threat that mobilizes an organism for attacking (fight) or fleeing (flight) an
enemy
- Autonomic nervous system (ANS): made up of the nerves that connect to the heart, blood vessels, smooth muscles, and glands
o Where responses occur
o Involuntary
- ANS broken into 2 divisions:
o Parasympathetic division – conserves bodily resources
o Sympathetic division – fight-or-flight response mediator
 Mobilizes bodily resources for emergencies
- Females are less adaptive to fighting and fleeing because both cases endangers offspring
o More likely to “tend and befriend” as a response to stress
o Put more effort into caring for offspring and seeking help and support
- Even female infants more likely to go to mom than males
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 - Reaction is leftover from evolutionary past
o In modern world, not as adaptive
 Most modern stressors cannot be handled simply through fight or flight
The General Adaptation Syndrome
- Selye thought stress reactions are non-specific – do not vary by circumstances (tested on animals)
o Called nonspecific response, stress
- General adaptation syndrome: model of the body`s stress response, consisting of three stages: alarm, resistance, and
exhaustion
o Alarm – when organism recognizes existence of threat
 Physiological arousal increases as body musters resources to combat challenge
 Fight or flight
o Resistance – happens with prolonged stress; coping efforts get under way
 Physiological arousal continues to be higher than normal, but may level off as organism becomes accustomed
to threat
o Exhaustion – stress over a substantial period of time; body’s resources for fighting stress are limited

Body’s resources may be depleted and physiological arousal will decrease

Individual may collapse from exhaustion

Organism’s resistance declines – “diseases of adaptation”
- Research forged link between stress and physical illness
- Ignores individual differences in appraisal of stress and thought stress reactions were nonspecific
- Provided guidance for those who worked out details of how stress reverberates throughout the body
Brain-Body Pathways
- When you experience stress, brain sends signals to endocrine system along two major pathways
- Endocrine system: consists of glands that secrete chemicals called hormones into the blood stream
o Major glands: pituitary, pineal, thyroid, adrenal glands
- Hypothalamus – small structure near the base of the brain, appears to initiate action along both pathways
- Pathway 1:
o Routed through ANS
o Hypothalamus activates the sympathetic division of ANS
o Stimulates central part of adrenal glands (adrenal medulla) to release large amounts of catecholamines into the
bloodstream
o Hormones radiate throughout the body, producing important physiological changes
o Catecholamine elevation causes body to be mobilized for action
- Pathway 2:
o More direct communication between brain and endocrine system
o Hypothalamus sends signals to master gland of endocrine system – pituitary gland
o Pituitary secretes a hormone (ACTH) that stimulates outer part of adrenal glands (adrenal cortex) to release other
important set of hormones – corticosteroids
o Stimulates the release of chemicals that help increase energy and help inhibit tissue inflammation in case of injury
o Cortisol: type of corticosteroid often used as physiological indicator of stress in humans
- Stress also causes changes in immune system (provides resistance to infections)
o Stress can suppress certain aspects of multifaceted immune response, reducing overall effectiveness in repelling
invasions by infectious agents
o Both sets of hormones contribute
Behavioural Responses
- Emotional and physiological responses are automatic; but behavioural level may shut down these potentially harmful emotional
and physiological reactions
- Coping: active efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate the demands created by stress
o Most stress response involves coping
o Can be healthy or unhealthy
- Coping strategies help determine whether stress has positive or negative effects on individual
The Potential Effects of Stress
- Adaptational outcomes – relatively long-lasting (not necessarily permanent) consequences of exposure to stress
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Impaired Task Performance
- Baumeister’s theory:
- Pressure to perform  makes people self-conscious  disrupts attention  interferes with performance
- Attention distorted in 2 ways:
o Elevated self-consciousness diverts attention from demands of task, creating distractions
o On well learned tasks (can be executed almost automatically), self-conscious person may focus too much attention on
task (thinks too much)
- Support from lab experiments where he manipulated pressure to perform
- Support from studies of past performance of professional sports teams championsifts
o Gifted professional athletes less likely to choke under pressure than any other sample
- For normal subjects, choking under pressure is common
- Research on rats found chronic stress might affect brain that leads to overreliance on habits even when habits no longer
advantageous
- May hep during times of stress because take less energy and effort, can keep one from adapting to changing circumstances and
result in impairments in performance
Disruption of Cognitive Functioning
- Keinan – said stress disrupted two specific aspects of attention
o Increased participants’ tendency to jump to conclusions too quickly without considering all their options
o Increased tendency to do unsystematic, poorly organized review of their available options
- For traumatic events, poor attention plays role in shaping memory of the event
- Stress has effects on certain aspects of memory functioning
o Can be minor day-to-day or anticipatory stressors too, not just major
- Stress reduces efficiency of working memory system
o Cannot process, manipulate, integrate new information as effectively as normal
- Short term, mild-to-moderate stressors can actually enhance memory, especially for emotional aspects of event
Burnout
- Burnout: syndrome involving physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and a lowered sense of self-efficacy that is
attributable to work-related stress
- Exhaustion – chronic fatigue, weakness, low energy
- Cynicism – highly negative attitudes toward oneself, one’s work, life in general
- Reduced self-efficacy – declining feelings of competence, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness
- Caused by cumulative stress reaction to ongoing occupational stressors
- Not because of the individual but because of workplace (work overload, interpersonal conflicts at work, lack of control over
responsibilities and outcomes, inadequate recognition for one’s work)
- Physical conditions (noise, light) can contribute to workplace stress, even night and rotating shift work
- Associated with increased absenteeism and reduced productivity, and vulnerability to health problems
Psychological Problems and Disorders
- Chronic stress might contribute to psychological problems and mental disorders
- May contribute to many common psychological problems like poor academic performance, insomnia and other sleep
disturbances, sexual difficulties, alcohol and drug abuse
- Associated with negative mood
- Contributes to psychological disorders like depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, eating disorders
- Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): enduring psychological disturbance attributed to the experience of a major traumatic
event
- Many veterans suffered over a decade later
- 9% of people suffer, twice as common in women than men
- Adults and children can suffer from it (shows up in children’s drawings)
- Sometimes does not surface until many months or years after
- Also seen after rape, serious car accident, robbery or assault, witnessing someone’s death, natural disasters
- 50% will encounter traumatic event in lives
- Don’t need to experience directly (just watching TV)
o Some agree, some say by watching it doesn’t make them a victim therefore cannot develop PTSD
o Instead maybe those who repeatedly and purposefully expose themselves to traumatic images have pathological
preoccupations that account for the symptoms of distress
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 - Common symptoms: reexperiencing event in nightmares or flashbacks, emotional numbing, alienation, problems in social
relations, elevated arousal, anxiety, guilt
- Associated with risk for substance abuse, depression, anxiety disorders, and variety of physical health problems
- Symptoms usually decline over time but in many cases they never completely disappear
- Associated with alterations in structure and function of the brain – changes can build up with exposure to multiple events
- Majority of people who experience traumatic events do not develop PTSD
- Vulnerability to PTSD depends on number of biological and environmental factors
o One factor is intensity of one’s reaction at the time of the traumatic event
 Especially intense emotional reactions
 Report dissociative experiences (sense that things are not real, time stretching out, watching oneself in a movie)
Physical Illness
- Psychosomatic diseases: genuine physical ailments thought to be caused in part by stress and other psychological factors
- Examples: high blood pressure, peptic ulcers, asthma, skin disorders, migraine, tension headaches
- These not regarded as imagined physical ailments, but authentic organic maladies that were stress related
- Gradually falling into disuse because stress seen to contribute to development of diverse array of other diseases that previously
believed to be purely physiological in origin
- Stress may influence onset and course of heart disease, stroke, gastrointestinal disorders, TB, MS, arthritis, diabetes, leukemia,
cancer, various types of infectious disease, etc
- Stress is only one of many factors that contribute to development of physical illness
- Physical effects may be worsened by risky behaviours that stressed people are more likely to engage in
o Ex. increased substance abuse
Positive Effects
- Beneficial effects more difficult to pinpoint than harder effects because they are more subtle
- 3 positive effects:
- 1. Promote positive psychological change (posttraumatic growth)
o Those who face a variety of stressful circumstances (bereavement, cancer, sexual assault, combat)
o Force people to develop new skills, reevaluate priorities, learn new insights, acquire new strengths
o Adaptation initiated by stress leads to personal changes for the better
o Posttraumatic growth related to lower levels of depression, enhanced well-being also related to increased intrusive
thoughts (but not necessarily distress)
o People cognitively working through stressful event
- 2. Help satisfy need for stimulation and challenge
o Most people prefer intermediate level of stimulation and challenge in their lives
o Underload of stimulation can be stressful – experience boredom
o Stress fulfills basic need of human organism
- 3. Today’s stress can inoculate and psychologically prepare individuals so they are less affected by tomorrow’s stress
o Exposure to stress can increase stress tolerance (as long as not overwhelming)
o Better prepared for subsequent stress
Factors Influencing Stress as Tolerance
- Moderator variables soften impact of stress on physical and mental health
Social Support
- Social support: various types of aid and succor provided by members of one’s social networks
- Social support favourably related to physical health
- Stronger social support had higher levels of antibody (wards off respiratory infections)
- Also greater immune functioning
- Associated with mental health
- Serves as protective buffer during times of high stress, reducing negative impact of stressful events
o Also has positive effects on health even when people aren’t under great stress
- In workplace, reduces prevalence of burnout
- Reduce likelihood of PTSD among veterans, increasing likelihood of posttraumatic growth
- Connection between social support and wellness subject of debate
o Can promote wellness by making appraisals of stressful events more benign, less intense physiological reactions to
stress, reducing health-impairing behaviours, encouraging preventative behaviours
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 - Providing social support to others has psychological benefits (less depression and perceived stress) and physical benefits (lower
blood pressure)
- Sociability helps people build social networks, independently associated with reduced susceptibility to infectious disease
- Pet owners view pets as source of support and has health benefits
- Negative aspects of social support (conflict, role strain, additional responsibilities, dependencies) are just starting to be looked
into
Hardiness
- Stress affects hardier people less
- Modified version of Holmes and Rahe stress scale (SRRS) to measure amount of stress experienced by a group of execs
o Modest correlation between stress and incidence of physical illness
o Compared those who had high stress and had high incidence of illness and highs stress who stayed healthy
o Hardier execs were more committed, felt more in control, wanted challenge more
- Hardiness: disposition marked by commitment, challenge, and control that is purportedly associated with strong stress resistance
- Alters stress appraisals or fosters more active coping
- Less likely to get PTSD, and predictor of success in high stress occupations
- Can be learned and comes from strong social support and encouragement
Optimism
- Optimism general tendency to expect good outcomes
- Correlation between optimism (using Life Orientation Test) and good physical health – college students
- Associated with faster recover and better post surgery adjustment
- Associated with more effective immune functioning
- Inversely related to PTSD symptoms who knew a victim in 9/11
- Associated with better mental and physical health
- Pessimistic explanatory style – blame setbacks on own personal shortcomings
o Linked with more thoughts of suicide following a traumatic event
- Optimistic explanatory style – attribute setbacks to temporary situational factors
o Associated with relatively good health and increased longevity
o Some say linked to superior physical health, higher academic achievement, increased job productivity, enhanced athletic
performance, higher marital satisfaction
- Cope with stress in more adaptive ways
- More likely to engage in action-oriented, problem-focused, carefully planned coping, more willing to seek social support
- Related to constructs of hardiness and posttraumatic growth
- Pessimists more likely to deal with stress by giving up, avoiding it, or engaging in denial
- Optimism can be negative when it is inaccurate or unrealistic, or hold “it can’t happen to me” attitude
- Need middle ground – optimism closely tied to strength of wisdom
Application – Reducing Stress through Self Control
- Behaviour modification: systematic approach to changing behaviour through the application of the principles of conditioning
- Behaviour is learned (what can be learned can be unlearned)
- Recondition people to produce more desirable behaviour
- Can treat attention disorders and childhood obesity
- Sources of stress can be reduced using self control
Specifying Your Target Behaviour
- Identify target behaviours you want to change
- Many people have difficulty pinpointing behaviour – must choose overt behaviour rather than unobservable personality traits
- Think of specific examples of responses that lead to that trait description
Gathering Baseline Data
- Systematically observe your target behaviour for a period of time (usually a week or two) before work out details of program
- Monitor 3 things while collecting data:
o 1. Determine initial response level of your target behaviour
 Ex. how often the target response occurs in a certain time interval
 Use unit of measurement – crucial to gather accurate data
 Keep permanent written records, preferably in form of chart or graph
o 2. Monitor antecedents of target behaviour
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  Antecedents: events that typically precede the target response
 Ex. overeating in evening while watching TV
 If find antecedent-response connection, can break the link
o 3. Monitor typical consequences of target behaviour
 Identify reinforcers that are maintaining undesirable target behaviour or unfavourable outcomes that
suppressing desirable target behaviour
• Even avoidance behaviour is negative reinforcement
 Responses may not be reinforced every time, most behaviour is maintained by intermittent reinforcement
Design Your Program
Increasing Response Strength
- Depend largely on use of positive reinforcement
- Reward yourself when behaviour properly
Selecting a reinforcer
- Need to use reward that will be effective
- Reinforcement is subjective
- Choose reinforcer that is realistic and really available
- Doesn’t have to be new reinforcer, can be one you are already getting
- Restructure so you only get it when you behave appropriately
- Making yourself earn rewards you used to take for granted is useful strategy
Arranging the contingencies
- Contingencies describe exact behavioural goals that must be met and the reinforcement that may then be awarded
- Set behavioural goals that are challenging and realistic
o Challenging so it leads to improvement, but not unrealistic that leads to discouragement
- Make sure reinforcement isn’t too easy to get, otherwise become satiated and reinforcer loses motivational power
- Token economy: system for doling out symbolic reinforcers that are exchanged later for a variety of genuine reinforcers
o Ex. point system
o Reinforce variety of related target behaviours rather than just one
 Ex jogging, tennis, and sit-ups (all related)
Shaping
- Shaping: accomplished by reinforcing closer and closer approximated of the desired response
- For target responses that you are not currently capable of making
- Should set up schedule spelling out how and when target behaviours and reinforcement contingencies should change
- Move forward gradually
Decreasing Response Strength
Reinforcement
- Can be used in an indirect way to decrease frequency of a response
- Seems paradoxical (learn reinforcement strengthens behaviour)
- Depends on how you define target behaviour
o Ex. eating less than __ rather than eating more than __
Control of antecedents
- Identify antecedents and avoid exposure to them
- Especially useful when trying to decrease frequency of consummatory response (smoking, eating)
Punishment
- Punishing yourself for behaviour is overused
- Problem is difficulty following through and punishing oneself
- If use, keep 2 guidelines:
o Do not use punishment alone, use in conjunction with positive reinforcement
 If just negative consequences, won’t stick to it
o Use relatively mild punishment that you will actually be able to administer to yourself
 Relatively harmless punishment but as strong source of motivation
Executing and Evaluation Your Program
- Enforce contingencies you have planned
- Continue to record frequency of your target behaviour so you can evaluate
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 - Success of program depends on your not “cheating” – most common form is rewarding yourself when you have not actually
earned it
- Two things to increase likelihood to comply with program:
o Behavioural contract: written agreement outlining a promise to adhere to the contingencies of a behaviour
modification program
 Signing in front of friends or family makes it seem you are taking it more seriously
o Have someone help you dole out reinforcements and punishments
- Behaviour modification programs often require fine-tuning
- Common flaws:
o Depending on a weak reinforcer
o Permitting lengthy delays between appropriate behaviour and delivery of reinforcers
o Trying to do too much to quickly by setting unrealistic goals
Ending Your Program
- Set terminal goals
- Good idea to phase out your program by planning gradual reduction in frequency or potency of your reinforcement for
appropriate behaviour
- If program is successful, may fade away without conscious decision on your part
- New improved behaviours usually become self-maintaining
- Whether you end program intentionally or not, always be prepared to reinstitute program if you find yourself slipping back
- Can be very stress we are trying to reduce that drives us back to unhealthy habits

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