Professional Documents
Culture Documents
chapter13
chapter13
chapter13
and Health
The Relationship
Between Stress and Disease
• Acute stressors:
– Threatening events with a clear endpoint
and are rather short in duration (speeding
ticket)
• Chronic Stress
– Long in duration with no clear endpoint
(neg. boss, mortgage loan)
Major Types of Stress
• Psychologists have outlined 4 principle types of
stress
• Frustration: blocked goal
– Very common in every day life
– Ex. traffic jams, waiting for ACT scores or college
admittance papers, breaking up
Major Types of Stress
• Pressure
– expectations or demands that one behave
in a certain way
– pressure to perform or to comply
• Weiten Developed a Pressure Index with
a higher correlation than the SRRS to
psychological problems associated with
stress
Responding to Stress Emotionally
• Physiological Responses
– Fight-or-flight response: Walter Cannon (1932).
• The FF response is a physiological reaction to
threat in which the autonomic nervous system
(ANS) mobilizes the organism for attacking (
fight) or fleeing (flight) an enemy
• modern stressors are more long term (the
checkbook)
– Higher physiological reactions include:
higher consumption of oxygen, higher blood
pressure, dilated pupils, reduction in
digestive processes
Responding to Stress Physiologically
• Behavioral Responses
– Frustration-aggression hypothesis: striking
out at others aggressively,usually the result
of frustration…(Dollard)
– Catharsis: purging of emotions (venting),
aggressive behavior leads to more
aggression
– defense mechanisms
• Coping: refers to active efforts to master,
reduce, or tolerate the demands created by
stress (can be positive or negative)
Responding to Stress Behaviorally
• Coping Mech:
– Giving up on oneself: passively accepting
setbacks that might be dealt with
effectively
• learned helplessness – passive behavior
produced by exposure to unavoidable
aversive events
• Blaming oneself: perpetuates negative
reactions and behaviors toward stress
• Neg. self-talk can lead to depression
Responding to Stress Behaviorally
• Coping Mech:
– self-indulgent (eating, drinking, smoking,
shopping, internet, pornography)
• Trying to solve problems by immersing
yourself in sub. forms of satisfaction
– defensive coping (erecting defense
mechanisms)
• Denial of Reality, Fantasy, isolation,
Undoing, Overcompensation
• Use the principle of self-deception
Responding to Stress Behaviorally
• Coping Mech:
– constructive coping
• confronting problems directly
• realistically appraising situations
• recognize and inhibit disruptive
emotional responses
• ensuring your body is not especially
vulnerable to stress
Figure 13.4 Overview of the stress process
Effects of Stress:
Behavioral and Psychological
• Heart disease
– Type A behavior - 3 elements
• strong competitiveness
• impatience and time urgency
• anger and hostility (most important)
– Type B Behaviors (less likely)
• Relaxed
• Patient
• Easy going
• Amicable behavior
• One study found that patients with high hostility
ratings are twice as likely to develop Atherosclerosis
Figure 13.9 Anger and coronary risk
Effects of Stress: Physical
• Social support
– Increased immune functioning
– decrease the negative impact of stress
• Optimism
– More adaptive and more effective coping
• Pessimistic explanatory style
– related to passive coping and poor health
practices.
Factors Moderating the Impact of Stress
• Conscientiousness
– Fostering better health habits
– related to increased longevity, possibly
because being conscientious leads better
preventive medicine
• Autonomic reactivity (physiological factors)
– Cardiovascular reactivity to stress
– appear to play a role in how significant the
impact of stress is on an individual.
Figure 13.12 The prevalence of smoking in the United States
Health-Impairing Behaviors
• Smoking
– A 25 year old male who smokes two packs a day
has an estimated life expectancy 13-14 years
shorter than that of a similar, nonsmoker.
– Health risks decline quickly for those who give up
smoking, but quitting is difficult and relapse rates
are high.
• Poor nutrition
– linked to heart disease, hypertension, and cancer,
among other things
• Lack of exercise (same as poor nutrition)
Figure 13.13 Quitting smoking and cancer risk
Health-Impairing Behaviors