PSY333H1 Lecture 5: PSY333 – Oct 5th
PSY333 – Oct 5th
Kasi Sewraj
Measuring Stress
• Physiological measures can be EKG, BP, impedance cardiography
o These examine HR, CO, ventricular contractility, and diastolic and systolic BP
Electrocardiography
• Records electrical cycles of the heart
• Tells us the heart rate and the timing of each component
Impedance Cardiography – assesses changes in resistance due to changes in blood flow
- HR, volume of blood and timing of cardiac cycle
Blood pressure
Systolic: BP when heart is contracting
Diastolic: Minimum arterial pressure when ventricles are relaxing and heart is filling with blood
Exercise vs. Stress
Stress
Exercise (this is more about aerobic exercise)
– High sympathetic nervous system response
– Typically negative appraisal
– Longer cortisol exposure
– Repeated exposure weakens stress response in
crisis
– Sweat is more water based
– High parasympathetic nervous system response
– Typically more positive appraisal
– Acute cortisol exposure
– Repeated exposure improves stress response in
crisis
– Sweat is more protein based and smells worse
• Different psychological and physiological response
• Also use acute stress paradigms shows short term psychological and physiological distress
- Saliva tests, blood tests, urine tests for
detecting hormone levels – these are
more apt measures that physiological
responses
- Takes a long time for cortisol to get into
your samples, so have to wait about 30
mins after the activity
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o Helps us find what events produce stress and predict chronic stress
• Study where they induced a cold in people – swabbed noses with a viral culture
o Found that IL 6 was a pro-inflammatory cytokine that linked stress through immune system
▪ More psychological stress led to more IL6 production
• Also look at stressful life events – organisms must make an adjustment to the environment
o Used social readjustment rating scale and assigned point values to events that reflected
the most amount of change that had to be made
o To get a stress score need to sum all the points
o Also used Recent Life Changes Questionnaire and ranked and found that the results
matched SRRS
▪ Used Life Change Units
o Those who had greater stress reactivity were more likely to develop a cold in the next 12
weeks
• There were issues with this kind of rating
o Items were vague (personal illness – what does that mean)
o Events were pre-assigned point values but we don’t know if they have the same meaning
to everyone
o Inventories included positive and negative events – some were sudden and some were
planned
▪ Don’t typically assess if these events cause stress
o Chronic stress is part of everyday life – needs to be measured from specific life events
▪ Some people might be prone to more stress
▪ If a stressful event occurred before study they might rate things higher
• We also go through daily hassles – these lead to declines in health and produce stress
o They accumulate
o They influence relationship between major stress events and illness
• Perceived stress may be a better way too look at stress
Stress moderator: Modify how stress is experienced and the effects it has
Chronic stress
• We can adapt to stress to a certain degree but then they show negative responses
o Chronic stressors may be more important than certain life events
• PTSD – for sexual assault, virulence, etc.
• Westray mining catastrophe – 26 miners died in an explosion
o 8 years after people 80% still had dreams and thoughts of their loved ones which were
upsetting
o 1/3 did not get over the event
o 1/2 found meaning in the experience
o 85% felt that someone was to blame and they were still bitter about it
• Early stressors in lie have long term physiological effects and more negative consequences for the
immune system
o Early family relationships may affect long term health
o Contributes to allostatic load
o Even have results if prenatal stress was incurred – mothers who were in Quebec ice storm
had kids with poor cognitive and language development
▪ Scored lower on IQ tests
• Hard to determine whether or not chronic stress is related to illness
o Hard to show that chronic stress is a factor contributing to illness
o Chronic stress is assessed on self report
o Hard to isolate chronic stress as the result for a condition
• Chronic stress alters catecholamines and cortisol patterns
o Chronic stress means more glucocorticoid resistance and therefore a heightened
inflammatory response
How stress affects both mental and physical health
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find more resources at oneclass.com
• Low SES increases chronic stress
• Bullying causes long term stress
o Differences between boys and girls (girls more verbal and boys more physical)
• Cyberbullying and suicide
• Work place stress
o Has a huge effect on the economy through sick pay and lost productivity
o Low SES have increased work place stress
o Increased
• Physical hazards in the workplace – produce elevated catecholamines
• Work overload
o In Japan men who worked over 61 hours a week had 2x risk of heart attack
• Ambiguity and role conflict in your job
• Social relationships
o Good ones can protect against disease
o Bad ones can increase risk for coronary heart disease
• Lack of control
o Heighted catecholamines, increased coronary artery disease
• Job insecurity
• Unemployment
• Work-life balance
o Women having multiple roles
▪ May have a protective effect even though no data for it
Personality and Stress
Negative Personality Styles:
• Negative Affectivity
o Negative mood, with high anxiety, depression, & hostility
▪ More physical symptoms and more of a long term effect
▪ Slip into alcohol use disorder to deal with stress
▪ More suicide and higher mortality rate at old age
▪ Higher risk of diabetes, arthritis, kidney, liver disease, increased adrenalcortical
activity
o Can also be an optimist in this sense – when one thing doesn’t go right the whole world
ends
o Just generally a miserable person
o Can increase poor health just by having a false impression of health
• Pessimism
o Dispositionally expect negative outcomes in the future
▪ Think bad things in their life happen due to internal qualities
▪ More physical systems, and reduced immune function
▪ SES link – those with lower SES have more pessimism
▪ More coronary heart disease and poor cell mediated immunity
o Can also have negative affectivity
▪ They are interrelated so they can have shared symptoms
▪ Don’t have to have a negative affect to be a pessimist
o Can also have a pessimistic explanatory style which they learned to view their lives
o Those who looked at their negative life events with a global negative disposition were
more unhealthy later in life
• Perfectionism
o Compulsively driven by excessively high standards and harsh evaluations
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Physiological measures can be ekg, bp, impedance cardiography. These examine hr, co, ventricular contractility, and diastolic and systolic bp. Tells us the heart rate and the timing of each component. Impedance cardiography assesses changes in resistance due to changes in blood flow. Hr, volume of blood and timing of cardiac cycle. Diastolic: minimum arterial pressure when ventricles are relaxing and heart is filling with blood. Saliva tests, blood tests, urine tests for detecting hormone levels these are more apt measures that physiological responses. Takes a long time for cortisol to get into your samples, so have to wait about 30 mins after the activity. Repeated exposure weakens stress response in crisis. Sweat is more protein based and smells worse: different psychological and physiological response, also use acute stress paradigms shows short term psychological and physiological distress, helps us find what events produce stress and predict chronic stress.
