copyright © 2011 pearson education, inc. all rights reserved. psychology: from inquiry to...

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding 2/e

Scott O. LilienfeldSteven Jay LynnLaura Namy Nancy J. Woolf

Prepared by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gülbahar Baştuğ

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Stress, Coping, & Health:The Mind-Body Interconnection

Chapter Twelve


Lecture Preview

• What is stress?

• How we adapt to stress

• The brain-body reaction to stress

• Coping with stress

• Promoting good health


What is stress?


• What happens after we experience a traumatic event? How do people manage following a close brush with death? Do the effects continue? Can people manage to cope in the aftermath of event?

• Kessler (1995) studied 6000 persons and found that 60-90% had experienced at least one traumatic event. It’s actually unusual person who doesn’t experience severe stress in her/his lifetime.


Firefighters and police officers who merely witness traumatic events often experience high levels of stress.


• Groups at high risk for stressful events are young and unmarried people, and people of low SES.

• People who live in rural areas or nonindustrialized countries experience less stress than people of urban and more developed areas.


What is Stress?

• Stress is the tension, discomfort, or physical symptoms that arise when a stressor strains our ability to cope effectively.

• A traumatic event is a stressor so severe that it can produce long-term psychological or health consequences.


• Scientists used the term stress on engineering, before the 1940s.

• A building was said to withstand stress if it didn’t collapse under intense pressure.


Three Approaches to Stress

• Stressors as stimuli approach

• Stress as a transaction approach

• Stress as a response approach



• Stressors as stimuli approach focuses on identifying types of stressful events, from job loss to combat. Some events are dangerous and unpredictable, some people are most vulnerable to stress following different events.

• Helps identify situations that cause more stress and persons that react more strongly.


Earthquake of Van destroyed much of Van in 2011, forcing many displaced residents to relocate.

• Disasters impact an entire community. They can increase social awareness and cement interpersonal bonds.



• We can view stress as a transaction between people and their environments.

• Stress as a transaction examines how people interpret and cope with stressful events.


Lazarus argued that a critical factor influencing whether we experience an event as stressful is our appraisal of the event.

• Primary appraisal is an initial decision regarding whether an event is harmful.

• Secondary appraisal is perception regarding our ability to cope with an event that follows primary appraisal.


Problem-focused vs emotion-focused coping

• When we’re optimistic and think we can achieve our goals, we’re likely to engage in problem-focused coping, coping strategy by which we problem solve and approach life’s challenges head-on.

• When situations arise that we can’t avoid or control, we’re likely to adopt emotion-focused coping, a coping strategy that features a positive outlook on feelings or situations accompanied by behaviors that reduce painful emotions.


Emotion-focused coping may encourage people

who’ve divorced to begin dating again.


Three Approaches to Stress• Stress as a response approach assesses

psychological and physical reactions to stress.

• Scientists measure large number of outcome variables, including feelings such as depr, hopelessness, and hostility and physiological responses such as heart rate and corticosteroids= stress hormone that activates the body and prepares us to stressful circumstances.


Measuring Stress

• Number of life events have been found to be related to physical and psychological health.

• The Social Readjustment Rating Scale that developed by Holmes and colleagues ranks a number of particularly stressful events. The SRRS is a self-rating scale, consisting of 43 items.


Forty-Three Stressful Life Events from the Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Scoring: Each event should be considered if it’s taken place in the past 12 months. Add values to the right of each item to obtain the total score.


Your susceptibility to illness and mental health problems: Low < 149; Mild = 150–199; Moderate = 200-299; Major > 300 . Bear in mind that very high scores indicate only a susceptibility to certain emotional problems, not the presence of these problems themselves.


• But SRRS neglects people’s interpretation of events, coping behaviors and resources or chronic issues.

• This approach aslo neglects that some stressful life events can be consequences rather than causes of people’s psychological problems.


Hassles: Don’t sweat the small stuff

• Hassles : minor annoyances that strain our ability to cope

• Hassles Scale measures how stressful events impact our life.

• More hassles are related to physical health, depr, and anxiety.


Getting stuck in traffic is one of many “hassles” we encounter in our daily lives. Research suggests that such hassles can be quite stressful over the long haul.


How we adapt to stress: Change and Challenge


Mechanics of Stress• Canadian physician Selye believed that too much

stress leads to breakdowns.

• He called the pattern of response to stress the general adaptation syndrome (GAS). According to him, all prolonged stressors take us through 3 stages of adaptation:


According to Selye’s general adaptation syndrome, our level of resistance to stress drops during the alarm phase, increases during the resistance phase, and drops again during the exhaustion phase.


• Alarm reaction - autonomic nervous system is activated, stress hormones (Adrenaline) released, physical symptoms of anxiety. The center of anxiety is within limbic system: amygdala, hypothalamus and hipocampus.

– HPA axis: Hypothalamus (H) receives signal of fear, sympathetic nervous system activates the adrenal gland (A), which secretes the stress hormones epinephrine =E and norepinephrine =NE.


Fight or flight response:

• Cannon described a set of physiological and psychological reactions that mobilize us to either confront or leave a threatening situation.

• When animals and humans face a threat, they have two options: fight or flee.

• When someone can’t flee, the hypothalamus and pituitary gland organize the adrenal gland’s release of another stress hormone, cortisol, which floods someone with energy.


Mechanics of Stress

• Resistance – you adapt and find ways to cope with the stressor.

• Exhaustion – in prolonged stressors, such as combat, our resistance can break down. It can cause physical or psychological damage.


Diversity of Stress Responses

• Women are more likely to tend and befriend than males. Women rely on their social contacts. When stressed out, women befriend, turn to others for support.

• Oxytocin, “the love and bonding hormone”, counters stress and promotes tend-and befriend response.


In stressful times, women often rely on friendships for support and comfort, a pattern that psychologist

Shelley Taylor called “tend and befriend.”


A Conversation With a Columbine Survivor

• Marjorie Lindholm on Life After Columbine and Advice in the Wake of School Shootings.

• She was on life after Columbine (1999). On massacre of Virginia Tech (2007), she relived everything.


• What is stress?• Three Approaches to Stress

– Stressors as stimuli approach– Stress as a transaction approach– Stress as a response approachLazarus’s appraisal termSelye’s general adaptation syndromeCannon’s fight or flight responseShelley Taylor’s “tend and befriend.”


Diversity of Stress Responses

• Long-lasting stress reactions can result in acute stress disorder or PTSD. Its symptoms are vivid memories, feelings, images of traumatic events= flashback, efforts to avoid reminders of the trauma, feeling isolated from others and symptoms of arousal, such as difficulty sleeping.

• Lifetime prevalence rates are 5% in males and 10% in females.


The horrific 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech left some survivors with symptoms of PTSD.


Combat ranks with sexual assault as one of two events producing the highest risk for PTSD.


PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WHO DEVELOP PTSD

Natural disaster 4-5%

Bombing 34%

Plane crash into hotel 29%

Mass shooting 28%

PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WHO DEVELOP ACUTE STRESS DISORDER

Typhoon 7%

Industrial accident 6%

Mass shooting 33%

Violent assault 19%

Vehicle accident 14%

Assault, severe burns 13%

The rates of PTSD and acute stress disorder associated with a number of disturbing events.


Are almost all people traumatized by highly aversive events?

• Bonanno et al (2006) conducted a study in NY City about 6 months after 9/11 attacks. 65 % of sample was resilient. Nearly all regained their equilibrium and returned to their previous level of functioning.

• People who cope well in the stressor tend to display high levels of functioning before the event.


The Brain-Body Reaction to Stress


Suggestion alone can produce an uncomfortable rash much like that produced by poison ivy in people who are highly sensitive to leaves of a tree with effects similar to poison ivy.


The Immune System• Nocebo effects: beliefs can create reality.

Psychological factors can influence physical processes.

• Stress weakens body’s defenses against infections. • The immune system is our body’s defense against

bacteria, viruses, and other illness-producing organisms and substances. Our first shield from these foreign invaders, called antigens, is the skin, which blocks the entry of many disease-producing organisms, called pathogens.


The Immune System

• Consists of the skin, white blood cells including phagocytes, lymphocytes (T and B cells), and macrophages.

• Can be compromised via disorders like autoimmune diseases and AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome).


Psychoneuroimmunology

• is the study of the relationship between the immune system and central nervous system – the seat of our emotions and reactions to the environment-.

• We must be careful about the ideas of psychoneuroimmunology. Physical diseases aren’t the result of negative thinking, positive thinking doesn’t reverse serious illnesses.


Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Deepak Chopra have the idea that the “mind” can cure serious illnesses. But their claims aren’t supported by scientific evidence.


Psychoneuroimmunology

High levels of stress over the past year make you more susceptible to catching cold virus.

Stress affects health-related behaviors but has no direct impact on the immune system.

Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease is associated with lower ability to heal from injury and decrease blood clotting.


• Caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease experience high levels of stress, are at heightened risk of developing depr, and even show decreases in their blood’s ability to clot (associated with having a stroke) in response to stressful life events.

• For reasons that are unknown, the negative psychological effects of such caregiving seem to be lower among African Americans than Caucasians.


All of the following stressors can lead to disruptions in the immune system:

• Taking an important test• Death of a spouse• Unemployment• Marital conflict• Living near a damaged nuclear reactor• Natural disasters

copyright © 2011 pearson education, inc. all rights reserved. psychology: from inquiry to...

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