This is a summary of the PBS documentary, "Worried Sick", a video about the science of stress. I wrote this summary for the course, Intro to Psychology.
This documentary is about the study of stress, how it impacts the body
and how stress can be prevented. Three most intriguing points in “Worried
Sick” are how personality impacts one’s stress levels, how arguments and
satisfaction in romantic relationships can influence stress levels, and the
impact meditation has on the elimination of stress. Conclusions were made
by researchers in medical and psychology specific fields about stress by
using both primate and human subjects.
I was surprised to learn that people with more hostile personalities
experience more stress and higher levels of blood pressure than those who
are not. By testing the people’s personalities and responses to stress, the
researchers came to this conclusion. Unfortunately, these people are more
prone to heart attacks because they experience higher spikes in blood
pressure. Initially, I would have thought that the less dominate monkeys
would have higher levels of stress due to a need to have access to more
resources, but researchers found the opposite is the case. The stress levels
of the less dominate moneys were more impacted by how the group treated
them, especially the more dominate monkeys. However, the more dominate
monkeys as well as the people with more hostile personalities, have higher
flight or flight responses. Because the result of the studies were opposite of
what I thought they would be, I found this part of the documentary even
more interesting.
It was also interesting to learn how relationship satisfaction,
particularly in romantic relationships and arguments within those
relationships impact stress and blood pressure. Researchers found that the
nature of the relationship played an important role in the subject’s
experiences of stress within arguments. Women showed a particular
sensitivity to stress in relations to arguments less happy relationships. It is
important to know that people who get along better with others tend to be
less stressed out than those who do not. People who had arguments with
their partners that they were less invested in also did not experience much
stress. Researchers tested how well blisters healed with people who had
happy romantic relationships compared to those who had less happy
relationships. They found that the blisters healed much faster in those with
happy relationships. This also shows a connection between the immune
system’s responses and stress. Researchers concluded that the immune
system is less effective because of stress, by looking at the results of the
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