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Erasmus University Rotterdam: Anxiety and Stress Summary (2.6) Lectures Included
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All the lectures and literatures given in block 2.6 Anxiety and stress.
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2.6Anxiety and Stress
Problem 1 – Stress
Stress: the circumstance in which transactions lead a person to perceive a discrepancy
between the physical or psychological demands of a situation and the resources of his/her
biological, psychological and social systems.
o Stress has two components.
1. Physical: involves direct material or bodily challenge.
2. Psychological: involving how individuals perceive circumstances in their lives.
Approaches to stress
1. Stimulus approach Focuses on the environment: stress is seen as a stimulus. (E.g., when
we have a demanding job or experience severe pain from an illness.)
o Stressors: physically or psychologically challenging events or circumstances.
2. Response approach Focuses on people’s reactions to stressors. Psychological or
physiological responses. (E.g., feeling nervous, heart pounding, shaking)
o Strain: the psychological or physiological response to a stressor.
o People differ in the amount of strain they experience from the same stressor.
3. Process approach Describes stress as a process that includes stressors, and focuses on the
relationship between the person and the environment.
o Transactions: a process which involves continuous interactions and adjustments with
the person and the environment each affecting and being affected by other.
o Person is an active agent who can influence the impact of a stressor through
behavioral, cognitive and emotional strategies.
The demand, resource or discrepancy may be either real or just believed to exist.
Stress often results from inaccurate perceptions or discrepancies between environmental
demands and the actual resources.
Appraising Events as Stressful
Appraisal can influence the stress even when the stressor does not directly related to us.
, Vicarious: if we see other people in stressful circumstances, we may emphasize with their
feelings and feel vulnerable ourselves.
Film Experiment (Speisman et al., 1964)
Empathetic appraisal.
4 clips in which the penis is deeply cut from the tip.
1. No sound track.
2. A sound with a “trauma” narrative that emphasized danger and primitiveness of the
operation.
3. A narration that denied any pain and potential harm to the victim, describing the
participants willingly going through the operation.
4. A scientific narration that encouraged the viewers to watch in detached manner.
1-2 compared: 2 was more stressful and viewers reacted more.
3-4 displayed less stress.
People can experience stress vicariously and their reactions depend on the process of primary
appraisal.
Cognitive Appraisal
A mental process by which people assess two factors. (Richard Lazarus)
1. Whether a demand threatens their physical or psychological well-being.
2. The resources available for meeting the demand.
Primary Appraisal
Primary appraisal: assess the meaning of the situation for our well-being.
How something is classified as eustress or distress?
o What does this mean to me?
o Will I be okay or in trouble?
o Could yield 3 judgments.
(a) It is irrelevant. Not related to the stressor.
(b) It is good. Benign-positive. (E.g., college exam postponed.)
(c) It is stressful.
When a circumstance is labelled as stressful there is a further appraisal.
1. Harm Loss
o Refers to the amount of damage that has already occurred.
o People can exaggerate the damage that has already occurred.
2. Threat
o Involves the expectation of future harm.
o E.g., medical bills, difficult rehabilitation, loss of income.
3. Challenge
o The opportunity to achieve growth, mastery or profit by using more than routine
resources to meet a demand.
Secondary Appraisal
Assessment of the resources we have available for coping.
, When we judge our resources as sufficient we may experience little or no stress.
When we appraise demands as greater than our resources we may feel a great deal of
stress.
We are especially aware of our secondary appraisals when we judge a situation as potentially
stressful.
E.g., I can’t do it / I know I will fail. No problem / I can do it.
What Factors Lead to Stressful Appraisals?
Appraising events as stressful depends on two types of factors.
1. Factors that relate to the person.
o Self-esteem: people who have high self-esteem are likely to believe that they
have the resources to meet demands that require the strengths they possess.
o Motivation: the more important a threatened goal, the more stress the person is
likely to experience.
o Person’s belief system: people have irrational beliefs that increase their stress.
o Perfectionism: people who are perfectionists are more likely to feel stress.
2. Factors that relate to the situation.
o Events that involve very strong demands and are imminent tend to be seen as
stressful.
o Life transitions: Starting a new school, moving to a new community, becoming
a parent.
o Difficult timing: events that happen earlier or later in life than usual or expected.
(E.g., having a child at 15 years of age)
o Ambiguity: a lack of clarity in a situation. (E.g., unclear information about
someone’s health or job)
o Low desirability: some circumstances are undesirable to most people. (E.g.,
losing one’s house in a fire or getting a traffic ticket)
o Low controllability: circumstances that seem to be outside the person’s
behavioral or cognitive influence. (E.g., low behavioral control: not being able to
do anything to prevent back pain. Low cognitive control: not being able to think
about a traumatic experience.)
Biopsychological Aspects of Stress
Reactivity: the physiological portion of the response to a stressor. (E.g., trembling, heart
pounding)
o Genetic factors affect a person’s reactivity to a stressor.
o People who are under chronic stress show heightened reactivity when a stressor
occurs, and their arousal may take more time to return back to baseline levels.
Fight-or-flight response
o The perception of danger causes the sympathetic nervous system to stimulate many
organs and the endocrine system to secrete epinephrine for further arousal.
o Adaptive because it mobilizes the organism to respond quickly to danger, but high
arousal can be harmful to health if it is prolonged.
General adaptation syndrome (GAS)
o Hans Salye.
o Subjected laboratory animals to a variety of stressors over a long period of time.
o Discovered that the fight-or-flight response is only the first in a series of reactions the
body makes when stress is long-lasting.
, 1. Alarm reaction: The first stage in GAS is similar to fight-or-flight response.
Mobilizes the body’s resources. Caused by the sympathetic nervous system
triggers the adrenal glands to release epinephrine and norepinephrine. Less
quickly the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) is activated to trigger the
pituitary gland to secrete ACTH, which causes the adrenal gland to release
cortisol into the bloodstream. Both cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine
enhance body’s mobilization.
2. Stage of resistance: if a stressor continues the reactions of the sympathetic
nervous system become less pronounced and important. The HPA axis activation
predominates. Body tries to adapt to the stressor. Psychological arousal remains
higher than normal. Body tries to defend against and adapt to the stressor. Despite
the continuous arousal, the organism may show few outward signs of stress,
however, the ability to resist to a new stressor is impaired. This can cause the
diseases of adaptation (E.g., high blood pressure, asthma)
3. Stage of exhaustion: prolonged physiological arousal produced by severe long-
term stress can weaken the immune system and deplete the body’s energy
reserves. Exhaustion begins. Diseases to internal organs are likely and death may
occur.
Allostatic load: the effects of body’s having to adapt repeatedly to stressors and fluctuations
in levels of hormones like cortisol or epinephrin. Impairs its ability to adapt to future
stressors.
Cumulative amount of strain typically has a greater influence on health.
Four factors are important in the overall amount of bodily activation or physiological stress.
1. Amount of exposure: when we encounter more frequent, intense or prolonged stressors
we are likely to respond with a greater total amount of physiological activation.
2. Magnitude of reactivity: in response to any particular stressor, some individuals will show
large increases in blood pressure or stress hormone, while others show much smaller
changes.
3. Rate of recovery: after an encounter with a stressor, physiological responses return to
normal quickly for some people and stay elevated for a longer time for others. Continuing
to think about a stressor can delay physiological recovery and add accumulated toll
through prolonged physiological activation.
4. Resource restoration: replenish the resources used in physiological strain by sleep.
Responses to Stressors
Hans Salye: GAS is nonspecific with regard to the type of stressor. The physiological
reactions the GAS describes will occur regardless of whether the stress results from very cold
temperature or conflicts or death of a loved one.
o Contradiction because some stressors appear to elicit stronger emotional response
than others do.
o The stressors are most likely to trigger the release of large amounts of all three
hormones (epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol) if the individual’s response
includes a strong element of emotion.
o Pattern of physiological arousal under stress depends on two factors.
1. Effort with distress: tends to be accompanied by an increase of both
catecholamine and cortisol excretion.
2. Effort without distress: is a joyous state characterized by active and successful
coping, higher degree of personal control. Only secretes catecholamine.
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