Psychology of Stress Responses

Individual Factors That Influence the Response to Stress

• Stress response is influenced by individual factors such as personality traits, coping mechanisms, and social support.
• Type A behavior pattern is linked to heart disease, with hostility being a significant factor.
• Personal control over a situation reduces the impact of stressors.
• Explanatory style impacts how people interpret negative events.
  • Optimistic individuals use external, unstable, and specific explanations.
  • Pessimistic individuals use internal, stable, and global explanations.
• Social support can improve health and stress management, but can also create stress when inappropriate.
  • Women tend to provide more social support but are more susceptible to the stress contagion effect.
  • Men are less likely to be upset by negative events outside their immediate family.
• Chronic negative emotions lead to increased stress and contribute to chronic diseases.

Coping Mechanisms

• Coping mechanisms are strategies used to change circumstances or interpretations to make them more favorable.
• Emotion-focused coping aims to alter emotional reactions to stressors, including:
  • Escape-avoidance
  • Seeking social support
  • Distancing
  • Denial
  • Positive reappraisal
• Problem-focused coping focuses on changing the stressful situation, including:
  • Confrontative coping
  • Planful problem-solving
• Cultural influences on coping vary:
  • Individualistic cultures favor problem-focused strategies.
  • Collectivistic cultures favor emotion-focused strategies.

Stress, Health, and Coping

• Stress is defined as a negative emotional state caused by events perceived as taxing or exceeding resources
• Stressors can be categorized as:
  • Social and cultural sources: Poverty, low social status, racism, and discrimination, acculturative stress
  • Daily hassles: Minor, everyday annoyances and upsets
  • Burnout: Prolonged work stress leading to exhaustion, cynicism, and inadequacy
• Health psychologists study stress and its impact on health, illness, and treatment, using the biopsychosocial model.
• Life events approach considers stressors as events requiring adaptation.
  • The Social Readjustment Rating Scale measures the impact of life events.

Cognitive Appraisal Model and Daily Hassles

• Richard Lazarus proposed the cognitive appraisal model of stress, highlighting the importance of how individuals interpret and evaluate stressors.
• He established the importance of daily hassles in contributing to stress.

Physical Effects of Stress

• Walter Cannon identified the endocrine pathway involved in the flight-or-fight response to acute stress.
  • Sympathetic nervous system and release of catecholamines from the adrenal medulla are involved.
• Hans Selye identified the endocrine pathway involved in the three-stage general adaptation syndrome (GAS) response to prolonged stress.
  • The roles of the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and release of corticosteroids from the adrenal cortex are involved.
• Chronic stress can lead to:
  • Premature aging and disease
  • Telomere shortening, protective caps on the ends of chromosomes.

Psychoneuroimmunology

• Psychoneuroimmunology examines the interplay of psychological processes, nervous and endocrine systems, and the immune system.
• Lymphocytes, specialized white blood cells, are crucial for fighting viruses and bacteria.