Chapter 15

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 What is stress?
 The stress-illness mystery
 The physiology of stress
 The psychology of stress
 Coping with stress

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 Stress is subjective; can include:
 sudden traumatic experiences
 continuing pressures that seem uncontrollable
 small irritations that wear you down
 Holmes and Rahe developed the Social
Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)
 a stress scale that rates the degree to which life
events are stressful

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 SRRS considers both positive and negative
events as stressful
 Most stress, however, comes from a series of
little stressors, or daily hassles, that include
irritations and demands that occur in daily
life
 Stress reactions to hassles may predict one’s
stress toward major life events

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  Work-Related Problems
 Noise
 Bereavement and Loss
 Poverty, Powerlessness,
and Racism
 Recent Immigration

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 Stressors can increase illness when they:
 severely disrupt a person’s life
 are uncontrollable
 are chronic (i.e., lasting at least 6 months)

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 General adaptation syndrome
 There are three phases in responding to stressors:
 Alarm
 Resistance
 Exhaustion
 Goal is to minimize wear and tear on the system

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 General adaptation syndrome
 There are three phases in responding to
stressors:
 Alarm
 Resistance
 Exhaustion
 Goal is to minimize wear and tear on the system

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 HPA (Hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal cortex
axis)
 A system activated to energize the body to respond
to stressors
 The hypothalamus sends chemical messengers to the
pituitary gland
 The pituitary gland prompts the adrenal cortex to
produce cortisol and other hormones

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 Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)
 The study of the relationships among
psychology, the nervous and endocrine systems
and the immune system
 Psychological factors explain why not all
people are stressed the same amount by the
same things

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 Emotions and illness
 Managing negative emotions
 Explanatory styles
 The sense of control
 The benefits of control
 The limits of control

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 Hostility and heart disease
 Type A Personality: Determined to achieve, sense
of time urgency, irritable, respond to threat or
challenge very quickly, and impatient with
obstacles
 Type B Personality: Calmer and less intense.
 Personality type is less predictive of health
problems than is hostility
 Proneness to anger is a major risk factor

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 Men with highest
hostility scores as
young medical
students had higher
rates of heart disease
25 years later
 Hostility is more
hazardous than a
heavy workload
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 Longitudinal study of 180 Catholic nuns
found that longevity was related to
frequency of positive emotions:
 Examples include happiness, interest, love, hope,
gratitude, and contentment
 Nuns whose life stories contained the most
words describing positive emotions lived on
the average of 9 years longer

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 Two studies followed 1000 people for many
years
 Those who had been clinically depressed at the
outset were 2-4 times more likely to have a
heart attack than non-depressed people were
 Other research failed to find the link

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 Emotional Inhibition: A personality trait
involving a tendency to deny feelings of
anger, anxiety, or fear; in stressful situations,
physiological responses such as heart rate and
blood pressure rise sharply
 People who display this trait are at greater
risk of becoming ill than people who can
acknowledge feelings

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  Research on
confession: divulging
private thoughts and
feelings that make you
ashamed or depressed
 Can also give up
thoughts that produce
grudges and replace
them with different
perspectives
 Forgiving thoughts

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 Studies have shown that those with
optimistic explanatory styles, in comparison
to pessimistic styles, tend to:
 Live longer
 Be active problem-solvers
 Don’t give up or escape
 Keep a sense of humour

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 Locus of Control
 A general expectation about whether the
results of your actions are under your own
control (internal locus) or beyond your
control (external locus)
 Feelings of control can reduce or even
eliminate the relationship between
stressors and health

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 When exposed to cold viruses, those who feel
they are out of control are more likely to
develop colds
 Low-income individuals with high levels of
control report similar quality of life to high-
income individuals
 Managers and executives have fewer illnesses
 African-American individuals reporting more
control have less problems with hypertension
 Nursing home residents with greater control
over activities are more alert, happier and live
longer
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 Primary Control (Western Cultures)
 An effort to modify reality by changing other
people, the situation, or events; a “fighting
back” philosophy
 Secondary Control (Eastern Cultures)
 An effort to accept reality by changing your
own attitudes, goals, or emotions; a “learn to
live with it” philosophy

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 Cooling off
 Solving the problem
 Rethinking the problem
 Drawing on social support
 Healing through helping

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 Relaxation Training
 Learning to alternately tense and relax muscles,
lie or sit quietly, or meditate by clearing the
mind; has beneficial effects by lowering stress
hormones and enhancing immune function
 Massage therapy
 Exercise is also an excellent stress reliever

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 Among those with
low stress, fit and
less-fit people had
similar levels of
health problems
 Among those with
high stress, there
were fewer health
problems among
people who were
more fit

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 Emotion-focused and problem-focused
coping
 Effective Cognitive Coping Methods:
 Reappraising the situation
 Learning from the experience
 Making social comparisons
 Cultivating a sense of humour

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 Reappraising the situation
 Learning from the experience
 Making social comparisons
 Cultivating a sense of humour

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 Friends can help with coping:
 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
 Relationships can also cause stress
 Giving support to others can be a valuable
source of comfort

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 The man thinks the problem is “normal”
 The problem is not central to the man’s self-
concept
 The man can reciprocate the help
 Other men support his decision to seek help

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 Many are stressed by their responsibilities of
caring for others
 In close relationships the person of support
may also be the source of stress
 Married couples who argue in a hostile way have
increased elevations of stress hormones and
immune deficiency
 Friends may be unsupportive or block your
progress toward a goal

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 Coping by giving support to others
 Stimulates optimism
 Restores feelings of control
 Encourages problem solving
 Reduces blaming or venting
 Reappraisal: gain perspective

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