Problem 1
Stress – the circumstances in which transactions lead a person to perceive a discrepancy between the
physical or psychological demands of a situation and the resources of their biological, psychological or
social systems. Resources or discrepancy can be real or believed to exist – stress is in the eye of the
beholder.
2 components:
1. Physical – direct material or bodily challenge
2. Psychological -how people perceive circumstances.
The components are examined in 3 approaches, with different focuses:
1. Environment – stress is seen as a stimulus.
a. Stressors – physical/psychological challenging events
2. Stimulus- Response-Process – focus on how people react to stressors. The responses can be
psychological (thought and feeling) or physical (heart pounding).
a. Starin – the psychological and physical responses to stressors
3. The third approach thinks of stress as a process that includes stressors and strains and the
relationship between the person and environment. This view says that stress is not just a stimulus
or response, it’s a process where the person is an active agent who can influence the impact of the
stressor through behvaioural, cognitive and emotional strategies.
a. Transaction – continuous interaction and adjustments between the person and
environment, each affecting and being affected by each other.
Appraising events as stressful: transaction in stress involve cognitive appraisal – an assessment of the
events. This depends on – 2 types of appraisals:
Primary appraisal - if the demand threatens the psychological or physical well-being. It reads the pain or
discomfort and can reach 1 of 3 conclusions:
Either the pain is irrelevant; or its good – called benign positive; or its stressful – judging that the
symptoms are something to be worried about.
Circumstance seen as stressful receive further appraisal:
o Harm-loss – amount of damage that has already occurred
o Threat – expectation of future harm
o Challenge – the opportunity to achieve growth by using more than the usual resources to
meet a demand
Secondary appraisal - if there are resources available for meeting the demand of the stressors.
The stress that we experience oftens depends on the appraisal we conclude.
Appraisals can influence stress even when the stressor does not relate to us directly or the transaction is
vicarious – making people experience stress vicarious
Factors that influence appraisals:
1. Personal factors – intellectual, motivation and personality. For ex, self-esteem or motivation or
perfectionism
2. Situational factors – events evolve strong demand and are imminent + are ambiguous, have low
desirability or low controllability.
Body systems activated by STRESS:
Automatic nervous system - the fight/flight response – enables the body to carry out emergency
responses: increased heart rate, adrenaline. It releases catecholamines (noradrenaline from
, Sympathetic neurons). Adrenaline and noradrenaline from medulla of adrenal gland. These occupy
two receptors (alpha and beta receptors)
The endocrine system – ensures the release of hormones during stress:
o Epinephrine – affects the metabolism of glucose, so the stored nutrients can be released for
use. It ensures faster blood flow to the muscles (with norepinephrine) – leads to higher
blood pressure.
o Norepinephrine – stress hormone and neurotransmitter. The release is regulated by a
connection pathway between the central nucleus of the amygdala and the locus coeruleus –
it ensures alertness.
o Cortisol – it is a glucocorticoid because it affects the metabolism of glucose. It helps
breakdown proteins and convert them to glucose to make fats available for energy to speed
up blood flow. It helps the body mobilize its energy to combat a difficult situation and its
beneficial to health in the short term.
HPA axis – regulates the secretion of cortisol - consist of the hypothalamus (H), pituitary gland (P),
and adrenal cortex (A). Activation of the hypothalamus induces activation the anterior pituitary
gland in the hypothalamus causes the release of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which
stimulates the anterior purity gland to make adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which stimulates
the adrenal cortex to make glucocorticoid
including cortisol (“the stress hormone”), which
enhances metabolic activity, elevates blood
levels of sugar, and increases alertness. It reacts
more slowly than the ANS, so it dominates that
response to prolonged stress. Stress that
releases cortisol mobilizes the body’s energy to
fight the bad situation, but the results depend
on the amount and duration. When there is a
high concentration of cortisol in the blood, it is
detected by receptors in the brain, especially in
the hypothalamus, which makes the stress
response to be switched off through a negative
feedback-system.
Article –Acute stress reaction - Role of cortisol:
Cortisol can enhance your focused attention, and in
assessing a situation being able to deferential between an avoidance or approach
Ex: Seeing the bear in the woods. A goal irrelevant information would be if the bear is walking from you.
But if he is coming towards you than you make the decision between avoidance and approach.
Dimensions of stress – stress increases with stressor frequency, intensity and duration. The stronger the
stressors the greater the physiological strain.
,Chronic stress – stress that occurs and last a long time. It makes people more likely to catch a cold when
exposed to infection. People who are under chronic stress often show heightened reactivity when a
stressor occurs
Cannon (1929)- how the body reacts to emergencies – fight-or-flight response – where the perception of
danger causes the sympathetic nervous system to stimulate many organs – the heart, adrenal glands of
endocrine system which secrete epinephrine, arousing the body still further. He said that this arousal can
have positive or negative effects. The response is adaptive because it mobilizes the organism to respond
quickly to danger, but this high arousal is bad for your health if it lasts.
General adaption syndrome (GAS), Selye – observation of what happens when the body is other stress for
a long time. It has 3 stages:
1. Alarm reaction – like the fight-or-flight – it’s meant to mobilize the body’s resources. It comes from
the sympathetic nervous system. The system:
a. activates many organs through direct nerve connections, like adrenal glands which when
b. stimulated release epinephrine and norepinephrine in the bloodstream, producing more
activation
c. than the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA) is activated – it triggers the pituitary
gland to secrete ACTH which causes the adrenal gland to release cortisol into the
bloodstream, enhancing the body’s mobilization.
2. Stage of resistance – the initial reaction of the SN became less important and the HPA activation
continues. The body tries to adapt to the stressors. Physiological arousal remains higher than
normal, and the body replenishes the hormones the adrenal glands released. The body doesn’t
show many indications that it is under stress, but the ability to resist under stressors is impaired.
a. Makes the person vulnerable to health problems – diseases of adaptions – high-blood
pressures, asthma, illness that come from impaired immune function.
3. Stage of exhaustion – prolonged physiological arousal produced by severe long-term or repeated
stress leads to exhaustion – weaken immune system and a deplete in the body’s reserves. If the
stress continues, disease and damage to internals are likely which could lead to death.
Allostatic load – the effect of the body having to constantly adapt to stressor – like function in levels of
hormones, blood pressure, immune function… It makes it harder for the body to adapt to future stressors.
4 factors are important for the amount of bodily stress:
- Amount of exposure – the more frequent and intense the stressors are the greater the total
amount of physical activation
- Magnitude of reactivity – some people will have more hormones release and blood pressure
changes than others.
- Rate of recovery – some people will be able to go back to normal quickly after the stressors are
over, but others take longer.
- Resources restoration – how many resources to restore your physiological back to normal, like
sleep.
GAS will occur regardless of what the stressors is. But different stressor does cause different reactions – for
ex, a stressor that involves a strong emotional response is different form a sudden stressor. Studies found
that no specific hormones respond to all stimuli, stressors are more likely to trigger the release of large
amount of all 3 hormones. Other research show that arousal depends on effort – the person’s
interest/determination + distress – involves anxiety, uncertainty, boredom and dissatisfactions.
Effort with Distress – leads to increase in catecholamine and cortisol excretion
, Effort without distress – joyous stated, leads to successful coping. It leads to increase in
catecholamine secretion, and cortisol secretion may be suppressed.
Distress without effort – feeling helpless, losing control giving up.
Criticism – GAS has a good basic structure, but it doesn’t include the role of psychological factors in stress.
The startle response
a. Startle response = the
unconditioned response from the
unconditioned stimulus, picture 2
and 3
b. Experiment to investigate role of
amygdala in learning. +, fear
conditioning (implicit learning),
helps investigate how we develop
fear
c. Brain regions: Amygdala → double
dissociation between people with
amygdala and hippocampus
lesions which showed amygdala is
for the implicit emotional learning
High and low pathway:
- Low pathway (direct way): Info goes
directly from the thalamus to amygdala,
and the info is raw/unprocessed, reaches amygdala rapidly (takes 15 milliseconds in rats) fight or
flight response (happens first)
- High road pathway (indirect way): is slower, kicks in afterwards (takes 300 milliseconds in rats) info
goes via the thalamus which sends the info to sensory cortex and sensory cortex analyses the info
which goes to amygdala
Measuring stress
Physiological arousal is reflected in the function of many body systems. Ways to assess it:
Use electrical equipment to take measurements of blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate or
galvanic skin response (GSR) – all can be measured with the polygraph
Biochemical analyses of blood, urine or saliva samples – asses the levels of hormones that the
adrenal glands secrete during stress. They measure the 2 most important classes of hormones:
o Corticosteroids – most important is cortisol
o Catecholamines – including epinephrine + norepinephrine
These measures are affected by gender, body weight, activity prior to or during the measurement and
consumption of substances.
Life events– self-report method. A lot of scales have been developed to give a number to people level of
stress
Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), Holmes, 1967 – they asked hundreds of people their
opinion on how stressful certain events is. Then gave main events of adult life a number rating them
from 100 (death of spouse) stressful to 11 (minor violation of law)
