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Summary Mental Load & Stress
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Full Summary Mental Load & Stress Psychology Course Radboud University Nijmegen
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Mental load & StressWeek 1: Societal and Theoretical Background
• Stressor: event or set of conditions that causes a stress response (workload)
• Stress: short term response to the stressor (tired)
• Strain: longer term reaction to chronic stress (exhausted, high heart rate)
o Lower with social support
• stress as:
o stimulus-based/engineering approach: response (biology): Selye
▪ non-specific response of the body to any demand made upon it
▪ no distinction between positive and negative
▪ actually meant strain
▪ psychological, physiological, behavioral reactions
▪ General Adaptation Syndrome: fails to include role of psychosocial
factors of stress
• Alarm: fight-flight: adrenaline -> HPA -> ACTH -> cortisol
• Resistance: adaptation, on physiological level
o HPA predominates
o Ability to withstand new stressors is limited
• Exhaustion: susceptible to illness, chronic
▪ Distress vs eustress: Yerkes-Dodson Law
▪ Biological tradition: Stress is good for short-term, but maladaptive for
long-term
o Response-based/medico-physiological approach: characteristic of
environment (epidemiology): Holmes & Rahe
▪ a force or pressure exerted upon a material object or person
▪ psychosocial aspects = stress
▪ actually meant stressor
▪ Social Readjustment Rating Scale: long list with scores
▪ Limitations: different coping, experience subjective, retrospective
▪ Epidemiological tradition: stress is objective -> wrong -> stressors as
events that are consensually seen as undesirable or threatening
o Interaction-appraisal approach: interaction between person and
environment (psychology): Lazarus & Folkman
▪ stress is a relationship between the person and the environment, that is
appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and
endangering his or her well-being
▪ cognitive appraisal
• primary appraisal: demand is irrelevant, good or stressful
o harm-loss
o threat
o challenge
• secondary appraisal: coping
▪ stress and coping theory
• situation -> primary appraisal -> neutral/neg/pos -> secondary
appraisal – (situation/person) > coping -> re-appraisal ->
primary appraisal
• if situation = neg and coping options = insufficient, then: stress
▪ Psychological tradition: Threat appraisals and coping appraisals
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, o process: Rabkin & Struening
▪ stress is the organism’s response to stressful conditions consisting of a
pattern of physiological and psychological reactions, both immediate
and delayed
▪ situation -> disruption -> recovery
• disruption -> cumulation -> illness
▪ McEwen’s allostatic load theory:
• Homeostasis: equilibrium between sympathetic and
parasympathetic NS (hormones)
• Allostasis: “functional” changes in equilibrium
o Concession to environmental demands
• Allostatic load: physical and mental cost of disturbed
equilibrium -> This is bad!
o Repeated hits
o Lack of adaptation
o Prolonged response: ruminating
o Inadequate response: other symptoms have to make up
for it, also not good
• 4 factors that can lead to increased allostatic load:
o Amount of exposure
o Magnitude or reactivity
o Rate of recovery
o Resource restoration: amount of sleep
▪ How stressful life demands cause increased risk of disease
(see picture)
• Transactional stress theory (Lazarus & Folkman): daily hassles and
uplifts approach
• Conservation of resources theory: resource-based model of stress
• High stress reactivity and low stress recovery can lead to illnesses.
• 4 factors that are always the same for stress:
o Important situation
o Inability or unwillingness to retreat from the situation
o Loss of control
o High arousal, distracting thoughts and always accompanied by
emotions
• Cognitive or mental load: an efficient and healthy way to react to a challenge.
Activation via extra energy to realize efficient performance (studying)
o Mental load – (overload) > stress – (degree of exposure, duration) > effects:
health, performance, employability
2
,• Behavioral distress: tobacco abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, accidents and
aggression, dietary extremes
• Psychological distress: anxiety, burnout (1. Emotional exhaustion, 2.
Depersonalization or cynicism, 3. Reduces personal accomplishment), depression,
sleep disturbances, family problems, sexual dysfunction
• Medical distress: coronary heart disease and stroke, cancer (increase tobacco
consumption + decreased immune system), pain and musculoskeletal injuries,
headache, diabetes mellitus, additional medical distress, positive effects of eustress
• Changing world of work:
o Increased internationalization and competition
o New technology
o Changed configuration of workforce (more women)
o High performance: high quality and low costs
o Flexibility: structural, functional, numerical, geographic, job-based,
quantitative (overtime), qualitative
• Changes in work characteristics:
o Decrease job security, increase sickness absence
o More demands due to increase technology
o Work-home interactions
o New organizational practices (call centers)
o Overtime work
3
, Week 2: The Stress Response
• Walter Cannon -> homeostasis, fight-flight-(freeze) response
• Stress response as: Hierarchy of correcting actions
o Level of cells and organs (cold)
o ANS + endocrine system
▪ CNS -> PNS -> ANS (sympathetic + parasympathetic) + SNS
▪ When rats trapped: pee (parasympathetic)
o Brainstem: reticular formation
o Hypothalamus
▪ Pink = pituitary gland
▪ PVN secretes CRF
▪ Autonomic (green = SAM (fast)) division vs Endocrine (blue = HPA
(slow)) division
▪ Adrenaline:
o Supports SNS: blood to muscles, increase heartbeat
o Metabolic functions (glucose release/breakdown fats and
proteins)
o Stimulates release ACTH by pituitary (cortisol-concentration)
o Released especially in case of eustress
▪ Cortisol:
o Circadian rhythm (peaks in morning)
o For functioning ANS (by increasing adrenaline + noradrenaline)
o Metabolic functions: same as adrenaline
o Inhibitory effect on glucose uptake by brain, HPA-axis +
immune system
o Involved especially in negative emotions (distress)
▪ Acute effects of cortisol:
o Hippocampus: increase learning & memory
o Thalamus: increase sensitivity to stimuli
o Adrenoreceptors: increase sensitivity
o Immune system: inhibited (increase for very short term)
o Inflammation: decreased
o Glucose and fats: increase production and release
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