Quiz 4

• Eustress:

  • reactions to good stress
• Distress

  • reactions to bad stress
• Yerkes-dodson law

  • law plots performance against stress level
  • argues there is an optimal level of stress
  • upside down u shaped curve
  • has now been challenged due to lack of evidence
• Maximal adaptability model:

  • acknowledges that humans are highly adaptive, and can cope with different degrees of stress
  • we can continue to perform at high levels even overloaded with stress
• Stressors: external circumstances or simulii that challenges a balanced state

  • stressors can range from mild to severe
• Traumatic stressors:

  • threat to the survival or physical integrity of oneself or a loved one
• Stress response:

  • internal integrated psychological and biological stressors that work to restore a balanced state
  • psychological components: thoughts, emotions
  • biological components: blood pressure, increased HR
• Neurobiological response to stressors:

  • brain responsible for the detection of a threat and coordinating the response
  • amygdala is the early warning system, it can respond before we are consciously aware of an event
  • hippocampus compares current event to past events for a threat assesment
  • prefrontal cortex involved in long term planning, helps provide context to the perceived threat
• Primary appraisals

  • based on our perceptions of the characteristics of the stressor and how much it will demand of us and its prevalence to us
  • ex. tornado in Oklahoma does not effect ottawa
• Secondary appraisal:

  • considers the resources that are available to us to manage the stressor , including internal and external resources
  • internal- personality
  • external- social support
• Challenge:

  • situations in which resources exceed the demands of the threat
• threat

  • demands exceed your resources the stressor will be perceived as a threat
• Trier social stress test:

  • a (voluntary) participant must serially subtract a number that presents a challenge
  • usually preformed in front of an audience
• Perceived stress scale:

  • a tool that is used widely, helps researchers understand whether a research participant sees their life as
  • unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloaded
• Diathesis-stress model:

  • Diathesis is a tendency or predisposition to suffer from a disease
  • theory that mental and physical disorders develop from a genetic or biological predisposition for that illness
  • combined with stressful conditions that play a precipitating or facilitating role
  • one might have a predisposition to an illness, but it requires stressful conditions for the illness to manifest.
• Childhood stress

  • People without serious childhood stressors are about half as likely to experience a serious psychiatric disorder as people who suffered chronic and traumatic childhood stress.
• Stress and acute illness:

  • People in the top 25% on the “stress index” got twice as many colds as people in the bottom 25%
  • having a positive emotional style was protective against the common cold
• Stress and asthma:

  • greater exposure to stressors increased the risk of having an asthma attack
• Stress and latent viruses:

  • tested medical students before vs during exam period
  • Antibody analysis indicated that expected periods of high stress were associated with elevated antibody levels, suggesting that stress is associated with heightened activity of latent viruses
• Biological aging:

  • telomeres- caps on the end of chromosomes that protect against DNA damage
  • with time telomeres shorten and chromosomes become unstable and cell death happens
  • chronic inflammation in stress impacts the speed of shortening of telomeres