Download PsychSim5 All Stressed Out

Name: Hakima Missbah
PsychSim 5: ALL STRESSED OUT
This activity examines the way that psychologists conceptualize stress, emphasizing that stress
is a biopsycho-social process. You will explore the sources of stress in your own life, review
your body’s response to stress, and then learn how cognitive appraisal dramatically affects how
much stress you actually experience.
Checking the Level of Stress in Your Life
 What was your “Stress Test” score? __23__________

Do you think that such a test accurately captures your experience? What other stressors
should be included?
No, because I think its normal to get stressed because of my high expectations, that
doesn’t mean I have problems because of it.
Stress, Stressors, and Coping
 Psychologists differentiate stressors, strain, and stress. What does each of these terms
mean?
 Stressors: prediction of someone’s health based of on stress levels.
 Strain: The resulting damage of object
 Stress: process of coping with environmental factors that threaten you’re life.
The General Adaptation Syndrome
 Describe Selye’s general adaptation syndrome.
The depleting energy to overcome the stress and harms of environmental aspects that limit
someone’s ability to progress.
The Biology of Stress
 Although both men and women experience the fight-or-flight syndrome, some scientists
argue that women also can experience stress differently (tend-and-befriend). Briefly
explain this hypothesis.
This because natural selection developed stress relieves differently as they grow of different
ways and situations.
 Can you think of why this alleged gender difference in fight-or-flight and tend-andbefriend may “make sense” from an evolutionary perspective?
Because natural selectionwas developed in ways that the fittest was more successful than the
weaker people.
 Outline the body’s two-part endocrine response to stress.
Hypothalamic, pituatary adrenocortical system is a delayed response that function to restore
body to normal, and the Cortisol which affect glucose metabolism.
Stress Harms Your Body’s Organ Systems
o List the effects of stress on:
o the heart: Raise the heart pressure
o
the digestive tract: Reduction in enzyme digestions in blood flow.
o
the brain: It can damage the neurons involved in learning and in memory,
hypocampus is smaller in stressed patients.
Cognitive Appraisal – The Filter Through Which Stressors Are Processed
o According to the transactional model, what triggers the process of stress?
o By considering it as a transaction in which each person makes continual adjustments to
everyday circumstances. It is triggers when we exceed the ability to cope with all our
problems in life.