discussions

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Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing

Chapter 11

EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY DAVID G. MYERS | C. NATHAN DEWALL

Chapter Overview

• Stress and Illness

• Health and Happiness

Stress and Illness (part 1)

• Stress: Some basic concepts • Process of appraising and responding to a

threatening or challenging event • Stressor

• Stress reaction

• Positive effects • Short-lived or perceived as challenge

• Immune system mobilization; motivation; resilience

• Negative effects • Extreme or prolonged stress

• Risky decision making and unhealthy behaviors

Stress and Illness (part 2)

Stress and Illness (part 3)

• Stressors • Catastrophes

• Large-scale disasters

• Acculturative stress

• Significant life changes • Life transitions

• Cluster of crises

• Daily hassles • Compounded by prejudice and life circumstances

• Psychological and physical consequences

Stress and Illness (part 4)

• Stress response system • Cannon

• Stress response is part of a unified mind–body system

• Fight-or-flight adaptive response

• Selye • General adaptation syndrome (GAS)

• Phase 1: Alarm reaction

• Phase 2: Resistance

• Phase 3: Exhaustion

• Human body copes well with temporary stress but may be damaged by prolonged stress

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Stress and Illness (part 5)

• Due to the ongoing conflict, Syria’s White Helmets (volunteer rescuers) are perpetually in “alarm reaction” mode, rushing to pull victims from the rubble after each fresh attack. As their resistance is depleted, they risk exhaustion.

• Gender differences in coping strategies • Earlier death

• Tend-and-befriend response

• Withdrawal

Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome

Stress and Illness (part 6)

• Stress and vulnerability to disease • Health psychology: Subfield of psychology that

provides psychology’s contribution to behavioral medicine

• Psychoneuroimmunology: Study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health

Stress and Illness (part 7)

• Psychological states have physiological effects

• Stress can reduce the ability to fight disease • Trigger immune suppression

• Delay surgical wound healing

• Increase vulnerability to colds

• Hasten disease course

• Stress does not cause illness, but it does alter immune functioning that reduces the ability to resist infection

Stress and Health Stress and Illness (part 8)

• Cancer • Stress does not create

cancer cells

• Heart disease • Coronary heart

disease • Type A personality • Type B personality

• Inflammation • Blood vessel

inflammation

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Does Stress Cause Illness? Stress and Illness (part 9)

• Anger management • Individualist cultures

• Venting rage

• Catharsis (emotional release) • Fails to cleanse rage

• Can magnify anger (behavior feedback research)

• Backfire potential

• Anger management strategies • Wait

• Find healthy distraction or support

• Distance yourself

Health and Happiness (part 1)

• Coping with stress • Coping: Alleviating stress using emotional,

cognitive, or behavioral methods

• Problem-focused coping: Attempting to alleviate stress directly—by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor

• Emotion-focused coping: Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and by attending to emotional needs related to our stress reaction

Health and Happiness (part 2)

• Coping with stress • Perceived loss of control

• Losing personal control provokes stress hormone output

• Rising stress hormone levels related to blood pressure increase and immune response decreases

• Learned helplessness

Health and Happiness (part 3)

• Coping with stress • External locus of control

• Chance or outside forces control fate

• Posttraumatic stress symptoms

• Internal locus of control • People control their own fate

• Free will, willpower, and self- control

Health and Happiness (part 4)

• Building self-control • Self-control

• Ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for longer-term rewards

• Predicts good health, higher income, and better school performance

• Strengthening self-control: Practice in overcoming unwanted urges

• Depleting self-control: Depletion effect

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Health and Happiness (part 5)

• Explanatory style: Optimism versus pessimism • Optimists

• Expect to have more control, to cope better with stressful events, and to enjoy better health

• Optimism tends to run in families

• Optimistic students • Tend to get better grades

• Respond to setbacks with more productive strategies

Health and Happiness (part 6)

• Social support • Feeling liked and

encouraged by intimate friends and family

• Promotes happiness and health

• Social isolation • Leads to higher loneliness

and risk of death equivalent to smoking

Health and Happiness (part 7)

• Research-based findings about the health benefits of social support • Calms and reduces blood pressure and stress

hormones

• Fosters stronger immune functioning

• Provides an opportunity to confide painful feelings

Health and Happiness (part 8)

• Reducing stress • Aerobic exercise: Sustained, oxygen-consuming

exertion that increases heart and lung fitness

• Benefits of exercise • Adds to quality of life (moderate)

• Helps fight heart disease and reduce heart attack risk

• Predictor of life satisfaction

• Reduces depression and anxiety

Health and Happiness (part 9) Health and Happiness (part 10)

• Reducing stress • Biofeedback

• Recording, amplifying, and feeding back information about subtle physiological responses (many of which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system)

• Works best on tension headaches

• Relaxation • Helps alleviate headaches, hypertension, anxiety, and

insomnia

• Lowers stress

• Promotes better wound healing

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Health and Happiness (part 11)

Recurrent Heart Attacks and Lifestyle Modification

Health and Happiness (part 12)

• Reducing stress • Meditation

• Reduces suffering

• Improves awareness, insight, and compassion

• Mindfulness meditation • Relaxation and silent attendance to inner space; monitored

breathing

• Linked with lessened anxiety and depression, as well as improved sleep, interpersonal relationships, and immune system functioning

Health and Happiness (part 13)

• What happens in the brain as mindfulness is practiced? • Correlational and experimental studies offer three

explanations • Mindfulness strengthens connections among regions in our

brain

• Mindfulness activates brain regions associated with more reflective awareness

• Mindfulness calms brain activation in emotional situations

Health and Happiness (part 14)

• Faith communities and health • Faith factor

• Religiously active people tend to live longer than inactive people

• Women are more religiously active than men and outlive them

Health and Happiness (part 15) Happiness (part 1)

• Positive psychology (Seligman) • Feel-good, do-good phenomenon

• Subjective well-being

• Core features • Good life that engages one’s skills; meaningful life

that extends beyond self

• Positive traits that focus on exploring and enhancing a wide range of behaviors

• Positive groups, communities, and cultures

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Happiness (part 2)

• What affects well-being? • Emotional ups and downs of

days and within-days rebound

• Rebounding from worse events takes longer; even tragedy is not permanently depressing

• Duration of emotions is overestimated; resiliency is underestimated

Happiness (part 3)

• Wealth and well-being • People in rich countries are happier than people

in poorer countries • The power to increase happiness is strongest at lower

incomes

• Once enough money for comfort and security is attained, accruing more money matters less

• Economic growth in affluent countries has provided no apparent boost to people’s morale or social well-being

Happiness (part 4)

• Happiness is relative: Adaptation and comparison • Happiness is relative to our

own experience • Adaptation-level phenomenon

• Happiness is relative to the success of others

• Relative deprivation

Happiness (part 5)

Researchers Have Found That Happy People Tend to

However, Happiness Seems Not Much Related to Other Factors, Such as

Have high self-esteem (in individualist countries). Age.

Be optimistic, outgoing, and agreeable. Gender (women are more often depressed, but also more often joyful).

Have close, positive, and lasting relationships. Physical attractiveness.

Have work and leisure that engage their skills.

Have an active religious faith (especially in more religious cultures).

Sleep well and exercise.

Happiness (part 6)

Which suggestions can you provide for a happier life? What did the text suggest?