STRESS, HEALTH,

AND HUMAN
FLOURISHING

Ch. 10
R. Cavera, Psy.D.
Chapter overview
Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
Stress Effects and Health
Coping With Stress
Managing Stress Effects
Happiness
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
StressorsThings that push our buttons
Stress reactionsFrom alarm to exhaustion
Stress
Process of appraising an event as threatening or
challenging and responding to
Stressors appraised as threats
Can lead to strong negative reactions
Extreme or prolonged stress
Can cause harm
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
StressorsThings that push our buttons
Catastrophes: Unpleasant, large-scale events

Significant life changes: Personal events

Daily hassles: Day-to-day challenges

Stress Appraisal

Fuse/Getty Images
The events of our lives flow through a psychological filter. How we
appraise an event influences how much stress we experience and how
effectively we respond.
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
Stress reactionsFrom alarm to exhaustion
Cannon
Sympathetic nervous system
Flight-or-fight response
Selye
General adaptation syndrome (GAS)
Taylor
Tend-and-befriend
Stress theories
Fight-or-flight response
Emergency response, including activity of sympathetic
nervous system, that mobilizes energy and activity for
attacking or escaping a threat
General adaptation syndrome (GAS)
Selyes concept of the bodys adaptive response to stress
in three stagesalarm, resistance, exhaustion
Tend-and-befriend response
Under stress, people (especially women) often provide
support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support
from others (befriend)
AP Photo/ Chile's Presidency AP Photo/ Luis Hidalgo
Selyes General Adaptation Syndrome
Stress Effects and Health
Psychoneuro-
immunology:
Emotions affect your
Studies our
(psycho) brain (neuro)
mind-body
interactions

which controls
the stress
This field is the
hormones that
study of
influence your
(ology) those
disease-fighting
interactions.
immune
system.
Stress Effects and Health
Immune system is affected by age, nutrition, genetics, body temperature, and stress.

When the immune system does not function properly:

Responds too strongly
Underreacts

Lymphocytes
Two types of white blood cells that are part of the bodys immune system: B lymphocytes
release antibodies that fight bacterial infections; T lymphocytes attack cancer cells, viruses,
and foreign substances.
Coronary heart disease
Cogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in North
America and many other countries.
A Simplified View Of Immune
Responses
CNRI / Science Source

NIBSC / Science Source

Fuse/ Thinkstock

Lennart Nilsson/ Boehringer

Ingelheim International
GmbH

Eye of Science / Science Source

Stress Effects and Health: Immune System
Malfunctions
Reacting Too
Strongly Underreacting

Self-attacking Bacterial
diseases infection flare
Some forms Dormant
of arthritis herpes virus
Allergic erupt
reaction Cancer cells
multiply
Stress Effects and Health
Stress hormones suppress immune system
Animal studies: Stress of adjustment in monkeys caused weakened immune
systems
Human studies: Stress related to surgical wound healing and development of
colds. Low stress may increase effectiveness of vaccinations.

And sostress does not make people sick but it reduces immune systems
ability to function optimally.
Stress And Colds

Laurent / Yakou / Science Source

People with the highest life-stress scores were also most likely
to develop colds when exposed to an experimentally delivered
virus (Cohen et al., 1999).
STRESS EFFECTS
AND HEALTH
Stress and AIDS
Stress and cancer
Stress and heart disease
Stress Effects and Health
Stress and AIDS
Stress cannot give people AIDS, but may speed transition from HIV infection to
AIDS and the decline in those with AIDS.

Stress and cancer

Stress does not create cancer cells, but may affect growth by weakening natural
defenses.
Stress-cancer research results mixed.
Stress Can Have A Variety Of Health - Related
Consequences
Stress Effects and Health
Stress and heart disease
600, 000 North American coronary heart disease-related deaths yearly
Stress related to generation of inflammation which is associated with heart and
other health problems.
Meyer and colleagues
Stress predicted heart attack risk for tax accountants.
Type A men more likely to have heart attack.
Conley and colleagues
Stress related to everyday academic stressors in students.
 Personality types and stress levels
Type A
Friedman and Rosenmans term for competitive, hard - driving, impatient,
verbally aggressive, and anger - prone people
Type B
Friedman and Rosenmans term for easy going, relaxed people
Type D
Term for people who suppress negative emotion to avoid social disapproval
(Grande et al., 2012)
COPING WITH
STRESS
Personal control, health, and well-being
Who controls your life?
Is the glass half full or half empty?
Social support
CLOSE-UP: Pets are friends, too
Finding meaning
Coping With Stress
People deal with stress in a variety of ways.
Coping
Problem-focused coping
Emotion-focused coping
Personal Control, Health, and Well-
Being
Success in coping depends on several factors
Personal control
Optimistic outlook
Social support
Finding meaning
Lets look at each of these.
Personal Control, Health, and Well-
Being
Personal control
Involves the degree we perceive having control over our environment
Studying personal control
Correlation of feelings of control with behaviors and achievements
Experiments involving raising and lowering peoples sense of control and noting
the effects
Personal Control, Health, and Well-
Being
Learned helplessness
Involves dramatic form of loss of control
May result in negative health consequences
Fox and colleagues
Roberts and colleagues
Fleming and colleagues
 LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

When animals and people experience no control over

repeated bad events, they often learn helplessness.
Remember when we spoke about this in class (think about
the patient who gave up looking for work because he felt
Im never going to get hired, why should I bother trying.
Personal Control, Health, and Well-
Being
People
thrive when they live in conditions of personal freedom and
empowerment.

Proposal to improve health and morale by control (Humphrey and others)

Allowing prisoners to have more control over physical space
Having worker participate in decision-making
Offering nursing home patients more choices about their environments
Personal Control, Health, and Well-
Being
Who controls your life?
Thosewho have an external locus of control believe that
chance or outside forces control their fate
Theyachieve more in school and work, act more independently,
enjoy better health, and feel less depressed.
Thosewho have an internal locus of control believe they
control their own destiny
Personal Control, Health, and Well-Being
Half Full of Half Empty?
Pessimists
Expect things to go badly, blame others
Optimists/Optimism
Expect to have control, work well under stress, and enjoy good health
Run in families; genetic marker/oxytocin
Danner and colleagues: Optimism-long life correlation study
Personal Control, Health, and Well-
Being
Social support helps fight illness in two ways.
It calms the cardiovascular system, which lowers blood pressure and stress
hormone levels.
It fights illness by fostering stronger immune functioning.
 Anyone have a pet?
Canpets help people handle
stress?
Women experienced lower blood
pressure spikes in presence of their dog
during challenging test.
Pets increase the odds of survival after a
heart attack.
They relieve depression among AIDS
patients.
Pets lower the level of fatty acids in the
blood that increase the risk of heart
disease.
Social Support
Research findings
Uchino: People supported by close relationships are less
likely to die early.
Kaplan and colleagues: People in low-conflict marriages
live longer, healthier lives than unmarried.
Valliant: Healthy aging is better predicted by a good
marriage than by a low cholesterol level
MANAGING STRESS
EFFECTS
Aerobic exercise
Relaxation and meditation
Faith communities and health
Managing Stress Effects
Aerobic
exercise, relaxation, meditation, and active spiritual engagement
may help us gather inner strength and lessen stress effects.

Based on what we have learned so far, can you guess why?

Managing Stress Effects
Aerobic exercise
Involves sustained activity that increases heart and lung fitness; reduces stress,
depression, and anxiety
Can weaken the influence of of genetic risk for obesity
Increases the quality and quantity of life (~two years)
 Does aerobic exercise
produce a change in
stress, depression,
anxiety, or other health
outcomes?
10 weeks into a
experimental exercise
program, the women in
the aerobic exercise
program reported the
greatest decrease in
depression.

Aerobic exercise

OLJ Studio /Shutterstock

AEROBIC EXERCISE REDUCED DEPRESSION
(From McCann & Holmes, 1984.)
counteracts depression:
it increases arousal; it
does naturally what
some prescription drugs
do chemically:
Managing Stress Effects
Relaxation and mediation
Relaxation: More than 60 studies found that relaxation procedures can provide
relief from headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, and insomnia
Relaxation training: Training has been used to help Type A heart attack survivors
reduce risk of future heart attacks.
Recurrent Heart Attacks And Life-Style
Modification

David Madison/ Jupiterimages

The San Francisco Recurrent Coronary Prevention Project offered

counseling from a cardiologist to survivors of heart attacks. Those who
were also guided in modifying their Type A lifestyle suffered fewer
repeat heart attacks. (From Friedman & Ulmer, 1984.)
Managing Stress Effects
Learning to reflect and accept
Mindfulness meditation
Involvesattending to current experiences in a
nonjudgmental and accepting manner
Improves many health measures
Managing Stress Effects
Learning to reflect and accept
Howmindfulness contributes to positive
changes
Connections among regions are strengthened.
Brain regions associated with more reflective awareness are
activated.
Brain activation in emotional situations are calmed.
Managing Stress Effects
Faith communities and health: Faith Factor
Religious involvement predicts health and longevity.
HAPPINESS
The short life of emotional ups and downs
Wealth and well-being
Why cant money buy more happiness?
CLOSE-UP: Want to be happier?
Happiness
Resilience
Involves process of bouncing back in the face of adversity or significant sources
of stress
Feel-good, do-good phenomenon
Suggests that when people feel happy, they become more helpful and doing
good promotes feeling good
Subjective well-being
Includes feelings of happiness and sense of satisfaction with life
USING WEB SCIENCE TO TRACK HAPPY
DAYS
Thedays with the most
positive moods are Friday
and Saturday

A similar analysis of
emotion-related words in 59
million Twitter messages
found Friday to Sunday the
weeks happiest days. correspondence, 2010) tracked
Adam Kramer (personal
positive and negative emotion words
in many exact number is proprietary
information) of status updates of U.S.
users of Facebook between September
7, 2007, and November 17, 2010.
THE CHANGING MATERIALISM OF ENTERING COLLEGE STUDENTS

Yearly surveys of more than 200,000 entering U.S. college

students have, since 1970, revealed an increasing desire for
wealth.
(From The American Freshman surveys, UCLA, 1966 to 2012.)
Happiness
The short life of emotional ups and downs
Over time, emotional ups and downs tend to balance out.
Positive emotions rise over early to middle part of day and then drop off.
Duration of emotions is overestimated; resilience is underestimated.
 Does money buy happiness?
Money surely helps us to avoid certain
types of pain. Yet, though buying power
has almost tripled since the 1950s, the
average Americans reported happiness
has remained almost unchanged.
(Happiness data from National Opinion
Research Center surveys; income data
from Historical Statistics of the United
States and Economic Indicators.)

Economic growth in
wealthy countries has
provided no apparent
boost to morale or
social well - being.
Why Cant Money Buy Happiness?
Happiness is relative
Relative to personal experience
Relative deprivation: Sense that people feel that they are worse off than others with
whom they compare themselves
Relative to success of others
As people climb the ladder of success they mostly compare themselves with local
peers who are at or above their current level.
Happiness
Predictors of happiness
Genes: Heredity accounts for about 50 percent of happiness ratings differences.
Personal history: Emotions balance around level defined by experiences.
Culture: Groups vary in the traits valued.

Is there a happiness set-point?

Happiness Is . . .
 Want to be happier?
Realize that enduring happiness does not come from
financial success.
Take control of your time.
Act happy.
Seek work and leisure that engage your skills.
Join the movement movement.
Give your body the sleep it wants.
Give priority to close relationships.

Photodisc / Jupiterimages
Focus beyond self.
Count your blessings and record your gratitude.
Nurture your spiritual self.
Next: Personality (ch. 11)