1 STRESS 3: Stressors

The specification  Stress as a bodily response  The body’s response to stress  Stress-related illness and the immune system  Stress in everyday life  Life changes and daily hassles  Workplace stress  Personality factors  Psychological and biological methods of stress management 2

Outline of Today’s Session  Life changes  Daily hassles  Workplace stress 3

Research into Life changes as a source of stress Essay plan Holmes and Rahe (1960s) SRRS The key feature of life changes is the psychic cost of change. Individual differences Research is correlational. Bonanno et al (2007)

Life Changes: Rahe et al. (1970)  Aim?  To find out if scores on the Holmes and Rahe “Social Readjustment Rating Scale” (SRRS) correlated with subsequent onset of illness  How?  Used a version of SRRS with 2600 Navy men.  Showed?  A small positive correlation between illness and LCUs.  Retrospective recall may be unreliable.  Daily hassles may be better predictor  One reason may be that people are more likely to seek support for major life events (Flett et al., 1995) 5

Psychological Resilience: Bonanno et al (2007)  What predicts psychological resilience after disaster?  How?  Researchers asked one set of people about recent life events eg. death of a spouse  Asked second set about how they had been affected by the September 11th,  Also measured whether the interviewee had PTSD  Result?  Those who had experienced less life events were better able to cope with the disaster.  Those with only 1 recent life event were 2 times more likely to be resilient than those who experienced 2 or 3 recent life events.  Finding suggest  effects of stressful events are cumulative  the more bad things happen the worse people become at coping 6

Daily hassles as a source of stress  Anita DeLongis et al. (1982) hassles and uplifts scale.  May be due to accumulation or amplification (increased vulnerability).  DeLongis et al. (1988) How? 75 married couples Showed? Hassles were related to ill health (not life changes or uplifts).  2 nd study? Individual differences. Research is correlational. Retrospective recall may be unreliable. Better than life changes. Individual differences. Research is correlational. Retrospective recall may be unreliable. Better than life changes.

Workplace stressors  Sir Michael Marmot (1977) How civil servants (Whitehall study). Measured health status. Five years later  WORKLOAD  It was not the hard- working executives most at risk of heart attacks; it was the people at the bottom of the hierarchy.  CONTROL  Stress-related illness was found in those who had felt the least control. Work underload (Schulz et al.) Individual differences. Methods of assessment may be outdated. Important real-world applications. Work underload (Schulz et al.) Individual differences. Methods of assessment may be outdated. Important real-world applications.

Mr Harris is about to move his business into a brand new building. He is very keen to create a healthy working environment and reduce workplace stress. In this way he hopes to improve productivity and reduce absenteeism. What advice would you give Mr Harris? Use your knowledge of psychological research in this area. (6 marks) Jan 2010 Exam questions

The exam 10 3 studies /explanations 3 evaluative points HowShow