20/02/2021

UNDERSTANDING
PEOPLE AND
BEHAVIOUR
LECTURE 3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

The University of Canberra acknowledges

the Ngunnawal peoples as the traditional
custodians of the land upon which the
University's main campus sits, and pays
respect to all Elders past and present.

Virtual Room & Chat Notifications

• The chat will remain open mainly for
interstudent communication.
• If you want, disable chat sounds (see image to
right)
• Unless two conveners are present, the
convenor will not respond to the chat.
• How to ask questions to the convenor?
• Raise your hand (the button).
Disable chat
• Write you question down, but do not post it sounds
yet.
• Wait to be asked for your question.
Raise hand
• Post your question to convenor in personal
chat.

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LECTURE OVERVIEW
1. Stress overview & job strain
2. The stress response and consequences of stress
3. Taking a positive approach to stress

1.STRESS OVERVIEW & JOB STRAIN

STRESSED?
• Survey of 1446 adults in the Canberra and Queanbeyan region
• 1284 (89%) reported frequent work stress

• The World Health Organization calls stress “the health epidemic of the 21st
century”

• On average 2019 UPB students reported elevated academic stress levels

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WHAT IS STRESS?
• Internal processes that occur as people try to adjust to events and situations (stressors)
• When they exceed the ability to cope -> physical, psychological or behaviour issues
• Process whereby an individual perceives and responds to events that they appraise as
overwhelming or threatening to their well-being

• Acute stressors: Relatively short with an obvious end

• Chronic stressors: Relatively long with no explicit end
• Catastrophic events: sudden, unexpected, potentially life threatening
• Life changes and strains
• Daily hassles: irritations, pressures and annoyances

STRESS

Stress Stress
Stressors
mediators response
• Cognitive appraisals • Physical
• Life changes and
• Predictability • Emotional
strains
• Control • Cognitive
• Catastrophic events
• Coping resources and • Behavioural
• Acute stressors
methods
• Daily hassles
• Social support
• Chronic stressors

STRESS CASE STUDY

• Academic juggling multiple different roles
• No control over role
• Large demands placed on her
• Long commute
• Trains often delayed
• Daily hassles

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JOB STRAIN
• Excessive job demands
• Little control or discretion in decisions

• Associated with depression and anxiety as well as hypertension, heart disease

• Leading cause of burnout

• general sense of emotional exhaustion and cynicism in relation to one’s job

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JOB BURNOUT
• 3 dimensions of burnout: exhaustion, cynicism and depersonalization, and inefficacy
• Common in human service jobs (e.g., social workers, teachers, therapists, nurses, medical
staff, firefighters and police officers)
• Stress is necessary for explaining this but not sufficient
• Related to motivation and feeling of work is a “calling”
• Can result in
• Violence in police
• Callous behaviours towards patients
• Inappropriate outbursts
• Cutting corners
• Contempt
• Can even result in patient blaming or abuse

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APPRAISALS

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MEDIATORS/MODERATORS
 Social support
 Presence of people you can confide in

• Less susceptible to stress

• Positive appraisals of situation
• Helps maintain physical and psychological health
• Protection against hypertension, cancer and heart disease
• Impacts functioning of immune system
• Number of close relationships is predictive of mortality
• Why?
• Buffering hypothesis: Acts as a buffer against stress
• Urban women (Brown & Harris, 1978)
• Elderly (Kraaij & Garnefski, 2002)

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MEDIATORS/MODERATORS
• Optimism
• Personality trait
• Associated with positive outcomes
• Patients with high optimism (Scheirer et al., 1989)
• University students who engage in self-blame (Peterson, 1988)
• Predictability and control
• Belief important - perception
• Gender
• Males tend to get angry, avoid stressors
• Females tend to help others and make use of social support
• Men’s physiological response generally stronger
• Possible role of estrogen
• Possibly explains higher rate of cardiovascular disease in men

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2. THE STRESS RESPONSE AND CONSEQUENCES

OF STRESS

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STRESS RESPONSE

• Physiological response
• Cannon’s (1932) fight-or-flight response
• Endocrine and sympathetic nervous system
• Stress hormone - Cortisol
• If not a short term danger, individual remains aroused
• Can lead to deteriorating health
• May not be as useful for us with chronic stressors

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RESPONDING TO STRESS
• Syle (1938) examined prolonged stressful events
• General adaptation syndrome
• Alarm:
• Fight-or-flight: Physiological responses
• Resistance:
• Parasympathetic returns heart rate to normal
• Still alert: Blood glucose and adrenaline remains high
• Vulnerable to illness
• Exhaustion:
• Physiological defenses break down
• Vulnerable organs are first affected

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RESPONDING TO STRESS

• Cognitive
• Ability to concentrate
• Ruminative thinking
• Catastrophizing
• Narrowing of attention
• Functional fixedness
• Judgment and decision making

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RESPONDING TO STRESS

• Behavioural responses are important

• Coping: Reduce or tolerate demands of stress
• Problem-focused coping
• Taking steps to identify, and deal with the cause of stress
• More likely when stressor is perceived as controllable
• Emotion-focused coping
• efforts to change or reduce the negative emotions associated with stress
• Often does not address the cause of stress

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RESPONDING TO STRESS
• Adaptive or maladaptive
• Seek support versus ignore the problem
• Striking out: Aggressive behaviour
• Freud suggested that venting is good for health: Catharsis
• Research has not supported this claim
• Indulging: Reduced control of impulses
• Excessive eating, drinking, smoking, drug use
• Compensatory forms of pleasure
• Minimizing
• Distancing
• Positive comparison
• Trying to find the positives

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PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES .
• Implicated with variety of health difficulties
• Common cold
• Ulcers
• Back pain
• Cancer
• Cardiovascular disease
• Modest correlation between measures of stress (including public speaking, medical school
examinations, unemployment, marital discord, divorce, death of spouse, burnout and job strain,
caring for a relative with Alzheimer’s disease etc.) and likelihood of specific illnesses
• But is there a causal relationship?
• Cohen et al. (1993;1998): High and low levels of stress in lives
• Nasal drops that may contain common cold
• High-stress likely to develop cold

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PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES
• Immune response:
• Stress increases susceptibility to illness
• Why?
• Leukocytes attack and destroy foreign bodies
• Stress reduces leukocytes
• Stress hormones contribute to this reduction
• Fewer leukocytes during stressful periods
• Stress may impact cancer
• Can increase growth of cancerous tumors
• Optimistic patients survive longer
• May impact on likelihood of cancer cells forming
• However, findings are not consistent

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PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES
• Cardiovascular system
• 9/11 worry linked to heart problems
• Link between coronary heart disease and chronic stress
• Including job strain, marital conflict and even exposure to high traffic noise at home
• Strong for people who show intense physiological reaction
• Influenced by personality
• E.g. Type A and hostility

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PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES
• Psychological consequences of stress can be as profound as the physiological
consequences
• Anxiety
• Depression

• However, stressful events do not lead to psychological disorders for all people

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3. TAKING A POSITIVE APPROACH TO STRESS

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GENERAL APPRAISAL OF STRESS/GOOD STRESS

• Stress is not always bad
• How we think about stress influences the outcomes
• Harvard study
• Social stress test

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GENERAL APPRAISAL OF STRESS/GOOD STRESS

• How we think about stress influences the outcomes
• Harvard study
• Social stress test

Stressful Physiological Negative Negative

Situation Arousal Arousal Outcomes
Appraisal

Functional/ Improved
Adaptive Outcomes
Arousal
Appraisal

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GENERAL APPRAISAL OF STRESS/GOOD STRESS

• 1998 National Health Interview Survey
• 33.7% of nearly 186 million (n=28,753) U.S. adults perceived that stress affected
their health a lot or to some extent
• “During the past 12 months, how much effect has stress had on your health – a
lot, some, hardly any, or none?”
• Those who reported a lot of stress AND that stress impacted their health a lot
had
• A 43% increased risk of premature death
• Five times increased risk of psychological distress

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STRESS MANAGEMENT
• Reappraisal
• Alter our appraisal of the situation
• You “feel the way you think”
• Catastrophic thinking
• Must learn how to recognise this negative thinking and rectify it
• Examine your coping mechanisms
• Problem focused?
• Adaptive?

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STRESS MANAGEMENT
• Learning to relax
• Can reduce physiological arousal
• Research shows the relaxation effect of meditation
• Herbert Benson developed “relaxation response”
• Quiet environment and Comfortable position: Avoids major distraction
• Mental device: Move attention inwards by repeating a sound, focus on breathing
• Passive attitude: Accept distractions
• Reduces sympathetic arousal

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STRESS MANAGEMENT
• Exercise
• both of long (aerobic) and short (anaerobic) duration
• Play with a pet
• Children aged between 7 and 12 got much less stressed about arithmetic and public
speaking tasks when they have their dog with them (having a parent present did not have
the same effect).

• Biofeedback
• uses electronic equipment to accurately measure a person’s neuromuscular and autonomic
activity

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POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY PERSPECTIVE

• Seeks to identify and promote those

qualities that lead to greater
fulfillment in our lives.
• Looks at people’s strengths and what
helps individuals to lead happy,
contented lives, and moves away
from focusing on people’s pathology,
faults, and problems

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WHO IS HAPPY?

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WHAT MAKES PEOPLE HAPPY?

• Age
• Family and other social relationships
• Enough money to be comfortable
(Approx US$75,000)
• Meaningful and engaging jobs

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HAPPINESS IN THE FACE OF “LIFE”

• We are not good at forecasting
happiness

• Life events have a strong initial effect

• But eventually becomes normal and
baseline happiness returns

• Well being interventions have a

longer effect

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POSITIVE AFFECT/ OPTIMISM

• Positive Affect
• Pleasurable engagement with the environment, such as happiness, joy, enthusiasm,
alertness, and excitement (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988)
• Optimism
• tendency to look on the “bright side of things”
• tendency to view life’s stressors and difficulties as temporary and external to oneself

• Associated with greater social connectedness, emotional and practical support,

adaptive coping efforts, and lower depression; it is also associated with longevity and
favorable physiological functioning

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FLOW
• Experience that is so engaging and engrossing that it becomes worth doing for
its own sake

• Absorption, work enjoyment, and intrinsic work motivation

• Stressor recovery time
• Invest time and energy in a moderately demanding task
• Appropriate skills for the task
• Lack of job strain
• Physical, psychological, social, or organizational support

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