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Stress is a process triggered by environmental events or stimuli perceived as threatening. This leads to a fight-or-flight response and releases stress hormones like cortisol, affecting health. Chronic stress can weaken the immune system, trigger psychological disorders, and contribute to heart disease. The stress may arise from various stressors like trauma, job strain, and daily hassles. Stress impacts the immune system, cardiovascular health, and even exacerbates conditions like depression, headaches, asthma, and hypertension. Coping strategies, social support, and stress reduction techniques can help manage stress and improve overall well-being. Positive psychology focuses on promoting qualities leading to happiness and fulfillment, emphasizing factors like positive affect, social support, and personal control.
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Psychological Foundations Stress, Lifestyle, and Health
What is Stress? Stress is a process whereby an individual perceives and responds to overwhelming or threatening events Stressors: environmental events that seem threatening or demanding; stimuli that initiate the stress process
What happens when we perceive something stressful? • The sympathetic nervous system releases adrenaline from the adrenal glands to activate the fight-or-flight response • At the same time the hypothalamus releases corticotrophin-releasing factor, a hormone that causes the pituitary gland to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) • The ACTH then activates the adrenal glands to secrete cortisol, which helps provide that boost of energy when we first encounter a stressor, preparing us to run away or fight
Effects of Chronic Stress • Increases in cortisol can significantly weaken our immune system and are associated with depression • Stress contributes to the development of psychological disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder • Stress may lead to heart disease, musculoskeletal, nervous system, and endocrine and metabolic disorders, and death
Stressors • Trauma • Life changes • Daily hassles may cause more stress related illness than life changes • Job strain • Job burnout
Stress and the Immune System • Stress hormones inhibit the production of lymphocytes, white blood cells that are important in the immune response • People with high stress levels were more likely to get sick when exposed to a cold • People under chronic stress showed poorer antibody response following vaccination • Stress slows down wound healing by impairing immune responses
Stress and the Cardiovascular System A major risk factor for heart disease is hypertension, which is high blood pressure Stress increases blood pressure Anger and hostility (right) are linked with heart disease Negativeaffectivity, a tendency to experience distressed emotional states involving anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness, is linked with hypertension and heart disease
Depression and Heart Disease Patients with heart disease have more depression than the general population, and people with depression are more likely to eventually develop heart disease and experience higher mortality than those who do not have depression
Stress and Headaches • Tension headaches are triggered by tightening/tensing of facial and neck muscles • Stress has been demonstrated to increase sensitivity to pain
Regulating Stress: Coping Strategies and Perceived Control Problem-focused coping strategies are similar to strategies used in everyday problem-solving Emotion-focused coping consists of efforts to change or reduce the negative emotions associated with stress Perceived control is our beliefs about our personal capacity to exert influence over and shape outcomes Greater perceived control improves mental and physical health
Managing Stress: Social Support Social support: soothing and often beneficial support of others • Can take different forms, such as advice, guidance, encouragement, acceptance, emotional comfort, and tangible assistance • Social support boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure
Stress Reduction Techniques • Exercise • Relaxation • Biofeedback
Factors Connected to Happiness • Happiness increases with age • Family and other social relationship • In the US well-being rises with annual income, but only up to $75,000 • Education shows a weak positive correlation with happiness • Religiosity tends to improve happiness • People who have the characteristics that are highly valued by their culture tend to be happier • Attractiveness and Parenthood are NOT correlated with happiness
Life Events and Happiness When an event that provokes positive or negative emotions occurs, at first we tend to experience its emotional impact at full intensity In the long run, we adjust and revert to our original baseline happiness levels
Increasing Happiness Writing down three good things that occurred each day led to increases in happiness that lasted over six months Average national happiness scores relate strongly to six key variables • Per capita gross domestic product (GDP, which reflects a nation’s economic standard of living) • Social support • Freedom to make important life choices • Healthy life expectancy • Freedom from perceived corruption in government and business • Generosity
Positive Psychology Positive psychology seeks to identify and promote the qualities that lead to happy, fulfilled, and contented lives such as: • Positive affect, pleasurable engagement with the environment, is associated with greater social connectedness, emotional and practical support, adaptive coping efforts • Optimism • Flow is a state involving intense engagement in an activity; usually is experienced when participating in creative, work, and leisure endeavors
Practice Question What can people do to have happier lives?
Quick Review • What are various definitions and models of stress, including stimulus-based, response-based stress, fight or flight, general adaptation syndrome? • What occurs in the sympathetic nervous system, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system during stress? • What are different types of stressors? • How does stress impact the functioning of the immune system? How does stress lead cardiovascular disorders? asthma and tension headaches?
Quick Review • What is coping? How are problem-focused and emotion-focused coping different? • How does perceived control affect our reactions to stress? • How is social support vital in health and longevity? • What are common stress reduction techniques? • What is happiness? What factors contribute to it? How can people increase happiness? • What is positive psychology? What does it study? What is flow?
