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STRESS 3:Stressors

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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

Outline of Today’s Session

Life changes Daily hassles Workplace stress

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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)

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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)

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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

Daily hasslesas 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 couplesShowed? Hassles were related to ill health (not life changes or uplifts).

2nd study?

• Individual differences.

• Research is correlational.

• Retrospective recall may be unreliable.

• Better than life changes.

Workplace stressors Sir Michael Marmot (1977)

How 7000+ 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.

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

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What is meant by …. (3 marks)

Describe one research study that has investigated ….. (6 marks).

Describe and evaluate research … (6 marks + 6 marks)

3 studies /explanations3 evaluative

points

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