Daily hassles

• Daily hassles

  -are relatively minor events that arise in the course of a normal day.

  -Daily hassles are proximal sources of stress because their effects are direct and immediate.
• Examples of daily hassles

  -stuck in traffic

  -Woke up late

  -Lost keys/phone

  -Too much to do in little time

  -Late for school
• Examples of daily uplifts

  -Someone complementing you

  -Doing well in a test

  -Getting good news

  -Having favourite lunch
• The hassles and uplifts scale - Kanner et al

  -Consists of 53 questions that ask individuals positive and negative experiences that happen in everyday life.

  -Self report measure assesses how may hassles a person experiences and how sever the hassle is.

  -Each item is scored twice, once for hassle and one for uplifts, scale of 0-3.

  -Results are correlated with measures of psychological wellbeing, measure the relationship between hassles and uplifts.
• Daily uplifts

  -daily enjoyable things that give us small boost of happiness and offsets the stress.
• Key study - Kanner at al

  -Aim: to investigate whether daily hassles are better predictors of psychological ill health than life changes.

  -Procedure: 100 PP aged 45-64 years completed the the hassles scale for 9 months. PP also completed a scale to measure life changes and Hopkins symptoms checklist which measures psychological symptoms of anxiety and depression.

  -Findings: found a significant positive correlation between hassles frequency and psychological symptoms at start and end of study. The more hassles a person experiences the more severe psychological symptoms were.