Chapter 15: Stress Management

• Stressors


  Life events or situations that cause stress
• Stress reactivity


  The body's response to perceived stressful events, including elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, muscle tension, and perspiration
• Strains


  Negative physical and psychological consequences that can occur if the body's stress reactions occur for periods longer than it can tolerate
• Eustress


  Stress that results in feelings of challenge or achievement, where the stress is converted into positive energy and becomes motivating
• Optimal level of arousal (inverted-U theory)


  A moderate level of arousal results in the highest levels of performance, while too little or too much arousal results in poor performance
• Distress


  Bad or negative stress that occurs when there is too much stress and nothing is done to eliminate, reduce, or counteract its effects
• Negative stress occurs when we perceive an imbalance between the demands (stressors) placed on us and our ability to meet those demands
• Predisposition to Stress


  • There appear to be individual differences in the extent to which people are susceptible to stress or are predisposed to tolerate stressors
• Factors that affect individual tolerances to stress

  • Stress Personalities
  • Gender, Ethnicity, and Race
  • Stress Sensitization
• Type A Personalities


  Stress-prone people who are competitive, impatient, and hurried
• Type B Personalities


  Non-stress-prone people who are relaxed and agreeable
• Neuroticism


  Anxious, often depressed, pessimistic, and lack hopefulness - more likely to perceive events as stressful and have negative reactions
• Women may experience certain stressors more often than men, and men and women may react differently to certain types of stressors
• Minority groups have higher levels of stress than non-minorities, but this difference becomes nonsignificant after controlling for demographic variables
• Stress Sensitization


  The amount of stress experienced throughout life affects how future stress is handled
• What is stressful for one person may not be for another, and whether something is a stressor depends on its importance and the amount of perceived controllability
• Personal Stressors


  • Family and intimate relationships
  • Marriage
  • Divorce
  • Health issues
  • Financial problems
  • Raising children
• Fear


  The challenge and potential excitement from change can produce eustress, but fear of the unknown produces negative stress
• Resistance


  Holding on to old traditions that are no longer feasible, which doesn't allow coping with inevitable changes
• Resentment


  Changes that are forced on us, particularly those we feel we had no control over or input into
• Occupational Stressors


  • Job Characteristics
  • Person-Organization Fit
  • Change
  • Relations with Others
  • Organizational Politics
• Role conflict


  When work expectations and what we think we should be doing don't match the actual work we have to do
• Role ambiguity


  When an individual's job duties and performance expectations are not clearly defined
• Role overload


  When individuals either feel they lack the skills or workplace resources to complete a task, or perceive the task cannot be done in the required time
• Employees perceiving role overload, role ambiguity, or role conflict are less likely to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors
• Person-Organization Fit


  The extent to which an employee's personality, values, attitudes, philosophy, and skills match those of the organization
• Incompatibility in philosophies and values between the employee and organization can cause stress, lower job satisfaction, and increase turnover
• Organizational Politics


  Self-serving behaviors employees use to increase the probability of obtaining positive outcomes, which can be positive (helping the organization and individual) or negative (manipulative behaviors for personal gain)
• Stressors in the Physical Work Environment

  • Noise
  • Temperature
• Noise


  Lower frequencies do not affect employee performance as much as higher frequencies, and constant noise has less effect than changing noise levels. Noise affects tasks involving cognitive skills or communication more than perception tasks, and has greater effects on employee health and morale than performance
• Radiation


  One way the body maintains normal temperature, through the emission of heat waves
• Evaporation


  One way the body maintains normal temperature, through perspiration reducing excess heat
• Effective temperature


  The combination of air temperature, humidity, airflow, and heat radiation that determines how hot or cold the environment feels
• Extremely high or low temperatures can affect performance on cognitive, physical, and perceptual tasks
• Humidity


  The warmer the air temperature feels, and thus the higher the effective temperature
• Airflow


  Important for feeling relief from a breeze coming off a lake or the ocean
• Effective temperature


  Affected by the heat that radiates from other objects in the environment
• Air temperature and humidity


  Interact with the body's ability to cool down through radiation and evaporation
• When air temperature is higher than body temperature


  We are unable to radiate heat
• When humidity is high

  It is more difficult to lose body heat through evaporation