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Stress, Health, and Human
Flourishing
Chapter 10
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Stress, Health, and Human
Flourishing
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
 Stressors – Things That Push Our Buttons
 Stress Reactions – From Alarm to Exhaustion
Stress Effects and Health
 Stress and AIDS
 Stress and Cancer
 Stress and Heart Disease
 Stress and Health: The Role of Personality
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Stress, Health, and Human
Flourishing
Human Flourishing
 Coping With Stress
 Personal Control
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Stress: Some Basic Concepts
Stress is defined as the process by which
we perceive and respond to certain events
called stressors that we appraise as
threatening or challenging.
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Stress Appraisal
• Stress arises less from the event itself
than from how we appraise it. (Lazarus,
1998)
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Three Main Types of Stressors
• Catastrophes
– Unpredictable large-scale events
• Significant life changes
– Leaving home, getting married, changing jobs, death
of a loved one, etc.
– One is more disease-prone following such changes
• Daily hassles
– More significant hassles include low wages, poor
health, neighborhood problems
– Can lead to high blood pressure and other health
problems
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Stress Reactions
• Stress response involves mind and body.
• Walter Cannon (1929) found extreme cold, lack
of oxygen, and emotion arousal all trigger
release of stress hormones from adrenal glands.
• Sympathetic nervous system engages fight-orflight response, which mobilizes energy and
activity for attacking or escaping a threat.
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Stress Reactions
• Hans Selye (1936) studied
animals’ reactions to stressors.
• Discovered that the body has a
common pattern of responding to
a variety of stressors, which he
called the General Adaptation
Syndrome (GAS):
1. Alarm
2. Resistance
3. Exhaustion
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General Adaptation Syndrome
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Other Ways of Dealing with Stress
• Withdraw, pull back, and conserve energy
• Some may become paralyzed with fear in the
face of disaster.
• Tend-and-befriend – under stress, some
people (especially women) often both provide
support to and seek support from others
– Men are more likely to withdraw, self-medicate, or
become aggressive.
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Stress Effects and Health
• Psychoneuroimmunology – a field that studies
how psychological, neural, and endocrine
processes affect our immune system and health
• Immune response includes two types of
lymphocytes (white blood cells)
• macrophages, and natural killer (NK) cells.
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The Immune Response
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Immune System Errors
• Responding too strongly: the immune
system may attack the body’s own tissues
– Arthritis, allergies
• Underreaction: May allow dormant virus to
erupt or cancer cells to multiply
• Women have stronger immune systems.
– This makes them less likely to get infections,
but more susceptible to diseases like lupus
and MS.
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Stress Effects and Health
• The immune system
becomes less active
when the body is flooded
with stress hormones.
– Wounds heal more slowly
– More vulnerable to colds
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Stress and AIDS
• People with AIDS already have a
damaged immune system.
• Stress and negative emotions speed the
transition from HIV to AIDS.
• Stress leads to a faster decline in those
with AIDS.
• Reducing stress can help control AIDS.
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Stress and Cancer
• Stress does not create cancer cells, but:
– Stress may weaken a person’s ability to fight
off cancer.
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Stress and Heart Disease
• Stress is closely linked with coronary heart
disease – the clogging of the vessels that
nourish the heart.
– Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death
in North America.
• Study of tax accountants – risk of heart disease
peaks right before April 15.
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Stress and Health: The Role of
Personality
• Nine-year study of 3000+ men,
aged 35-39. At start, they were
interviewed and categorized:
– Type A: competitive, hard-driving,
impatient, verbally aggressive, angerprone, combat-ready
– Type B: easygoing and relaxed
• At end of study, 257 heart attacks
– 69% were Type A
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Is Stress All Bad?
Stress motivates us, invigorates our lives,
makes our life challenging and productive.
But stress makes us less resistant to
disease.
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Stress and Health:
The Stress Effect
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Depression: More on Mental Health
Affecting the Heart
• Study: Depression increases risk of
worsening heart problems by 400%
• Study: Depression increases risk of death
as much as smoking does.
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Human Flourishing
• Coping With Stress
Study: the single trait shared by 169 people
over 100 was the ability to manage stress well
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Coping With Stress
• Problem-focused coping
• Emotion-focused coping
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Personal Control
• Personal control is our sense of seeing
ourselves in control of our environment.
• Psychologists study this in two ways:
– They correlate peoples fellings of control with
behaviors and achievements.
– They experiment, by raising or lowering
people’s sense of control and noting the
effects.
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Control, Morale, and Health
• Seligman (1975) strapped dogs in a
harness and gave them electric shocks
• When later placed in another situation
where they could escape the punishment
by simply leaping over a hurdle, the dogs
cowered and did not move
• Other dogs that were able to escape the
first shocks did not act this way
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Control, Morale, and Health
• Learned helplessness is the term for the
hopelessness and passive resignation an animal
or human learns when unable to avoid repeated
aversive events.
• Perceived loss of control predicts health
problems.
• Ability to control one’s environment leads to
greater happiness and productivity.
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Who’s at the Controls?
• Is your life out of your control? Is the world run
by a few powerful people?
• Do you control your own fate? Is being a
success a matter of hard work?
• External locus of control: the perception that
chance or outside forces beyond personal
control determine our fate
• Internal locus of control: the perception that
we control our own fate
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“Internals” and “Externals”
• Internals assume an internal locus of
control.
– believe they control their own destiny
– achieve more in school and work, enjoy
better health, and feel less depressed than
there counterparts:
• Externals assume an external locus of
control.
– view that chance or outside forces control
their fate
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Self Control
Self Control: The ability to control
impulses and delay gratification
• Self-control is like a muscle:
– it grows stronger with exercise
• Self-discipline in one area may strengthen
self-control in general and lead to a less
stressed life
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Is the Glass Half Full?
•
Optimism is the anticipation of positive
outcomes
• Pessimism is the anticipation of negative
outcomes
1. Optimists tend to have better health, and may
live longer
2. Success requires optimism but enough
pessimism to us alert
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Social Support
• Feeling liked and encouraged by friends and
family promotes both happiness and health.
• Social support can calm the cardiovascular
system and foster stronger immune functioning.
• Both good and bad habits can quickly migrate
to ones friends.
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Finding Meaning
•
•
Doing a Google search of ‘the meaning
of life’ resulted 6,720,000 hits
Those with a strong sense of meaning
1. See a purpose for their lives and have strong
values, and a sense of self-worth.
2. Those who find meaning in a tragic event have
fewer adverse health effects and lower rates of
depression.
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Managing Stress Effects
• Sometimes we cannot avoid experiencing
stress.
• What can we do to manage it?
– Aerobic exercise
– Relaxation
– Meditation
– Spirituality
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Aerobic Exercise
• Aerobic exercise,
sustained activity that
increases heart and
lung fitness, may
reduce stress,
depression and anxiety
• Study: mildly depressed
women improved more
with exercise than with
relaxation exercises
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Relaxation: Lifestyle Modification
• Study with Type A heart attack survivors: a control group was
given advice about medications, diet, and exercise.
• A second group was given this advice PLUS guidance in
modifying their lifestyle–
Walking, laughing, eating slowly
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Can we tell which part of the intervention made the difference?
Relaxation: Meditation
• Relaxation procedures can provide relief from
headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, and
insomnia.
• The relaxation response:
– Sit quietly in a comfortable position. Close your eyes.
Relax your musicles, starting with your feet and
moving slowly upward. Breathe slowly, and on the
exhale focus on a word, phrase or prayer. Repeat for
10-20 minutes.
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Spirituality
• The faith factor: Religiously active people
tend to live longer
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Possible explanations for the
Faith Factor?
• Religiously active people tend to have healthier lifestyles.
– less alcohol, dietary fat, and smoking
• Belonging to a faith community is to have access to a
support network.
– Religion encourages marriage, another predictor of health
and longevity
• Religion promotes positive emotion, optimism, a stable
world-view, and relaxed meditation.
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What Accounts for the Faith Factor?
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How to Flourish
• Some qualities and influences can help us
flourish by making us emotionally and
physically stronger:
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A sense of control
Optimistic outlook
Healthy habits
Social support
Relaxation
A sense of meaning
Spirituality
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