psy290 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Biopsychosocial Model, Hans Selye, Health Psychology
19 May 2018
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Chapter 13 & 14 – Unit 7 and 8
Chapter 13 – Stress, Coping, and Health
The Biopsychosocial model holds that physical illness is caused by a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and
sociocultural factors.
Health psychology – is concerned with how psychosocial factors relate to the promotion and maintenance of helath, and with
the causation, prevention, and treatment of illness.
1. Define stress. Discuss the relationship between the severity of stress and its effects. (pp. 597-598)
Comment: Sele elieed that stress as a stiulus eteral to the orgais. I lae’s ters, he used the
term stress to refer to the harmful or unpleasant stimuli themselves and the term strain to refer to the od’s
response to those stimuli. Lazarus and Folkman (1993), on the other hand, believed that stress resulted in the
perso’s appraisal or ealuatio of the relationship etee these stiuli ad the perso’s ailit to eet,
mitigate, or alter the demands to his or her well-being. This difference of opinion led to a great deal of research,
ad uh of it has supported Lazarus’s positio.
Nature of stress
Stress – any circumstances that threaten or are perceived to threaten one’s well-being and that thereby tax one’s coping
abilities.
• Stress is a common, everyday event, and even routine hassles can have harmful events.
Appraisal: Stress Lies in the Eye of the Beholder
• People’s appraisals of events determine what they find stressful.
• Primary appraisal – is an initial evaluation of whether an even is 1) irrelevant to you, 2) relevant but not
threatening, or 3) stressful.
• Secondary appraisal – which an evaluation of your coping resources and options for dealing with the stress.
2. Describe the four principal types of stress discussed in Weiten and McCann (2013). (pp. 599-602)
Major types of stress
• Theorist have tires to analyze the nature of stressful events and divide them into subtypes.
a. Acute stressors – are threatening events that have a relatively short duration and a clear endpoint.
b. Chronic stressors – are threatening events that have a relatively long duration and no readily apparent time
limit.
Frustration
• Frustration – occurs in any situation in which the pursuit of some goal is thwarted.
Conflict
3. Identify the three basic types of conflict. (Figure 13.1, p. 600)
• Conflict – occurs when two or more incompatible motivations or behavioural impulses compete for expression.
• Comes in three types:
1. Approach-approach conflict – a choice must be made between two attractive goals.
2. Avoidance-avoidance conflict – a choice must be made between two unattractive goals.
3. Approach-avoidance conflict – a choice must be made about whether to pursue a single goal that has both
attractive and unattractive aspects.
Change
• Life changes – are any noticeable alterations in one’s living circumstances that require readjustment.
• Holmes and Rahe developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) to measure life change as a form of stress.
The scale assigns numerical values to 43 major life events.
1. The scale purports to measure change-related stress, but actually taps many types of stressful experience.
2. Many studies have shown that high scores on the SSRS are associated with increased vulnerability to
physical illness and psychological problems.
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Pressure
• Pressure – involves expectations of demands that one behave in a certain way.
• People may be put under pressure to perform well or to conform to other’s expectations.
• Pressure is a predictor of psychological symptoms.
• People under pressure may often show diminished performance.
Responding to Stress – emotional, physiological, behavioural
Emotional Responses
• Emotions Commonly Elicited
• Many emotions may be evoked by stress, but anger-rage, anxiety-fear, and sadness-grief are especially common.
• Effects of Emotional Arousal
• Emotional arousal may interfere with coping efforts
• Investigators have tended to focus on negative emotions, but research shoes that positive emotions also occur during
periods of stress.
4. Describe the relationship between emotional arousal and task performance. (p. 605)
• The inverted U hypothesis posits that as tasks become more complex, the optimal level of arousal (for peak
performance) tends to decrease.
Psychological Responses
• The Fight or Flight Response
• Walter Canon – flight-or-fight response – is a physiological reaction to threat in which the autonomic
nervous system mobilizes the organism for attacking (fight) or fleeing (flight).
• General Adaptation Syndrome
• General adaptation syndrome – is a model of the body’s stress response, consisting of three stages: alarm,
resistance and exhaustion.
5. Describe the three stages of the General Adaptation Syndrome. (pp. 606-607)
• First stage: alarm reaction – occurs when an organism first recognizes the existence of a threat.
1. Physiological arousal occurs as the body musters its resources to combat the challenge -> fight or
flight.
• Second stage: stage of resistance – physiological changes stabilize as coping efforts get under way.
1. Occurs when the organism is exposed to prolonged stress, similar to chronic stress.
2. Physiological arousal continues to be higher than normal, although it may be level off somewhat as
the organism becomes accustomed to the threat.
• Third stage: stage of exhaustion – is when the stress continues over a substantial period of time.
1. The body’s resources for fighting stress are limited. If the stress can’t be overcome, the body’s
resources may be depleted.
• Brain-Body Pathways
6. Discuss the two major pathways along which the brain sends signals to the endocrine system in response
to stress. (Figure 13.7, p. 607)
• Stress can cause the brain to send signals to the endocrine system along two pathways.
1. First pathway – flight or fight
Hypothalamus -> autonomic nervous system -> adrenal medulla -> Secretion of catecholamine
▪ Routed through the autonomic nervous system
▪ In response to stress, your hypothalamus activates the sympathetic division in the ANS. A
key part of this activation includes stimulating the central part of the adrenal glands (the
adrenal medulla) to release large amounts of catecholamine into the blood steam. These
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hormones radiate thought your body, producing the physiological changes seen in the
flight-or-flight response.
• Secretion of catecholamine causes: body is mobilized for action. HR and blood
flow increases and more blood is pumped to your brain and muscles. Resp and
oxygen consumption speed up, which facilitates alertness. Digestive process are
inhibited to consume energy. The pupils of your eyes dilate, increasing visual
sensitivity.
2. Second pathway – involves more direct communication b/w the brain and the endocrine system.
Hypothalamus - > pituitary gland -> adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) -> adrenal medulla -
> secretion of corticosteroids.
3. Hypothalamus sends signals to the so-called master glad of the endocrine system called the pituitary
gland.
▪ Then, the pituitary secretes a hormone (ACTH) that stimulates the outer part of the adrenal
glands (the adrenal cortex) to release another important set of hormones called
corticosteroids.
• Secretion of corticosteroids: Stimulate the release of chemicals that help increase
energy and help inhibit tissue inflammation in case of injury.
Behavioural Responses
• Most behavioural responses to stress involve coping:
1. Coping – refers to active efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate the demands created by stress.
• Coping efforts may be healthy or unhealthy.
• Endler developed a measure designed to assess stable individual differences in coping
1. The Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) measures three stable coping dimensions:
task-oriented coping, emotion-oriented coping, and avoidance oriented coping.
• Giving Up and Blaming Oneself
• When confronted with stress, some give up and withdraw from the battle. Some people routinely respond to
stress with fatalism and resignation, passively accepting setbacks that might be dealt with effectively. This
syndrome is called learned helplessness.
• Learned helplessness – is a passive behaviour produces by exposure to unavoidable aversive events.
1. Seems to occur when individuals believe that events are beyond their control.
• Giving up and blaming oneself are less than optimal methods of coping with stress.
7. Describe and evaluate aggression and self-indulgence as behavioural responses to stress. (pp. 609-610)
• Striking out at Others
• Another unhealthy response is to strike out at others with aggressive behaviours.
1. Aggression – any behaviour that is intended to hurt someone, either physically or verbally.
• Frustration-aggression hypothesis – psychologist said that aggression is always caused by frustration.
• Freud theorized that behaving aggressively could get pent-up emotion out of one’s system and thus be
adaptive. He coined the term: catharsis to refer to this release of emotional tension.
• Indulging Oneself
• Indulging oneself is another common response to stress that tends to be less than optimal.
• When troubles by stress, many people engage in excessive consumption – unwise patterns of eating,
smoking, dirking, using drugs, spending money, gambling and so forth. People try to compensating by
pursuing substitute forms of satisfactions.
• Maladaptive coping with online world: internet addiction – which consists of spending an inordinate
amount of time on the internet and inability to control online use.
8. Discuss defensive coping and constructive coping as mechanisms for dealing with stress. (pp. 610-612)
• Defense Coping
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Document Summary
Chapter 13 & 14 unit 7 and 8. The biopsychosocial model holds that physical illness is caused by a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. Health psychology is concerned with how psychosocial factors relate to the promotion and maintenance of helath, and with the causation, prevention, and treatment of illness: define stress. Discuss the relationship between the severity of stress and its effects. (pp. Comment: sel(cid:455)e (cid:271)elie(cid:448)ed that stress (cid:449)as a sti(cid:373)ulus e(cid:454)ter(cid:374)al to the orga(cid:374)is(cid:373). I(cid:374) la(cid:455)(cid:373)e(cid:374)"s ter(cid:373)s, he used the term stress to refer to the harmful or unpleasant stimuli themselves and the term strain to refer to the (cid:271)od(cid:455)"s response to those stimuli. This difference of opinion led to a great deal of research, a(cid:374)d (cid:373)u(cid:272)h of it has supported lazarus"s positio(cid:374). Stress any circumstances that threaten or are perceived to threaten one"s well-being and that thereby tax one"s coping abilities: stress is a common, everyday event, and even routine hassles can have harmful events.
