Stress and Memory Studies

Stress: physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging ● Physical: unusual fatigue, sleeping problems, frequent colds, chest pain, nausea. Or pacing, eating too much crying a lot, smoking and drinking more, or hitting people ● Emotionally: depression, fear, irritation, anger, frustration ● Mental: concentration, memory, decision-making, loss of humor Stressors: events that cause a stress reaction from within a person or from an external source that can range in seriousness to even imagining the worst Distress: effect of unpleasant and undesirable stressors and those that cause Eustress: effect of positive events, or the optimal amount of stress that people need to promote health and well-being ● Eustress Ex. Marriage, job promotion, baby. But these require large habit changes in lives which creates stress ● motivates an individual to take constructive action ● Coincides with Arousal Theory: having little stress is helpful (motivates to study) ○ Studying for final exam ahead of time as it is stressful Stress and Memory Studies: small amounts of stress may improve memory. Difference in degree of anxiety and how person interprets the situation (exam) What is eustress may me distress for another Catastrophe: an unpredictable, large-scale event that creates a tremendous need to adapt and adjust and overwhelming feelings of threat ● 9/11: 8% people living in area near attacks developed a severe stress disorder ○ 10% reported symtpons of depression 2 months after the attack ● 14% increase in stress disorders and persistence of previously diagnosed stress disorders ● 2011 Japan Earthquake: hospital and firefighters 14 months after ad more stress ○ Related to lack of rest and communication Social Readjustment Rating Scale SRRS (Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe): assessment that measures the amount of stress from major life events over a 1-year period in a person's life ● Both negative and positive events require life adjustment/change -> current stress ● Used 400 people sample to measure the scale of stress in a person's life by adding up the total major events in "life change units" ○ Ranges can indicate increased risk of illness or accidents (above 300) ● Miller and Rahe revised: reflect changes in the ratings in the events during 30 years ○ Overall stress on the list increased by 45% due to genders, economics, social norms College Undergraduate Stress Scale (CUSS): Renner and Mackin: assessment that measures the amount of stress in a college student's life over a 1-year period resulting from major life events ● Includes more common events that could happen in a student's life ● Both the SRRS and CUSS are stressful from emotionally intense and most hassles as many events causes stress Life event scale issues: outdated, doesn’t account for personal appraisal aspect of stress Hassles: the daily annoyances of everyday life ● number and perceived severity of daily hassles are strong predictors of headaches ● Lazarus and Folkman: hassles scale that affect immediate health and well-being (not long-term) and short-term illnesses ● Fernandez and Sheffield: 261 people who experienced headaches scaled it based on number and seversity of daily hassles which predicted the headaches ● Ellis: hassles come from different sources depending on person's developmental stage ○ 270 people from 3-75 checked off a list of hassles they have and their impact ■ 6-10: bad grades ■ 11-15: pressured for drug use ■ 16-22: trouble at school/work ■ Adults: fighting ■ Elderly: lack of money, shopping as less able to get around and socialize Factors that Influence Stress (Stressors): Pressure: psychological experience by urgent demands or expectations for a person's behavior that come from an outside source ● Time Pressure: most common, negative impact on creativity ○ Tereasa Amabile: time pressure in workers decrease a lot in creativity even if thought they were productive in the effort Uncontrollability: degree of control over particular event or situation (less control = more stress and stress disorder symtpoms) ● Robin and Langer: nursing home, residents more control over their lives were more social and active ● Voluntarily chose part-time employment have less stress and anger than full time Zucchi: Unpredictability increases stress levels as it isn't controllable ● Weiss study: rats were given a shock with or without warning. Unpredictable and uncontrollable shock developed severe stomach ulcers Frustration: psychological experience produced by the blocking of a desired goal or fulfillment of a perceived need ● External: car break down, declined job offer, theft of belongings, failure, rejections, delays ○ Increases depending on if minor or serious the goal is (traffic to shop vs last minute mall) ● Internal/personal: goal or need can't be attained due to internal or personal characteristics ○ Ex. Want to be astronaut but have motion sickness or basketball player but short ● When frustrated, use typical responses ● Persistance: continuted efforts to get around what is causing the frustration. May involve making more intense efforts or changing response style ○ Ex. Vending machine coin doesn't work so either push button again or many buttons to get a response to then hit or kick as a sign of aggression Aggression: actions intended to harm physically or psychologically ● Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis (Berkowitz): some form of frustration nearly always preceds aggression, but frustration doesn't always lead to aggression ○ Frustration creates an internal *readiness to aggress* but that aggression will not follow unless certain external cues are also present ■ Ex. If the frustration source is much larger and bigger, then aggression is the unlikely outcome Displaced Aggression: taking out one's frustration on some less threatening or more available target ● Gillham study: male unemployment and single parenthood were 2 factors of child abuse. Abusive unemployed men highly correlated with murder of abused woman that act as scapegoats with less power Escape or Withdrawl: leaving the presence of a stressor, either literally or by a psychological withdrawl into fantasy, drug, abuse, or apathy.... Or sucidie