Psychology Chapter 11: Stress and Health

Chapter 11: Stress and Health

• Stress is a physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral response to events perceived as threatening or challenging.
• Stressors are events that trigger a stress response.
• Distress is the effect of unpleasant and undesirable stressors.
• Eustress is the effect of positive events or the optimal amount of stress needed for health and well-being.
• Catastrophes are unpredictable, large-scale events that create a need for adaptation.
• Major life changes cause stress by requiring adjustment.
• The Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) measures the amount of stress from major life events over a year.
• The College Undergraduate Stress Scale (CUSS) measures the amount of stress resulting from major life events in one year for college students.
• Hassles are daily annoyances of everyday life, associated with short-term illnesses.
• Pressure: psychological experience produced by urgent demands or expectations for a person's behavior.
• Uncontrollability: the degree of control a person has over a particular event or situation. Increased stress comes with less control.
• Frustration: the psychological experience when a desired goal or fulfillment of a perceived need is blocked.
• External frustrations: conditions like losses, rejections, failures, and delays.
• Internal frustrations: occur when a goal or need cannot be attained due to internal or personal characteristics.
• Possible reactions to frustration include persistence, aggression, displaced aggression, and escape/withdrawal.
• Conflict: psychological experience of being drawn to two or more desires or goals, only one achievable.
• Approach–approach conflict: choosing between two desirable goals.
• Avoidance-avoidance conflict: choosing between two undesirable goals.
• Approach–avoidance conflict: a goal with both desirable and undesirable aspects.
• Multiple approach–avoidance conflict: choosing among two or more goals or having a goal with multiple options and each possessing desirable and undesirable aspects.
• The autonomic nervous system is part of the nervous system dealing with involuntary and life-sustaining activities.
• The sympathetic division reacts to stress via increased heart rate, slowed digestion, and a surge of energy to the muscles.
• The parasympathetic division returns the body to a normal state at the end of stress.
• The general adaptation syndrome (GAS) has three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
• The alarm stage activates the sympathetic nervous system.
• The resistance stage shows less of the symptoms from the alarm stage until the stressor is gone.
• The exhaustion stage is when the body can no longer cope with the stress.
• The immune system is largely impacted by stress. Stress triggers the same response as infection.
• Allostasis is maintaining stability through change to meet both perceived and anticipated demands.
• Allostatic load is the prolonged exposure to elevated levels of hormones and other stress mediators over weeks, months, or years that results in wear and tear on the brain and body.
• Stress can increase the risk for coronary heart disease (CHD), Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer.
• Personality traits, like Type A, predict a reaction to stress and how individuals cope.
• Type A personalities are ambitious, time-conscious, extremely hardworking, hostile, and easily annoyed.
• Type B personalities are relaxed, laid-back, less driven, and slow to anger.
• Type C personalities are pleasant, peace-keepers, are difficulty expressing emotions, internalize anger, and are lonely, often linked to cancer.
• Type D personalities are distressed and prone to chronic stress.
• The Hardy personality thrives on stress, committing to values, having control over their lives, and challenging instead of avoiding problems.
• Explanatory styles, comparing optimists and pessimists, influence coping.
• Optimists expect positive outcomes, are less likely to develop learned helplessness, more likely to take care of their health, less likely to become depressed, and have more effectively functioning immune systems.
• Social factors increase stress as poverty, job stress, and culturally-based stressors.
• Acculturative stress comes from adapting to a new or dominant culture.
• Methods of adapting include integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization.
• Coping strategies are actions to master, tolerate, reduce, or minimize stressors; this involves problem-focused coping (actions to eliminate the source of stress) and emotion-focused coping (changing the emotional reaction to the stressor).
• Meditation is a mental exercise to refocus attention and achieve a trance-like state of consciousness, such as concentrative meditation and mindfulness meditation.
• Social support systems, such as family, friends, neighbors, or coworkers help to cope with stress. Marriage and gender also affect social coping mechanisms.
• Different cultures perceive stressors and cope with them in separate ways.
• Religion aids coping with stress through rituals or ceremonies.
• Healthy coping strategies are important for lessening stress impacts.

Stressors in College Life

• Stressors in college life can be various and influence stress levels for individuals differently.
• Some examples of college-related stressors include workloads, lack of control, long hours, and poor conditions for the individual.