Unit 11: Health and Stress Psychology
In this unit, we focus on health and stress in the workplace and in our everyday lives more broadly. First, we define stressors, and then we connect stress and illness. As you work through this unit, think about the stressors in your life and the coping mechanisms you use to handle them. How does the information presented here shed insight into how you handle stress? Is stress always negative?
Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- describe stress, the stress process, and the physiological basis of stress;
- explain the research on stress done by Walter Cannon and Hans Selye and how it applies to real-world situations;
- explain how stress affects bodily functioning and illness;
- discuss how coping mechanisms help to regulate stress; and
- explain the subfield of positive psychology and the importance of happiness.
11.1: Stress and Stressors
The field of health psychology is concerned with our well-being, how we handle stress, and how stressful experiences can impact our daily lives and health. Stress is not an easy concept to define because people generally experience and respond to it differently. Researchers agree that we must focus on how we respond to stressful situations to define stress (such as moving away from stimulus-based definitions). Consequently, an acceptable definition of stress is "a process whereby an individual perceives and responds to events that he appraises as overwhelming or threatening to his well-being". These events can be referred to as stressors.
Stress affects us because of how we respond to it. It is also important to distinguish between primary and secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal refers to our judgment of the degree of harm or threat a particular stressor has on us. For example, receiving a poor grade might make us feel threatened if report cards are about to come out. How we perceive a threat leads to secondary appraisal, namely, our judgment of how we cope or respond to the stressor. For example, if we decide to take action (such as talking to our teacher about doing some extra work to earn a higher score), we might not feel as stressed or threatened by the stressor.
Stress can manifest itself through a variety of symptoms and responses that can be physiological (elevated heartbeat, sweating, gastrointestinal problems), cognitive (having trouble concentrating), or behavioral (engaging in harmful behaviors to alleviate the stressor).
Walter Cannon (1871–1945), the American physiologist, was among the first to explore stress and how our bodies respond to stressful events. He described the fight or flight response to stress which suggests our body quickly arouses the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system when confronted with a stressful event so that our pupils dilate, our breathing quickens, we begin to sweat, our heart rate increases, and our muscles tense or tremble. These physiological responses prepare us to fight or escape from stressful events.
Hans Selye (1907–1982), the Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist, studied rats' responses to stress and developed the General Adaptation Syndrome, our body's physiological response to stress. According to this syndrome, when confronted with a stressful event, our bodies react in three stages: alarm reaction, stage of resistance, and stage of exhaustion.
Selye agreed with Cannon that our initial reaction (alarm reaction) is fight or flight. Our body provides the energy to fight or escape the stressor. When the stressor continues, our bodies move to the stage of resistance. The initial shock has worn off, and our body slowly adapts to the stressor but remains on high alert. During this stage, our body is ready to respond, but with less intensity than during the previous stage. When the stressor continues over a longer period of time, we move to a stage of exhaustion when we can no longer adapt to the stressor, and our body becomes weakened and more susceptible to illness.
Watch this lecture on stress. Pay attention to physical stressors as well as psychological enhancers.
Read this text to learn about stress and the stress process. Pay attention to the role of positive stress and familiarize yourself with the research by Walter Cannon and Hans Selye. After you read, you should be able to identify stressors in everyday life and in the workplace.
Read this article to familiarize yourself with the field of health psychology and its relation to medicine.
Watch this video on stressors. Pay attention to the four major categories of stressors.
11.2: Stress and Illness
When our bodies are stressed, we release the stress hormone Cortisol to provide extra energy to fight or flight. Our bodies can handle short spurts of Cortisol, but the extended release of this hormone can have effects on our bodies. Research has linked increased Cortisol levels to decreases in immune systems and our ability to fight diseases.
Research also shows that chronic or persistent stress can have harmful effects on our bodies and manifest itself in the form of psychophysiological problems. Stress commonly affects the following bodily systems:
- Cardiovascular (hypertension, heart disease)
- Gastrointestinal (problems with bowel movements)
- Respiratory (asthma, allergies)
- Musculoskeletal (pains, headaches)
- Skin (acne, eczema)
Classic research by the American cardiologists Meyer Friedman (1910–2001) and Ray Rosenman (1920–1913) linked personality types to chronic stress and consequently cardiovascular disease. They found that people who displayed a Type A personality (rushed, career-focused, workaholic, confrontational) were more likely to develop heart disease than Type B patients who were more relaxed and laid-back.
Read this text to understand how stress can affect our immune and cardiovascular systems.
Watch this video on how your body, particularly your heart, responds to stress.
11.3: The Regulation of Stress
In addition to studying stress, health researchers also analyze how we cope with it. They differentiate two different styles of coping. Problem-focused coping refers to identifying the problem and doing something about it to make it less stressful (action-focused). Emotion-focused coping refers to changing the negative emotions attached to the stressor.
For example, if you suddenly lose your job, you may begin looking for a new job right away, update your resume (problem-focused), or you may try to look on the bright side by recognizing you now have an opportunity to pursue other career interests (emotion-focused). How we cope also often depends on how much perceived control we have over the stressful situation.
Research finds that social support can help us cope with stress, but a number of stress reduction techniques are also helpful. Examples include the "relaxation stress response technique", which combines relaxation and meditation, or biofeedback, which uses an electronic apparatus to measure and provide feedback on visual and auditory signals.
Read this text, which discusses coping with or regulating stress. Social support and control can be important tools for managing stress in our daily lives.
Watch this video, which explains how certain types of stress, such as depression, can affect our bodies. Pay particular attention to the role of learned helplessness and the effect of stress on your heart.
11.4: Positive Psychology and Happiness
Martin Seligman (1942– ) initially studied learned helplessness and recently founded the field of positive psychology. This discipline encourages psychologists to focus on human strengths and identify factors in life that make us feel happy and fulfilled. Some equate this field of positive psychology with the study of happiness.
While there are many definitions of happiness, some researchers believe it consists of three elements:
- The pleasant life – the attainment of daily pleasures,
- The good life – identifying specific skills that make us happy, and
- The meaningful life – deriving a sense of fulfillment or meaning from our activities.
Research finds that happiness is strongly related to age – older people tend to be happier. We also associate having family, friends, education, and employment with happiness.Positive psychology is uplifting and explores happiness and its elements. As you read this text, think about how you define happiness in your life. What do you think about positive psychology or the science of happiness? What emphasis should psychology place on happiness?
Read this article to learn about the subfield of positive psychology and how it can make a difference in people's lives.
Unit 11 Assessment
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.