Pyschology SAC 2 - Details

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A negative psychological response to a stressor, indicated by negative psychological emotions.

Distress

A positive psychological response to a stressor, indicated by positive psychological emotions.

Eustress

A stimuli, either internal or external, that prompts the stress response.

Stressor

- Are small inconveniences or hassles that occur in everyday life - Often less severe than other types of stressors

Daily Pressure

- Stressors that force a person to change something about their lifestyle in order to cope with new circumstances that arise - Can elicit moth eustress and distress - Primarily characterised by forced adaption

Life Events

- Caused by the challenges associated with moving into a new and foreign culture - Also known as 'culture shock' - Acculturative stress may also occur when moving interstate or to another city, if the culture is significantly different from the culture a person moved from

Acculturative Stress

- A form of stress that causes trauma and distress - Often life threatening and/or present a threat to physiological well being. - Don't have to be the one that experiences it, witnessing it can also give you major stress - Objectively bad and causes stress to anyone confronted by them

Major Stress

- Large scale major upheavals that affect an interconnect population

Catastrophes that disrupt whole communities

- Fight is confronting and fighting off the threat (sympathetic nervous system) - Flight is escaping by running away to safety (sympathetic nervous system)

Fight - Flight

- Keeping absolutely still and silent, our heart rate drop, we cannot talk, blood pressure lowers, muscles collapse. - Tonic immobility - Little or no chance of escaping the threat - Adaptive value as prey in the animal kingdom that remain still are less likely to be noticed - Parasympathetic nervous system dominates for a fraction of a second before the symapthetic nervous system activates

Freeze

- Threat perceived - Signal is sent to the hypothalamus via the amygdala - Hypothalamus activates the Sympathetic Nervous System - Sympathetic Nervous System activates the adrenal medulla and releases adrenaline and noradrenaline - Hormones help with with the stressor via increased energy and heighted arousal

SAMs

- Stress hormone - Released into the body at times of stress - Plays a role in our respose to stress in the short and long term - Allows the body to remain at above average levels of arousal even after the initial fight - flight - freeze response is over.

Cortisol

- Increased energy supplies (acts upon the liver to secrete glucose) - Has anti-inflammatory effects (blocking activity of white blood cells) - Impair tissue repair - Suppression of the immune system - Regulates uneeded bolidy functions like sex drive, immunity to disease, digestion and growth

Impact of Cortisol

- Hypothamalus percieves the threat - Stimulates the pituitary gland - Pituitary gland releases ACTH - That makes the adrenal glands release cortisol - The release of cortisol is on a feedback loop with the pituitary gland to maintain cortisol levels

Cortisol Release

- First wave of stress is fight - flight - freeze response, which is high intensity but short in duration. They are caused by the release of adrenaline and noradrenaline - Second wave of stress is the HPA axis which puts into motion a slower but longer lasting chain reaction including the release of cortisol.

Biological way of Dealing with Stress

- A model that examines the biological stages of sterss involved in responding to a stressor - It defines stress as a biological reaction that is the same regardless of the stressor that occurs in response stress. - Made up of alarm reaction (shock and counter shock), resistance and exhaustion

Selye's General Adaption Syndrone (GAS)

- The immediate reaction that occurs when a person initially encounters and is made aware of a stressor - Mobiliies the body to confront a stressor with cortisol - Made up of shock and counter shock

Alarm Reaction

- Body's biological reactions fall below normal function - Body acts as though it is injured, experiecing a temporary drop in temperature and blood pressure - Ability to deal with stress is reduced momentarily

Shock

- The sympathetic nervous system response occurs - The release of stress hormones including adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol by the HPA - axis - Reactions in this stage are similar to those in fight-flight-freeze - Cortisol levels rise to mobilise the body to the stressor

Counter Shock

- Occurs after alarm reaction is stressor isn't dealt with - It functions as an adaptive stage in response to a persistent stressor, sustaining high levels of physiological arousal as the body adjusts to increased hormone levels - Body experiences a rise in its resistance to the stressor - High levels of stress hormones like cortisol cause immunosuppression, more likely to get sick - Often, individuals focus most of their energy on the stressor at hand - Resistance to other stress can decrease - Cortisol levels are sustained at heightened levels to maintain an increased ability to respond to the stressor

Resistance

- Person's resistance to a stressor falls below normal levels of function as the body becomes depleted and unable to maintain heightened arousal. - Person experiences fatigue, sickness and increases susceptiblity to mental health disorders and serious physical illnesses - Cortisol leves are depleted

Exhaustion

- Stress is a subjective 'transactional' between an incoming stressor and the personal and environmental factors to an individual. - The unique stress response of an individual results from their interpretation of the stressor and their belief in their ability to cope with it. - Stress arises when there is perceived imbalance between what a stressor requires and coping resources believed to be available to deal with it

Lazarus and Folman's Transactional Model of Stress and Coping

- In this stage, an individual determines the nature of the incoming stimulus and the type of stress it might - Stress can be appraised as benign - positive, irrelevant or stressful

Primary Appraisal

- Benign - positive means that the individual perceives the stimulus as neutral or positive, and such that it will not cause stress - Irrelevant - the stimulus is perceived as not presenting an issue or source of worry for the individual in any way. The stimulus then will not cause stress. - Stressful - the stimulus will worry or force the individual to respond in some way, and such is interpreted as being a stressor

First Interpretation of Stress in the Lazarus and Folkman's Model

-Harm/loss - the stressor is perceived as having already caused some damage for the individual. This means the individual has experienced distress - Threat - the stressor is perceived as potentially causing damage for the individual in the future. This appraisal causes the individual to experience distress - Challenge - the stressor is perceived as potentially providing a good opportunity for change or growth, though it will be taxing in some way. Causes individual to feel eustress.

Second interpretation of Stress in Lazarus and Folkman model

- A further assessment is made about the coping mechanisms required to actualy deal with it - The individual decides what type of coping mechanism or strategies will be needed to confront the stressor and whether or not these are avaiable to them - Further stress is created when the individual believs that their coping resources cannot meet the demands of the stressor

Secondary Appraisal

-use of copng strategies that target the emotional components of a stressor -dealing with the stressor indirectly rather than confronting its source

Emotion-Foccussed Coping

- use of coping strategies that directly target the source of the stressor - aiming to reduce it in a practical way

Problem-Focussed Coping

- refers to the process of dealing with stress using biological, cognitive and behavioural strategies - refers to when the coping strategy or mechanism used is appropriate for the demands of the stressor - Is an individual's ability to adjust their coping strategies depending on the unique and changing demand of a stressor

Coping with Stress/Context-Specific Effectiveness/Coping Flexibility

- Approach strategies are coping strategies which confront the source of the stressor. - Generally deal with stress in a practical way - Avoidance strategies are coping strategies that evade the stressor - Trying to reduce stress by indirectly dealing with it

Approach/Avoidance Strategies

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