The book «Introduction to Psychology». Authors — R.L. Atkinson, R.S. Atkinson, E.E. Smith, D.J. Boehm, S. Nolen-Hoeksema. Under the general editorship of V.P. Zinchenko. 15th international edition, St. Petersburg, Prime Eurosign, 2007.
Article from chapter 14. Stress, coping and health
Uncontrollable and unpredictable events, as well as events that challenge a person’s self-image, are experienced as stressful. Some people are more likely than others to view certain events in this way and experience them accordingly as stressful. There are three main theories that explain why some people tend to view events as stressful: psychoanalytic, behavioral, and cognitive.
Psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalysts distinguish between objective anxiety, which is a reasonable response to a threatening situation, and neurotic anxiety, which is not adequate to real danger. Freud believed that neurotic anxiety stems from unconscious conflicts that arise in the individual when unacceptable impulses coming from the «it» (mostly sexual and aggressive) collide with the restrictions put forward by the ego and superego (see chapter 13). Many impulses emanating from the «it» pose a threat to the individual, because they are contrary to personal and social values. A woman may not consciously feel her strong hostility to her mother, because these feelings are contrary to her belief that the child should love his parents. If she were to admit her true feelings, she would destroy her «I» as a loving daughter and risk losing her mother’s love and support. When she becomes angry with her mother, her increased anxiety signals potential danger. Therefore, this woman may experience as a strong stressor even small disagreements with her mother about, for example, the place of the vacation or what to cook for dinner. A woman who is not in such serious conflict with her feelings about her mother will not experience this as a major stressor.
According to psychoanalytic theory, we all have some form of unconscious conflict. However, for some people, these conflicts are more severe and more numerous, and for such people, more events are stressful.
behavioral theory
While Freud saw the source of stress responses in unconscious conflicts, behaviorists focused on how individuals learn to associate stress responses with a given situation. People may react to certain situations with fear and anxiety also because those situations have hurt or stressed them in the past. Some phobias develop through this classical conditioning (see Chapter 7). For example, a person whose car has slid off the road towards a steep cliff may experience anxiety every time they are in a high place. Or a student who fails his final exam in a particular classroom may feel anxiety for the next year when he enters the same classroom again as a senior.
Sometimes the feeling of fear is hard to muffle. If your first reaction to an anxiety-provoking situation was to avoid or walk away from it, then you will not be able to determine when this situation is no longer dangerous. A little girl who has been punished for being assertive in the past may never learn that expressing her desires is acceptable in new situations because she no longer tries to. Thus, people may continue to be afraid of certain situations because they constantly avoid those situations and therefore never put them to the test.
cognitive theory
Abramson et al.’s (1978) variant of learned helplessness theory is based on a single personality style that has to do with attribution processes, that is, the explanations people give for important events. These researchers argued that when people attribute negative events to their own internal causes (“it’s my fault”), or causes that are stable over time (“it seems like it will be forever”), or causes that affect many areas of their lives (“it will affect everything I do”), they are likely to have a reaction of helplessness, depression in response to negative events. For example, if a man who has left his wife attributes the breakup of a marriage to his «bad» personality (internal, enduring, and global attribution), he will lose self-respect and expect future relationships to fall apart as well. As a result, he will show low motivation, passivity and sadness. On the contrary, if his attribution is less pessimistic, for example, he will attribute the collapse of his marriage to simple incompatibility with his wife, then he will retain self-esteem and motivation for the future (for a similar logic, see: Weiner, 1972).
Abramson and her colleagues believe that people have strong attribution styles for events in their lives, which they call attribution styles, and that these styles determine how stressful people perceive events and how helplessly and depressingly they respond to difficulties. Several studies support this theory (Peterson & Seligman, 1984). One study assessed students’ attributive styles a few weeks before they took mid-course exams. Just before the exam, the students were asked which mark they would consider a failure, and which would make them happy. Then, after the students received their test scores, they were measured for their distress and depression levels. Among students who scored below their standards, those with a pessimistic attribution style were significantly more depressed than those with an optimistic attribution style (Metalsky, Halberstadt, & Abramson, 1987).
A pessimistic attribution style is also associated with physical morbidity (Peterson, Seligman & Vaillant, 1988; Peterson & Seligman, 1987). Students with a pessimistic attribution style are more likely to report a disease and visit the clinic more often than students with an optimistic attribution style. A 35-year study of male Harvard students found that men who had a pessimistic attribution style at age 25 were more likely to experience physical illness in later years than men with an optimistic attribution style.
How does attributive style affect health? We don’t know for sure yet. It can be assumed that people with a pessimistic attribution style tend to feel that they have little control over their lives, and as noted earlier, feeling out of control is associated with a decrease in immune system function. A study by Taylor and colleagues (Taylor et al., 1992) shows that pessimistic attitudes can damage health by encouraging people to engage in unhealthy behavior. He studied gay men, some of whom had the virus that causes AIDS (i.e., they were HIV positive) and some of whom were not (i.e., they were HIV negative). It turned out that among both those and others, men with more pessimistic and fatal views were less likely to adhere to a healthy lifestyle, that is, adherence to the correct diet, sleep schedule and exercise. This is especially important for HIV-positive men, as healthy behaviors can reduce the risk of AIDS. Thus, a pessimistic outlook can affect health directly by lowering the activity of the immune system, or indirectly by reducing a person’s propensity to engage in health-promoting behaviors.
Endurance. Another line of research has focused on people with the greatest resilience to stress, who do not develop physical or emotional disturbances even in the face of severe stressful events (Kobasa, Maddi & Kahn, 1982; Kobasa, 1979). In one study, more than 600 men who worked as executives or managers in the same company were given forms and asked to describe all the stressful events and illnesses they had experienced over the past 3 years. For comparison, two groups were selected: in the first, the indicators of stressful events and diseases were above average; in the second, stress and disease scores were equal but below average. Members of both groups then completed detailed personality questionnaires. An analysis of these results showed that men with high stress resistance and low morbidity differed from those who fell ill under the influence of stress in three main ways:
a) they were more actively involved in their work and public life;
b) they were more ready for changes and new challenges;
c) they felt more in control of the events of their lives (Kobasa, 1979).
It is doubtful that these personality differences are the result and not the cause of morbidity. For example, people are unlikely to participate in work or social life when they are sick. Therefore, a long-term study was conducted that looked at the personality characteristics of responsible executives in business before they fell ill, and then traced their level of stress in life and incidence over a two-year period. The results showed that executives who have a high attitude towards life can be assessed as (they were sympathetic, felt in control of the situation and responded positively to changes), maintained their health better over time than men with low scores on these parameters (Kobasa, Maddi & Kahn, 1982). Most important is a sense of control and commitment to personal goals (Cohen & Edwards, 1989). Although this study was conducted only with men, similar results were found in a study of women (Wiebe & McCallum, 1986).
As a result, the personal characteristics of stress-resistant or resilient people include commitment to personal goals, control over the situation, and the ability to withstand a challenge. These characteristics are related to the factors that we have discussed influence the perceived severity of stressors. For example, a sense of control over the events of one’s life reflects a sense of competence and also influences the assessment of the stressfulness of events. Accepting a challenge from a new task is also associated with cognitive appraisal, the belief that change is a normal part of life and should be seen as an opportunity for growth, not as a threat to security.
Type «A» behavior
A type of behavior, or personality style, called the Type A pattern has received much attention. For years, doctors have observed that victims of heart attacks are often hostile, aggressive, impatient people, too absorbed in their work. In the 50s, two cardiologists compiled a list of the Type A behaviors that characterize patients with coronary artery disease (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974). Type A people are too competitive and successful; they feel short of time, find it difficult to relax, and become impatient and angry when meeting time delays or people they consider incompetent. See →