1. CHAPTER 14: Living Well: Stress, Coping and Life Satisfaction in Adulthood
The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals
Edition 4
Patricia C. Broderick and Pamela Blewitt
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved

2. Life Satisfaction: What is a Well-Lived Life?
Happiness is a focus of intense research interest
Subjective well-being (SWB) is frequently used synonymously with happiness
Includes cognitive and affective elements
Overall life satisfaction
Frequency of positive and negative moods
Measured using interviews or questionnaires
New ways to directly sample daily experience

3. Worldly Goods and Well-Being
Happiness and income are correlated, but the relationships are not simple
People who are poor report less well-being
Once basic needs are met, greater wealth is not strongly related to happiness
Rising income appears to make people happier only if an number of other conditions are met
Increasing income has a positive effect if it increases actual purchasing power
When average national household income increases, average well-being increases
No increase in well-being if only wealthiest citizens experience income gains

4. Paradox of Wealth “American paradox” characterizes wealthy nations
As standards of living have increased steadily, so have emotional problems like depression, anxiety
Proposed explanations
Pursuit of material gain puts people on an unsatisfying “hedonic treadmill”
Affluence reduces need for support from others, limits connections with family and friends
Wealth provides control but fails to create a “perfect” life, the mismatch fosters depression
Counter-example of “chronically happy” Denmark
Greater income equality, even poorest satisfied

5. Personality and Well-Being
Internal factors may be more important than external conditions for explaining life satisfaction
Personality traits strongly correlated with SWB
Extroverts are happier than introverts
Neuroticism negatively correlated with happiness
Conscientiousness positively correlated with SWB
People may construe events in different ways
Expectations may moderate impact
Neuroticism linked to active social comparison, exaggerating perception of deficiency

6. Relationships and Well-Being
Social relationships are essential to well-being
Having friends, confidants, and marriage partners all linked to well-being
Both giving and receiving are important
Receiving social support linked to better coping
Giving social support linked to greater happiness
Reciprocal mutual influence
Happier people create better social relationships
Better social relationships create more happiness
Relationships can outweigh material circumstances
In cultural groups with strong social connections, happiness reported even in difficult circumstances

7. Work, Achievement, Generativity, and Well-Being
People who feel generative report more well-being
Making progress toward goals, work and non-work
Having opportunities to exercise skills
Congruence between personality and the skills and qualities required by a job makes work satisfying
Workplace conditions also linked to happiness
Opportunities for personal control
Variety of tasks
Support of supervisor
Good coworker relationships and interaction
Good pay and benefits
Respect and status

8. Universal Needs and Values and Well-Being
Psychological well-being (eudaemonic), distinct from subjective well-being (hedonic)
Psychological well-being specifically involves feeling a sense of purpose, growth, and mastery
Two kinds of well-being are closely correlated
People may have universal psychological needs that must be met to feel satisfied with life
Autonomy
Competence
Relatedness
Salience of these needs may vary across life span

9. Importance of Meaning
Many people believe a well-lived life is one grounded in a conviction that life has meaning
Baumeister argued we have a need to understand our lives, see them as making sense
Proposed four reasons people seek meaning
Having a purpose for life helps us set goals
Meaning provides a sense of control, autonomy
Meaning helps identify values, morals, and ethics by defining actions that are legitimate or not
Meaning helps people value themselves, fosters self-worth

10. Religion and Spirituality
Majority say religion is important part of their lives
Religious traditions institutionalize meaning systems
Helps establish global and situational meaning
Global meaning: Sense of meaning and purpose of the universe and of human kind
Situational meaning: Sense one’s own life has meaning and purpose
Researchers distinguish spirituality and religion
May have spiritual striving without religious practice
Two aspects are closely allied for many people
National levels of religiosity related to economic hardship, social strife

11. Culture and Well-being
Many influences on well-being have been identified
Money
Personality
Relationships
Work
Achievement
Psychological needs
Meaning and religion
Cross-cultural research offers an opportunity to examine the relative influence of these factors
Remember that cross-cultural research is challenging and should be interpreted with care

12. Cross-cultural Comparisons
Different definitions of happiness
Some Eastern cultures prize peaceful calm
Many Western cultures prize elation, excitement
Factors central to satisfaction vary
Self-esteem central in individualist cultures
Social relationships central in collectivist cultures
Wide differences in income do not necessarily lead to wide differences in levels of well-being
Richest Americans similar to African Maasai
Conditions of poverty create similar levels of misery in both rich and poor countries
Homelessness similar from California to Calcutta

13. Stress, Coping and Well-Being in Midlife
Capacity to adapt to stress is critical at every age
Many stressors affect people at midlife
Awareness of limited time left to live
Accumulated losses related to aging
Role strain of increased responsibilities and obligations to family and work
Protective factors important to resilience
Childhood factors (e.g., educated parents)
Social attachments (e.g., confidants, spouses)
Stable employment
Positive social comparisons

14. Stress: A Review Two kinds of stressors
Discrete life events
Chronic daily hassles
Effects of cumulative stress, allostatic load
May lead to psychological and physical symptoms
Kindling-behavioral sensitization
Diatheses-stress models
Specific vulnerabilities (diatheses) of individuals explain why more sensitive to stress than others
May be genetically based or acquired
Personality traits like extroversion may encourage post-traumatic growth

15. Stressors and the Body-Mind Connection
Stressors engage the autonomic nervous system
Mobilize energy resources for fight or flight
Immune system also requires energy, competing for limited resources
Chronic stress dysregulates immune functions
Immunosuppression, maladaptive inflammation
Evidence supports existence of bidirectional communication between brain and immune system
Growing new field of psychoneuroimmunology
Study of the interactions between the central nervous system, immune system and behavior

16. Coping with Stress
Given that everyone deals with stressors, question becomes how best to manage stress
Management of stress very similar to coping
Binary models of coping are common
Efforts aimed at changing the situation (problem-focused, problem-solving)
Efforts directed toward emotion management (emotion-focused, tension-reduction)
These models fail to capture true nature of coping
All coping involves cognitive and emotional aspects
Selection of coping response often related to values, beliefs, attitudes, cultural framework

17. Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory
Losses are primary stressors in midlife, aging
Primary loss event (bereavement, injury)
Transitions that involve loss (retirement)
Threats to aspects of the self (demotion)
Challenges with aspects of loss (job promotion)
Individuals act in ways that conserve resources
When stressed, people seek to minimize costs
Seek to increase resources in nonstressful times
Resources include material possessions, conditions (marriage, job), personal characteristics (self-esteem, hope), energies (time)

18. Wellness
Among ways of conserving or rebuilding resources is to cultivate self-efficacy, mastery, and control
Stress focuses attention on negative events and emotions, increases reactivity to stress
Promoting positive affectivity can buffer impact of stress on the body
The affectivity connection
Cultivating healthy mental habits can serve as one antidote to reactivity
Practice of mindfulness meditation and positive emotions promotes health, immune and cardiovascular functioning, reduce pain perception

19. Applications: Emotional Regulation
Good emotion regulation is associated well-being
Promoting well-being supports coping and resilience
Emotional affectivity and reactivity can be changed
Helpful paths to well-being include
Developing mastery and optimism
Effective problem solving and decision making
Developing social competence
Health-promoting behaviors, diet and exercise
Improving environmental circumstances

20. Applications: Mindfullness Practice
Mindfullness is paying attention in a particular way: On purpose, in the present, nonjudgmentally
Core features of mindfulness include
Developing ability to take note of thoughts, feelings, and sensations
Working skillfully with negative ones
Replacing automatic, habitual, judgmental reactions with relaxed observing and awareness
Benefits of mindfullness practice include
Improved physical and psychological functioning
Stress reduction
Improved immune system functioning

21. Applications: Forgiveness
Forgiveness does not involve excusing hurtful behavior, necessarily reconciling with offender, suppressing pain or forgetting the offense
Involves shifts in thoughts, feelings and behaviors in a more positive direction in relation to offenders
Forgiveness therapy offers a map for the process
Uncovering phase: Examining the trauma
Decision phase: Realizing burden of rage, benefit of forgiveness
Work phase: Deeper processing to understand trauma and meaning of forgiveness
Deepening phase: Integrating traumatic experiences into a meaningful life story