Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Harm Reduction, Sympathetic Nervous System, Neuroticism

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Terry Biggs

Document Summary

View stress in 3 different ways: stimulus. Stressors: events or stimuli that place strong demands on us: response. Response that has cognitive, physiological, and behavioral component: organism-environment interaction. Stress= pattern of cognitive appraisals, physiological responses and behavioral tendencies that happen because of an imbalance between situational demands and resources. Range in severity: from micro-stressors to catastrophic events to major negative events. Characteristics of stressors: intensity/severity, duration, predictability, controllability, chronicity. Measuring stressful life events: researchers made life event scales. Life event scales: quantify amount of life stress person experienced over given period. Asks if a particular event occurred, if event was positive or negative, if it was a major event. Four types of appraisal in response to stressor (lazarus: appraisal of demands of situation. Evaluate the demands of the situation and significance to you: appraisal of resources of available to cope with it. If demands is greater than resources, will experience stress. Judgment of what consequences of situation could be.