Stress
Terms
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- The more ___________ an event seems, the more likely it is to be perceived as stressful
- uncontrollable
- Behavioral strategies for emotion-focused coping
- Include engaging in physical exercise, using alcohol or drugs, venting anger, and seeking emotional support from friends
- Exercise
- A factor that is important in controlling stress. Individuals who regularly engage in exercise show significantly lower heart rate and blood pressure in response to stressful situations
- Problem-focused coping
- A person can focus on the specific problem or situation that has arisen, trying to find some way of changing it or avoiding it in the future
- Anxiety
- The most common response to a stressor
- What are some health-related behaviors that can increase our susceptibility to illness?
- Smoking, a high-fat diet, not engaging in exercise, excessive alcohol consumption, failure to use condoms
- Stress may indirectly affect health by reducing rates of __________ health-related behaviors and increasing rates of _________ behaviors
- positive; negative
- Independence vs. dependence
- A type of internal conflict. We may want someone to take care of us, but we are taught that we must stand on our own and vice versa
- How can we explain the results of predictable over unpredictable shocks?
- 1. A warning signal before an aversive event allows the person to initiate some sort of preparatory process that acts to reduce the effects of a noxious stimulus 2. With unpredictable shock, there is no safe period, but with predictable shock, the person can relax to some extent until the signal warns that shock is about to occur
- Allostatic load
- The wear and tear on the body that results from chronic overactivity of the physiological response to stress
- Controllability
- The degree to which we can stop an event or bring it about
- Coping
- The process by which a person attempts to manage stressful demands
- Catastrophic accidents
- Include car or plane crashes
- Cognitive techniques
- Additional approach to stress management focuses on changing the individual's cognitive responses to stressful situations
- Traumas caused by ______, such as sexual or physical assault, terrorist attacks, and war, may be ____ likely to cause PTSD than ______ ________
- humans, more, natural disasters
- What were the results of using PET on activity levels in parts of the brain?
- Data suggested that people who develop PTSD have lower baseline levels of cortisol before they experience their trauma, and possibly that abnormally low cortisol levels contribute to the development of PTSD
- Managing stress
- people can learn different techniques to reduce the negative effects of stress on the body and the mind
- Forms of behavioral techniques
- Biofeedback, relaxation training, meditation, and aerobic exercise
- Most research indicates that _________ events have a much greater impact on psychological and physical health than ________ events
- negative, positive
- Internal conflicts
- unresolved issues that may be either conscious or unconscious. Conflict occurs when a person must choose between incompatible, or mutually exclusive, goals or course of action
- Expression of impulses vs. moral standards
- A type of internal conflict. Sex and aggression are 2 areas in which our impulses frequently come into conflict with moral standards, and violation of these standards can generate feelings of guilt
- Traumatic Events
- Situations of extreme danger that are outside the range of usual human experience (natural disasters, disasters caused by human activity, catastrophic accidents, physical assault)
- Freud believed that neurotic anxiety stems from unconscious conflicts between ____________ ________ and the ___________ imposed by reality
- unacceptable impulses; constraints
- Steps for problem-focused coping
- 1. Must define the problem 2. Can generate alternative solutions and weigh the costs and benefits of the alternatives 3. Must choose between alternative solutions
- Fight-or-flight response
- The body's mobilization to attack or flee from a threatening situation
- The __________ nervous systems of hostile and/or type A individuals appear to be hyper responsive to stressful situations
- sympathetic
- Being able to _____ the occurrence of a stressful event - even if the individual cannot control it - usually reduces the severity of the stress
- predict
- The four sets of symptoms of PTSD
- 1. Represents a deep detachment from everyday life 2. A repeated reliving of the trauma 3. Sleep disturbances, difficulty in concentrating, and overalertness 4. Some people feel terribly guilty about surviving a trauma when others did not, even if they could not have saved other people
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- A severe set of anxiety-related symptoms
- Three basic theories about why some people are prone to appraise events as stressful...
- 1. The psychoanalytic theory 2. Behavioral Theory 3. Cognitive Theory
- Third stage after atraumatic event
- Survivors become anxious and apprehensive, have difficulty in concentrating, and may repeat the story of the catastrophe over and over again
- A pessimistic outlook may affect health _______, by reducing immune system functioning, or ________, by reducing a person's tendency to engage in health-promoting behavior
- directly; indirectly
- Cooperation vs. competition
- A type of internal conflict. Our society emphasizes competition, but at the same time, we are urged to cooperate and help others
- Type B pattern
- People who exhibit this behavior pattern are able to relax without feeling guilty and work without becoming agitated; lack a sense of time urgency, with its accompanying impatience, and are not easily roused to anger
- Modifying type A behavior
- A combination of behavioral and cognitive techniques has been shown to reduce type A behavior
- Diseases of adaptation
- A wide array of physiological diseases that Selye argued were cause by repeated or prolonged exhaustion of physiological resources (due to exposure to prolonged stressors that one cannot flee from or fight)
- Incompatible goals
- The action needed to achieve one automatically prevents you from achieving the other, even if the two goals are equally attractive (receiving 2 good job offers)
- Intimacy vs. isolation
- A type of internal conflict. The desire to be close to another person may conflict with the fear of being hurt or rejected
- The discovery of a link between __________ and the ______ _______ is important because negative emotional states such as anxiety or depression can affect neurotransmitter levels
- neurotransmitters; immune system
- Predictable over unpredictable shocks
- Humans generally choose predictable over unpredictable. Also show less emotional arousal and report less distress while waiting for the predictable shocks to occur. Perceive predictable shocks as less aversive than unpredictable ones of the same intensity
- Body's response to fight-or-flight response
- Liver releases extra sugar (glucose) to fuel the muscles. Hormones are released that stimulate the conversion of fats and proteins into sugar. Body's metabolism increases in preparation for expending energy on physical action. Heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate increases, muscles tense. Certain unessential activities (digestion) are curtailed. Saliva and mucus dry up, increasing the size of the air passages to the lungs. Endorphins are secreted and the surface blood vessels constrict to reduce bleeding in case of injury. Spleen releases more red blood cells to help carry oxygen. Bone marrow produces more white corpuscles to fight infection
- Myocardial infraction (heart attack)
- When flow of oxygen to the heart is completely blocked
- Holmes and Rahe (1967)
- Produced the Holmes and Rahe scale which measures stress in terms of life changes
- Physical assault
- Includes rape or attempted murder
- ACTH stimulates the outer layer of the adrenal glands resulting in the secretion of a group of hormones, the major one being...
- Cortisol
- First stage after a traumatic event
- Survivors are stunned and dazed and appear to be unaware of their injuries or of the danger. Wander around, possibly putting themselves at risk for further injury
- Predictability
- The degree to which we know if and when an event will occur
- Psychophysiological disorders
- physical disorders in which emotions are believed to play a central role
- Cognitive behavior therapy
- Attempts to help people identify the kinds of stressful situations that produce their physiological or emotional symptoms and alter the way they cope with these situations
- Biofeedback
- Individuals receive information (feedback) about an aspect of their physiological state and then attempt to alter that state
- Coronary heart disease (CHD)
- Occurs when the blood vessels that supply the heart muscles are narrowed or closed by the gradual buildup of a hard, fatty substance called plaque, blocking the flow of oxygen and nutrients to the heart
- Apathy and depression
- Although aggression is a frequent response to frustration, the opposite response, withdrawal and apathy, is also common
- The experience of _______ significantly increases the chances that an individual will develop PTSD
- torture
- Ruminating about the stressor
- Involves isolating ourselves to think about how bad we feel, worrying about the consequences of the stressful event or our emotional state, or repeatedly talking about how bad things are without taking any action to change them
- Attributional styles
- styles of making attributions for the events in their lives. These styles influence the degree to which people view events as stressful and have helpless, depressed reactions to difficult events
- Disasters caused by human activity
- Include wars and nuclear accidents
- Emotion-focused coping
- A person can focus on alleviating the emotions associated with the stressful situation, even if the situation itself cannot be changed
- Lymphocytes
- Specialized cells which the immune system uses to protect the body from disease-causing microorganisms
- Example of psychoanalytic theory
- A woman may not consciously acknowledge that she has strong hostile feelings toward her mother because these feelings conflict with her belief that a child should love her parents
- Common correlates of PTSD are...
- substance abuse, violence, and interpersonal problems
- Anger and aggression
- A common reaction to stressful situations. Anger may lead to aggression
- Two major forms of coping skills..
- 1. Problem-focused coping 2. Emotion-focused coping
- Objective anxiety
- A reasonable response to a harmful situation
- Physiological changes in response to fight-or-flight response result from activation of...
- two neuroendocrine systems controlled by the hypothalamus (Sympathetic system and adrenal-cortical system)
- Cognitive strategies for emotion-focused coping
- Include temporarily setting the problem aside ("I decided it wasn't worth worrying about") and reducing the threat by changing the meaning of the situation ("I decided that her friendship wasn't that important to me")
- Theory of learned helplessness
- characterized by apathy, withdrawal, and inaction, in response to uncontrollable events
- PET
- Positron emission tomography
- General adaptation syndrome
- a set of responses that is displayed by all organisms in response to stress
- Second stage after a traumatic event
- Survivors are still passive and unable to initiate even simple tasks, but they may follow orders readily
- Why are traumas caused by humans more likely to cause PTSD than natural disasters?
- 1. Such traumas challenge our basic beliefs about the goodness of life and other people, when these beliefs are shattered, PTSD is more likely to occur 2. Human-caused disasters often strike individuals rather than whole communities, and suffering through a trauma alone seems to increase a person's risk of experiencing PTSD
- The three phases of the general adaptation syndrome
- 1. Alarm, the body mobilizes to confront a threat by triggering sympathetic nervous system activity 2. Resistance, the organism attempts to cope with the threat by fleeing it or fighting it 3. Exhaustion, occurs if the organism is unable to flee from or fight the threat and depletes its physiological resources in attempting to do so
- Psychoneuroimmunology
- The study of how the body's immune system is affected by stress and other psychological variables
- Why were torture survivors (Bosnia) who were political activists less prone to develop PTSD than those who were not political activists?
- They appear more psychologically prepared for torture
- Pituitary gland releases this during fight-or-flight
- ACTH (adrenocorticotrophic hormone)
- Cognitive theory
- Focuses on the attribution or causal explanations people give for important events. When people attribute negative events to causes that are internal to them ("it's my fault"), are stable in time ("it's going to last forever"), and are global, affecting many areas of their lives, they are likely to show a helpless, depressed response to negative events
- Behavioral theory
- Focuses on ways in which individuals learn to associate stress responses with certain situations. People may also react to specific situations with fear and anxiety because those situations caused them harm or were stressful in the past
- Natural disasters
- Includes earthquakes and floods
- Hardiness
- Those who do not become physically or emotionally impaired even in the face of major stressful events
- Repressive coping
- People who engage in a more maladaptive way of coping with negative emotions: Simply deny that they have any negative emotions and push those emotions out of conscious awareness
- Frustration-aggression hypothesis
- Assumes that whenever a person's efforts to reach a goal are blocked, an aggressive drive is induced that motivates behavior designed to injure the object, or person, causing the frustration
- Type A pattern
- People who exhibit this behavior pattern are extremely competitive and achievement oriented; they have a sense of time urgency, find it difficult to relax, and become impatient and angry when confronted with delays or with people whom they view as incompetent
- Relaxation training
- Teaching people techniques to deeply relax their muscles and slow down and focus their thoughts. (Ex. people can learn to modify their heart rate and blood pressure)
- Psychoanalytic theory distinguishes between _______ anxiety and _______ anxiety
- objective; neurotic
- Finding Meaning
- Many people confronted with major trauma say that they feel their lives changed in extremely positive ways as a result of their experience, they feel their lives have more meaning and they have grown in important ways
- The ______ that we can ______ events appears to reduce the impact of the events, even if we never exercise that control
- belief, control
- Meditation
- An effective technique for inducing relaxation and reducing physiological arousal. Significant lowering of the respiratory rate, a decrease in oxygen consumption, and less elimination of carbon dioxide
- Our _______ of the controllability of events appear to be as important to our assessment of their stressfulness as the actual _________ controllability of these events
- perception, controllability
- Major changes in life circumstances
- Holmes and Rahe (1967) argued that any life change that requires numerous readjustments can be perceived as stressful
- Cognitive impairment
- People often show substantial cognitive impairment when faced with serious stressors. Find it hard to concentrate and to organize their thoughts logically. May be easily distracted. Performance on tasks tends to deteriorate
- Neurotic anxiety
- Anxiety out of proportion to the actual danger
- Angina pectoris
- Pain caused by coronary heart disease