Psych 102: Ch. 12 – Flashcards
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Emotion
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- Response of the whole organism involving: 1. Physiological arousal, 2. Expressive behaviours 3. Conscious experience
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Arousal comes before emotion: James Lange Theory
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- James-Lange Theory - We cry because we are sad, we lash out because of anger and tremble when afraid First comes awareness then feeling (William James had things backwards: we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike and afraid because we tremble) --> Theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousig stimuli Ex: noticed racing heart and then shaking with friend, felt the whoosh of emotion (feeling of fear followed body's response)
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Arousal and emotion occur simultaneously: Cannon Bard Theory
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- Physiologist: Walter Cannon - Disagreed with James and Lange - He and Philip Bard concluded that bodily responses and experienced emotions occur separately but simultaneously --> Theory than an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physical responses and the subjective experience of emotion Ex: heart began pounding as I experience fear - Emotion triggering stimulus travelled to my sympathetic nerves system causing body's arousal AND travelled to brain's cortex causing awareness of emotion -- Then people who suffer spinal cord injuries should not not a difference int heir experience of emotion after the injury STUDY: - Those with lower-spine injuries who had lost sensation in their legs reported little change in their emotions intensity - High spine injuries who couldn't feel anything below the neck reported changes. Some reactions more intense than before like anger and sadness
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Practice: According to the Cannon-Bard theory: our physiological response to a stimulus (for example a pounding heart) and the emotion we experience like fear occur ____. According to the James- Lange theory, the two occur ___.
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1. Simultaneously 2. Sequentially (first the physiological response and then the experienced emotion)
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Two-factor theory
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- Schachter and Singer - Emotional experience requires a conscious interpretation of arousal - Physical reactions and thoughts (perceptions, memories and interpretations) create emotion --> To experience emotion, one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal 1. Physical arousal 2. Cognitive appraisal "Spillover effect" - Injected men with epinephrine which triggers arousal - After injection, go to waiting room where you find another person (accomplice of the experimenters) who is acting either euphoric or irritated - You observe the person and your heart starts to race, body flush and breathing more rapid (If you were told that you would feel this way after the injection, what would you feel?) - Actual volunteers felt little emotion because they attributed their arousal to the drug - If you had been told the injection would produce no effects.. then what? --> These subjects "caught" the apparent emotion of the other person in the waiting room and became happy if the accomplice was acting euphoric and testy if they were irritated --> Arousal fuels emotion and cognition channels it
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Practice: According to Schachter and Singer, 2 factors lead to our experience of an emotion. 1. Physical arousal 2. ____
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Cognitive appraisal
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Does cognition always come before emotion?
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- Do we always interpret or arousal before experiencing emotion? Robert Zajonc - We have many emotional reaction apart from or even before our interpretation of a situation - Some of our emotional reactions involve no deliberate thinking - Ex: you like something or someone immediately without knowing why Ex: when people see a stimulus flashed too briefly for them to interpret, they come to prefer those stimuli (unaware that they've seen them, they like them anyways) --> We have a very sensitive radar for emotions even flashed quickly - Study: people given a fruit flavoured drink after viewing a subliminally flashed (unperceived) face -Those exposed tot eh happy face drank about 50% more than those expose to the neutral face and angry drank less
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Emotions can follow two different pathways
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1. "High road for hatred and love"- stimulus --> thalamus --> sensory cortex --> prefrontal cortex --> amygdala (emotion control centre) 2. "Simple likes, dislikes and fears" Stimulus --> thalamus --> amygdala - "Low road" according to Joseph LeDoux - Bypasses the cortex - Enables fast emotional response before intellect intervenes - Amygdala sends more neural projections up tot he cortex than it receives back which makes it easier for our feelings to hijack our thinking than for our thinking to rule our feeling Ex: jump into a pile of leaves, leaving it to our cortex to decide later whether the sound was made by a snake or by the wind. We decide without deliberate thinking
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Richard Lazarus
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- Our brain processes vast amount of info without our conscious awareness - Some emotional responses do not require conscious thinking - Lots of our emotional life operates via the automatic, fast "low road" (thalamus --> amygdala) - How would we know what we are reacting to if we did not in some way appraise the situation? - Appraisals can be effortless and may not be aware of it, but its still a mental function - To know if a stimulus if good or bad, brain must have some idea of what it is --> Emotions arise when when appraise an event as harmless or dangerous, whether we truly know it is or not Ex: we appraise the sound of the rustling leaves as the presence of a threat, later realize it was "just the wind"
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Zajonc, LeDoux, Lazarus
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- Zajonc, LeDoux = some emotional responses (especially simple ones like likes, dislikes and fears) involve no conscious thinking Ex: we may fear a big spider, even if we know it is harmless (This response is hard to change by thinking) Ex: we may automatically like one person more than another - Lazarus = feelings about politics are subject to our memories, expectations and interpretations (Schachter and Singer agree = 2 factor theory of physical arousal + cognitive appraisal) SO: emph that our appraisal d labeling of events also determines our emotional response - Highly emotion people are intense partly because of their interpretation - They may personalize events as being somehow directed at them and may generalize their experiences by blowing single experiences out of proportions
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Practice: Emotion researchers have disagreed about whether emotional responses occur in the absence of cognitive processing. How would you characterize the approach of each of the following researchers: Zajonc, LeDoux, Lazarus, Schacter and Singer?
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Zajonc and LeDoux = we experience some emotions without conscious cognitive appraisal Lazarus, Schachter and Singer = importance of appraisal and cognitive labeling in our experience of emotion
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In crisis mode..
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- Sympathetic division of your ANS mobilizes body for action Adrenal glands release stress hormones: - Epi (adrenaline) - Norepi (noradrenaline) Liver pours extra sugar into bloodstream for energy Respiration inc to urn the sugar HR and BP increase Digestion slows, blood from internal organs goes to the muscles instead (running becomes easier) Pupils dilate letting in more light Perspire to cool down If wounded your blood would clot more quickly
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Yerkes-Dodson law
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- Arousal effet performance in different ways depending on the task - Moderate arousal leading to optimal performance - Taking an exam, a bit of arousal but not too much or you'll be over nervous - Too little arousal will make you sleepy and prolonged can tax the body
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Parasympathetic response
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- Pupils contract - Salivation increases - Skin dries - Heart slows - Digestion increase - Adrenal glads dec secretion - Immune system function increases
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Detecting physiological differences between fear, anger and sexual arousal is hard
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- Dif emotions share common biological signatures - Single brain region can serve as the seat of different emotions Insula: neural centre deep in the brain - Activated when experience various negative social emotions like lust, pride and disgust - Becomes active in brain scans when someone eats something gross - Yet the emotions feel different to us - Fear and joy prompt similar inc HR, but stimulate different facial muscles (fear: eyebrow muscles tense, joy: cheeks and under the eye pul into a smile) - Some emotions differ in brain circuits - Brain scans and EEG recordings who' that emotions also activate different areas of the brain's cortex - When experiencing negative emotions like disgust, your right prefrontal cortex tends to e more active than the left - Depressed people generally have more neg personalities and show more right fontal lobe activity VS positive people with more activity on the left frontal lobe --> We can't easily see differences in emotions from tracking heart rate, breathing and perspiration - Facial expressions and brain activity can vary with the emotion
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Practice: How do the two division of the ANS affect our emotional responses?
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- Sympathetic ANS arouses for more intense experiences of emotion- pumping stress hormones epidemic and norepinephrine to prepare our body for flight or flight - Parasympathetic divison of the ANS takes over when a crisis passes, restoring our body to calm physiological and emotion state
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Polygraph
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- Measure emotion-linked changes in breathing, cardiovascular activity and perspiration 2 problems: 1. Physiological arousal is much the same from one emotion to another - Anxiety, irritation and guilt all prompt similar physiological reactivity 2. Man innocent people respond with heightened tension to the accusations implied by the critical questions --> Many rape victims have "failed" these tests when reacting emotionally but truthfully
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Guilty knowledge test
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- More effective lie detection approach - Assess a person's physiological responses to crime scene details known only to the police and the guilty person - fMRI scans have shown that brain areas like left frontal lobe and anterior cingulate cortex become activity when the brain inhibits truth telling
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Communicating non verbally
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-Experience can sensitive us to particular emotions Ex: children who have been abused are mcc quicker than other to spot the signals of anger - Shown a face 50% fear and 50% anger, are more likely to perceive anger than fear - Perceptions become sensitively attuned to glimmers of danger that nonabused children miss - Hard to control facial muscles may reveal emotions you may be trying to conceal - Lifting inner part of eyebrows reveals distress or worry - Eyebrows raise and pulled together = fear - Genuine happy smiles tend to be briefer and to fade less abruptly - Brain is great a detecting subtle expressions - First impressions occur really quickly - We're not very good at detecting deceiving looks Study: -Hundreds were asked to name the emotion displayed in brief film clips which was sometimes accompanied by a garbled voice - Introverts tend to give better emotional readings while extroverts are generally easier to read - Gestures, expressions and tone of voice absent in written communication convey important info STUDY: participants heart 30 s recording of people desiring their marital separations - Another group read the dialogue instead of hearing it - Those who heard it were better able to predict current and future adjustment of the people
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Gender differences in ability to communicate nonverbally
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Study: - Judith Hall - Women generally surpass men at reading people's emotional cues when given thin slices of behaviour - Female advantage emerges in early development: female infants, children and adolescents outperformed males - Women's nonverbal sensitively helps explain their better emotional literacy - Better at describing emotions too - Skill at decoding others' emotions may also contribute to their greater emotional responsiveness - We tend to attribute certain emotions to particular genders - Women are more likely than men to describe themselves as empathic --> To have empty: you identify with others and imagine what it must be like to walk in their shoes - Females are more likely to express empathy and tend to experience emotional events, like viewing pictures of mutilation, more deeply and with more brain activation in areas sensitive to emotion
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Practice: ___ report experiencing emotions more deeply and they tend to be more adept at reading nonverbal behaviour
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Women
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Culture and facial expressions
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Do some facial expressions have different meanings in different cultures? - smiles are consistent - sad face is the same - Facial expressions convey some nonvertbal accents that provide clues to one's culture - Enhanced accuracy when judging emotionsf rom their own culture - Facial muscles speak a universal language --> Darwin argued that in prehistoric times before our ancestors communicated in words, they communicated threats, greeting and submission with facial expression - Emotional expressions may enhance rival in other ways too - People judge angry face set in frightening situation as afraid --> Move directors harness the phenomenon by creating contexts and soundtracks that amplify our perceptions of particular emotions - Cultural differences exist within nations
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Practice: Are people in different cultures more likely to differ in interpretations of facia expressions or of gestures?
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- Gestures
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Effects of facial expressions
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- William James said to feel cheerful, sit up cheerfully, look cheerfully and act as if you were already cheerful - Expressions not only communicate emotion but amplify and regulate it (Verified also by Darwin)
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James Laird Study
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- Induced students to making a frowning expression by asking them to contract these muscles and pull your brows together (supposedly to help researchers attach facial electrodes) - Students reported feeling ab it angry and adopted other base emotions - Feeling more fear than anger, disgust or sadness when made to construct a fearful expression = Facial feedback effect
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Facial feedback effect
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- Tendency fo facial muscle state to trigger corresponding filings such as fear, anger , happiness --> Face is more than a billboard that displays feelings - It also feeds your feelings - People feel less depressed after Botox injections because it paralyzes the frowning muscles of the face = Botox smooths life's emotional wrinkles
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Behaviour feedback effect
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- Tendency of behaviour to influence our own and other's thoughts, feelings and actions "Going through the motions awakens the emotions" Ex: reading while pointing at the words with a finger. The finger impacted how you felt about the story - Pointing with middle finger lead to feeling that the story was more hostile - Thumb up meant more positive
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How many distinct emotions are there?
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- Carroll Izard isolate 10 basic emotions: joy interest-excitement, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame and guilt - Most present in infancy - Izard argued that other emotions are combos of these 10 Ex: love is mix of joy and interest-excitement - Ingredients of emotion = physiology + expressed behaviour + conscious experience - People place emotional experience along the 2D illusion = positive vs negative valence and low vs high arousal Ex: terrified is more frightened (unpleasant and aroused) than afraid, enraged is angrier than angry, delighted is happier than happy p 476
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Anger
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- Sometime in response to someone's perceived misdeeds, when the person's act seems willful, unjustified and avoidable - Small hassles and annoyances, foul odours, high temp, traffic, aches and pains - Chronic hostility is linked to heart disease - Anger boosts HR causing skin to drip sweat, raise testosterone levels - Triggers blood flow to brain's alarm system causing us to reflect on why we are angry How do we get rid of anger? - Boys more than girls reported walking away from the situation or working it off with exercise; girls more talking with friends and listening to music or writing. - Deal with internalized feelings - Individualist cultures encourage people to vent their rage - Advice is heard in cultures where people's identity is centred more on the group - People keenly sense their interdependence see anger as a threat to group harmony - Expressing anger an be temporarily calming if it doesn't leave us feeling guilty or anxious
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Catharsis
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- Emotional release - Catharsis hypothesis maintains that "releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges Study: - When people retaliate against provoker, they may actually calm down - This is only true if they direct their counterattack to the provoker, retaliation seems justifiable and their target is not intimidating - Usually fails to cleans our rage - Expressing anger breeds more anger - It make provoke more retaliation causing minor conflict to escalate into major confrontation Behaviour feedback research demonstrates: - Acting angry can make us feel angrier SO: venting to reduce anger is like using gas to put out a fire concluded a researcher
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Best way to manage anger
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1. Wait: reduce level of physiological arousal from anger by waiting 2. Find a healthy distraction or support: calm yourself by exercising, paling an instrument or taking things through with a friend. Ruminating inward about why you are angry only increases amygdala blood flow 3. Distance yourself: move away from the situation mentally. Allows dec in ruination, anger and aggression
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Anger..
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- Isn't always wrong - Can communicate strength and competence - Motivates people to take action and achieve goals - Controlled anger is better than pent up anger that will explode James Averill: - Asked people to recall or keep careful record of their experiences with anger, they often recalled reacting assertively rather than hurtfully - Anger that lead to reconciliation rather than retaliation can benefit a relationship - Research commends the age- old response of forgiveness - Without letting the person know they're of the hook or inning them to foruterh harm, it releases anger and calms the boyd Study: - German student had brain scanned and asked if they did or didn't forgive the wrongdoer - Forgives increased blood flow to regions that helped people understand their own emotion and make socially appropriate decisions
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Practice: Which is an effective strategy for reducing angry feelings? 1. Retaliate verbally or physically 2. Wait or simmer down 3. Express anger in action or fantasy 4. Review grievance silently
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Wait or simmer down
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Happiness
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- Happy people view the world as a safer place and feel more confident - More decisive and cooperate more easily - Live healthier and more energized and satisfied Study: - The happiest 10 y olds were more likely to marry and less likely to divorce - IN another: 37 happy students had gone on to earn significantly more money than their less happy than average peers --> When we are happy, our relationships, self image and hopes for the future also seem more promising "Happiness doesn't just feel good, it does good"
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Feel good, do good phenomenon
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People's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood The river is also true: doing good promotes good feeling Survey: - Nearly everywhere, people report feeling happier after spending money on others rathe retain on themselves - Some happiness coaches harness the "do good feel good phenomenon" as they assign people to perform a daily "random act of kindness" and to record the deals
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Humanist psychologists
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- Interested in advancing human fulfillment
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Positive psychology
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- Martin Seligman - Sc study of human flourishment with the goals of discovering and promoting strength and virtues that help individual and communities thrive - Includes study of subjective well being Ex: - Positive emotions by exercising and interventions - Positive helath by studying how positive emotions enhance and sustain physical well being - Positive neuroscience - Positive education - Satisfaction wtih the past, happiness with the present and optimism bout the future = positive psychology movement's first pillar "Positive well being" - Happiness as a byproduct of pleasant life and a good life that engages skills and meaningful life that points beyond oneself First pillar: positive well being Second pillar: positive character- focus exploring and enhancing creativity, courage, compassion, integrity and self control, leadership, wisdom and spirituality Third pillar: positive groups, communities and cultures, seeks to foster positive social ecology including healthy families, communal neighbourhood, effective schools, social responsible media, and civil dialogue
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Subjetive well being
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- Part of positive psychology - Self perceived happiness or satisfaction with life Used with measures of objective well being (ex: physical and economic indicators) to evaluate person's quality of life - Feelings of happiness or sense of satisfaction with life
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Naturalistic observation of emotion in status updates
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- Adam Kramer - Eliminated exceptional days like holidays, he tracked frequency of positive and negative emotions by day of the week - Positive mood days: friday and saturday --> Similar study but with Twitter indicated that fridays and sundays were the happiest - Emotional ups and downs tend to balance out - True to the course of the day - Positive emotion rises over the early to middle part of most days and then drops off - People tend to bounce back from a bad day to a "better than usual" good mood the following day - Negative events drag us down for longer periods, bad mood usually ends --> Faculty members up for tenure expected lives would be deflated by a negative decision. Actually 5-10 years later, their happiness level was about the same as those who received tenure. --> We overestimate the duration of our emotions and underestimate our resiliency and capacity to adapt.
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Wealth and well being
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- Poor countries: individuals with more money are typically happier than those who struggle to afford basic needs - Rich countries: people are greater well being - Enough money to buy your way out of hunger and have sense of control over life does buy happiness - Money to a certain point increases happiness - Economic growth in affluent countries has provided no apparent boost to morale or social well being - Thoe who strive for intimacy, personal growth, and community contribution experience a higher quality of life
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Two psychological phenomena: Adaptation and Comparison
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- Explains why, for those who are not poor, more money buys little more than a temporary surge of happiness and why our emotions seem attached to elastic bands from highs or lows -Suggests that happiness is relative
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Adaptation-level phenomenon
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- Tendency to form judgements (of sounds, lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience - Harry Helson - We adjust our neutral levels (where a sound feels neither loud, nor soft,) based on experience - We notice and react to aviation up or down from these levels - Initial surge of please, improvements become our "new normal" and we then require something even better to give us the happiness the next time EX: people who have experienced a recent windfall from lottery, inheritance or surging economy- typically feel elated - After a time, you gradually recalibrate your adaptation level and adjust new neutral level to include new experiences - Feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, success and failure are judgments we make based partly on our prior experience - Satisfaction has short half life (Richard Ryan) and so does disappointment
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Happiness is relative to others' success
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- Always comparing ourselves with others "Relative deprivation": perceptions act one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself Ex: one baseball player signed a contract for millions which must've made him feel good, but others felt decreased satisfaction with their lesser contracts - Seeing others succeed may inflate our expectations resulting in disappointment - Satisfaction stems less form income that from our income rank aka its all relative to others - Comparisons help us understand why the middle and upper income people in a country, who can compare themselves with the relatively poor, end to have greater life satisfaction than their less fortunate compatriots
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Predictors of happiness
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- Some people are naturally happier - The answer is found in the interplay between nature and nurture - Genes atter STUDY - ID and fraternal twins: about 50% of the difference among people's happiness rating was heritable - Other studies indicate a bit less heritability - Personal history and culture matter - Personal level: emotions tend to balance level defined by experience - Cultural level: groups vary in the traits they value - Self esteem and achieve matter more in Western countries who value individualism Genes, outlook and experience --> fluctuation of happiness around our "set point" - If we can enhance our happiness on an individual level, can we refocus on a national level? --> Policy makers should be interested in subjective well being of society as a whole - Happy societies are prosperous, and places where people trust one another, feel free, and enjoy close relationships Happy people tend to: - Have high self esteem - Be optimistic, outgoing and agreeable - Have close friendships or satisfying marriage - Have work and leisure that engage skills - Have active religious faith - Sleep well and exercise Does not really related to: - Age - Gender - Physical attraction
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Evidence based suggestions for happier life
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11 based research suggestions for improving mood and increasing satisfaction with life 1. Realize that enduring happiness may not come from financial success. - Adapting and adjusting expectations 2. Take control of time 3. Act happy 4. Seek work and leisure that engage your skills - People often in zone called "flow" when in tasks that challenge but don't overwhelm them 5. Buy shared experiences rathe than things 6. Join the "movement" movement - Aerobic exercise can relieve mild depression and anxiety, promoting health and energy 7. Give body sleep that it wants 8. Give priority to close relationships 9. Focus beyond self - perform acts of kindness - Happiness increases helpfulness 10. Count your blessings and record your gratitude 11. Nature your spiritual self
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Practice: Which of the following factors do NOT predict self-reported happiness? What factors are better predictors? a. Age b. Personality trait c. Close relationships d. Gender e. Sleep and exercise f. Religious faith
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a. Age d. Gender
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Stress
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- Slippery concept - Used informally to describe threats or challenges --> the process of appraising and responding to a threatening or challenging event - Arises less from events themselves than from how we appraise them Ex: being alone in a house and hearing a creaking sound - One will get scared - One will say its nothing - One will say its an intruder - One will welcome a challenge - One will say its a risking failure Stressful event (ex: tough math test) --> Threat (Yikes this is beyond me) --> Stressed to distraction OR Stressful event (ex: tough math test) --> Challenge (I've got to apply all that i know)--> Aroused and focused - When short lived, or perceived as challenges, stressors can have positive effects - Momentary stress can mobilize the immune system for fending off infections and healing wounds - Arouses, and motivate us to conquer problems - Energized and satisfied --> Lethargy: depressed but not stressed "Process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging" - Experiencing stress early in life builds resilience so adversity can help with growth - Extreme/prolonged stress can be harmful EX: stressed when pregnant leads to shorter pregnancy which poses health risks for their infants
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Behaviour medicine
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- Provides reminder that mind and body interact: everything psychological is simultaneously physiological - Must look at stressors and the subsequent reactions
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Stressors
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- Things that induce stress - Fall into 3 main categories 1. Catastrophes 2. Significant life changes 3. Daily hassles
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1. Catastrophes
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- Unpredictable large scale events Ex: earthquake, flood, wildfires and storms - After these events, damage to emotional and physical health can be significant Toxic stress- unpredictable large scale events - Can be 2 fold: the disaster itself and uprooting family and separation
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2. Significant life changes
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- Life transitions like leaving home, becoming divorced, losing a job, having a loved one die - Getting gmarried - Changes during young adulthood SURVEY: 15000 Canadian adults were asked whether they were trying to take on too many things at once - Higher stress levels were among the young adults LONGITUDINAL - Compare life changes by those who have or not suffered a specific health problem - Widowed, fired or divorced were more vleralb not disease Finish Study - widowed people found that survivors risk of death doubled in the week following a partners death
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3. Daily hassles
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- Ex: spotty phone connection, aggravating housemates, long lines at the store, too many things to do, email and text spam, loud talkers behind us - Some shrug them off Ex: Great Recession: Americans most oft-cited stressors relating to money , work and economy. - In poor areas where people generally faced income, unemployment and solo parents, were the stressors of daily life. - Stress eventually takes a toll on health
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Stress response system
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Walter Cannon - Stress response is part of a unified mind-body system - Extreme cold, lack of oxygen, emotion arousing events all trigger stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine from the adrenal glands - Sympathetic nervous system arouses us, preparing the body for fight or flight. Increases HR, respiration, diverts blood from digestion to the muscles, dulls feelings of pain, and releases sugar and fat from the body's stores - Hypothalamus (cerebral cortex) and pituitary gland --> adrenal gland secretes glucocorticoid stress hormones like cortisol
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Fight or flight
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- epinephrine - Glucocorticoids -
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Hans Selye
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- Research on stress - Studied animals' reactions to various stress like electric shock and surgery - Proposed that the body's adaptive response to stress is so general "General adaptation syndrome"- a 3 phased process
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General adaptation syndrome
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- GAS - Selye's conceptualization of the body's adaptive response to stress in three phases: 1. Alarm 2. resistance 3. Exhaustion
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Phase 1: Alarm reaction
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- Sympathetic nervous site is activated - Heart rate zooms - Blood diverted to skeletal muscles - Faint shock - Resources mobilized, ready to fight back
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Phase 2: Resistance
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- Temperature, blood pressure, respiration remain high - Adrenal glands pump hormones into bloodstream - Summoning all resources to meet the challenge - With no relief from stress, body reserves begin to dwindle
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Phase 3: Exhaustion
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- Vulnerable to illness or collapse and death
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Selye's basic point
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- although human body copes well with temporary stressors, prolonged stress is dangerous - Brain's production of new neurons slows and some neutral circuits degenerate STUDY - Shortening of telomeres (DNA pieces at ends of chromosomes) in women who suffered enduring stress as caregivers for children with serious disorders - Telomere shortening is normal part of aging - When they get too short, the cell can no longer divide and die - Most stressed women had ells that looked a decade older than their chronological age, which helps explain why severe stress seems to age people
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Common way to deal with stress
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- Withdraw, pull back - Conserve energy "Tend-and-befriend"
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Tend-and-befriend
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- Under stress, people (especially women), often provide support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend) - Demonstrated in the outpouring of help after natural disasters - Facing stress, en more often than women tend to withdraw socially, turn to alcohol, or become aggressive - Women under stress tend to stress by nurturing and banding together --> Oxytocin - Oxytocin, a stress moderating hormone associated with pair bonding animals, cuddling, massage, breast feeding in humans - Brain scans show difference in in stress response: for women, important areas for processing and empathy become more active; in men, they become less active
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Practice: The stress response system: When alerted to a negative, uncontrollable event, our ___ nervous system arouses us. Heart rate and respiration __ (increase/decrease). Blood is diverted from digestion to the skeletal ___-___-___ response.
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1. Sympathetic 2. Increase 3. Muscles 4. Fight-or-flgith
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Behavioural medicine
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- For integrating behavioural and medical knowledge - To study stress, healthy and unhealthy behaviours influencing health and illness
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Health psychology
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- A subfield of psychology that provides a psychology's contribution to behavioural medicine
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Psychoneuroimmunology
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- Study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health - Focusing on mind-body reactions - Your thoughts and feelings (psycho) influence your brain (neuro) which influences the endocrine hormones that affect your disease-fighting immune system - Subfield of (ology) those interaction
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B lymphocytes
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- White blood cells - Mature in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infections
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4 types of cells active in search and destroy missions
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1. B lymphocytes 2. T lymphocytes 3. Macrophages 4. Natural killer cells
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2. T lymphocytes
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- White blood cells - Mature in the thymus and other lymphatic tissue - Attack cancer cells, viruses and foreign substances
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3. Macrophages
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- Big eaters - Identify, pursue, and ingest harmful invaders and worn out cells
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4. Natural killer cells
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- NK cells - pursue diseased cells like those infected by viruses or cancer
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Things that impact immune system's activity
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- Age - Nutrition - Genetics - Body temperature - Stress
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The immune system doesn't function properly, 2 things can happen
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1. Responding too strongly. - May attack own tissues, causing an allergic reaction or self attacking disease - Women who are immunologically stronger than men, are more susceptible to self-attacking disease 2. Underracting immune system - Immune system may allow bacterial inflection to flare, dormant virus, cancer cells multiply
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Stress can trigger immune suppression
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- Reducing release of disease fighting lymphocytes - Surgical wounds heal more slowly in stressed people: dental students received punch wounds - Stressed people are more vulnerable to colds - Low stress may increase the effectiveness of vaccinations - Stress effect on immunity makes physiological sense - Take energy to track down invaders - Stress does not make us sick, but it does alter out immune functioning, which leaves us less able to resist infection
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Practice: Field of ___ studies mind-body interactions, including the effects of psychological, neural and endocrine functioning on the immune system and overall health
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- Psychoneuroimmunology
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Practice: What general effect does tress hawk eon our overall health?
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- Stress tends to reduce our immune system's ability to function properly, so that higher stress generally leads to greater incidence of physical illness.
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Stress and AIDS
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- Stress hormones suppresses immune system functions - AIDS related deaths are huge - Disease is spread by human contact - Stress can't give people AIDS, but the negative emotions may speed the transition from HIV and AIDS - Effects to reduce stress would help slow the progression of the disease
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Stress and cancer
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- Stress doesn't create cancer cells - It may affect their growth by weakening the body's natural defenders against multiplying - Powerful biological processes at work in cancer ror AIDS are not likely to be derailed by avoiding stress or maintaining a relaxed but determined spirit --> This is why psychotherapy doesn't extend cancer patients' survival
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Coronary heart disease
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- Clogging of vessels that nourish the heart muscle; leading cause of death in many developed countries - High blood pressure, and family history of disease increase the risk - Smoking, obesity, high fat diet, physical inactivity and high cholesterol level - Stress and personality play a large role in heart disease - More trauma someone experiences, the more their bodies generate inflammation which is associated with heart and other health problems We can pluck a hair to test cortisol level to predict whether a person will have a future heart attack
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Type A Personality
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- Meyer Friedman, Ray Rosenman - Tested idea that stress increases vulnerability to heart disease by measuring cholesterol level and clotting speed of 40 US male tax accountants - Those with most reactive, competitive, hard driving, impatient, time conscious, super motivated, verbally aggressive and easily angered were TYPE A TYPE B: mellow, and laid back --> Type A's toxic core is negative emotions, more combat ready. Excess cholesterol and fat may continue to circulate their blood and get deposited around the heart - Direct negative emotion towards dominating others
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Type D personality
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- Suppress their negative emotion to avoid social disapproval - Negative emotion they experience during social interactions is mainly distress - Significantly increased risk for mortality and nonfatal heart attack
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Pessimism
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- Toxic - Laura Kubzansky: - Studied healthy men who scored as optimists, pessimists or neither - Pessimists were more than twice as likely as optimists to develop heart disease - Depression can be lethal - Happy people tend to be healthier and outlive others - People with broad smiles tend to have extensive social networks, which predict longer life --> Depression substantially increases the risk of death, especially by unnatural causes and cardiovascular disease
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Stress and inflammation
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- Depressed people tend to smoke more and exercise less - After a heart attack, stress and anxiety increase the risk of death or of another attack - Stress hormones enhance one immune response: the product of proteins that contribute to inflammation --> People who experience social threats, including children raised in harsh families, are more prone to inflammation responses
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Practice: Which component of Type A personality has been liked most closely to coronary heart disease?
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- Feeling angry and negative much of the time
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Practice: How does Type D personality differ from Type A
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- Type D individuals experience distress rather than anger, and they tend to suppress their negative emotions to avoid social disapproval
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Cope
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- Alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive or behavioural methods - Used to deal with stress in our lives
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Problem focused coping
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- Attempting to alleviate stress directly- by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor - Used when we feel a sense of control over a situation and think we can change the circumstances or at least change ourselves to deal with the cicumstances more capably
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Emotion-focused coping
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- Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to our stress reaction - When we believe we can't change a situation - Reach out to others for support and comfort
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Personal control
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Rats - Two rats get simultaneous shocks - One can turn a wheel to stop the shocks - The helpless rat becomes more susceptible to ulcers and lower immunity "Learned helplessness"
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Learned helplessness
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- Hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events - Perceiving loss of control, we become more vulnerable to ill health Uncontrollable bad events --> Perceived lack of control --> Generalized helplessness behaviour
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Learned helplessness experiment with dogs
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- Dogs strapped in harness and given repeated shocks with no chance to avoid them - Place in another situation where they could escape the punishment by leaping a hurdle, but the dogs cowered as if there was no hope - Dogs where they were able to escape the first short reacted different - they learned they were in control and easily escaped the shocks in the new situation
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Nursing home learned helplessness experiment
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- Residents with little perceived control over their activities found that they declined faster and died soon than those with more control - More control usually means that they live longer - Control links between economic status and longevity
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Why losing control provokes an outpouring of stress hormones
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- When rats and dogs can't control shock, they feel unable to control their environment, stress hormone levels rise, bp increases, and immune responses drop - Allowing prisoners to move chairs and control room lights and TV has improve health and morale
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Excess of freedom
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- Too many choices - Result can be decreased life satifasction, increased depression, or beahivour paralysis Ex: people offered a chocie of one of 30 brans of jam or chocolate were less satisfied with their deicsion than those who had to pick from 6 options
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Internal vs. external locus of control
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- External locus of control: perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate - Internal locus of control: perception that we control our own fate STUDY - the internals have achieved more in school and work, acted more independtly, enjoyed better health, felt less depressed than the externals AKA "free will" or that we can control our own willpower - Younger people have an external locus of conrol - Shift may explain associated increases in rates of depression and other psychological disorders in young people
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Practice: To cope with stress, we tend to use ___ - focused strategies when we feel in control of our world, and ___-focused strategiest when we believe we cannot change a situation
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1. Problem 2. Emotion
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Self control
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- Ability to control impulses and delay shrt term gratification for longer term rewards STUDY - Self control predicts good health, higher income, and better grades - 8th graders: better self control was more than twice as important as intelligence score in predicting academic success - Changes from day to day - Weakens after use, recovers after rest, and grows stronger with practice - Exercising willpower temporarily depletes mental energy needed for self control on other tasks EXPERIMENT - Hungry people who had resisted temptation to eat chocolate chip cookies abandoned tedious task sooner than those who had eaten it - Exercising willpower decreases neural activation in regions associated with mental control - Giving sugar rather than an artificial sweetener had a good effect: strengthened effortful thinking and reduced financial impulsiveness --> Develop self discipline in one area of your life and your strengthened self control may spill over into other areas too, making for a healthier, happier and more successful life
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Optimism vs pessimism
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- Our outlook- what we expect from the world- influences how we cope with stress - Pessimists: expect things to go badly, they attribute poor performance to a basic lack of ability - Optimists: ex: Randy- expect to have more control to cope better with stressful events and enjoy better health. Respond better to stress with smaller increases in blood pressure and recover more quickly from heart bypass surgery. Get better grades because of good attitude, study habits and self discipline - Optimism runs in families, so some are just happier people (oxytocin for social bonding hormone)
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Social support
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- Feeling likes and encouraged by intimate friends and family - Promotes happiness and health - People are less likely to die early if supported by close relationships - Those with ample social connections has survival rates about 50% greater than those with meager ones (meager being equivalent to smoking about 15 cigarettes per day) - Some risk health to gain social acceptance - Divorced people are 23% more likely to die early
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How social support prolongs life
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- Calms up and reduces blood pressure and stress hormone STUDY - Subjected happily married women, while lying in an fMRI to the threat of electric shock to the ankle - During the experiment, some help their husband's hand while others held a stranger's hand or none at all - While waiting for the shock, there was less activity in threat responsive areas - Soothing - Fosters stronger immune functioning STUDY - Healthy volunteers inhaled nasal drops iwth cold virus and were quarantined and watched for 5 days - More sociability meant less susceptibility - Close relationships give us an opportunity for "open heart therapy" (a chance to confide painful feelings) - Talking about stress can temporarily arouse us but with time, calms us by calming the limbic system activity --> Self disclosing improves health - Addressing pain is better than blocking it out
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Reducing stress
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- Sense of control, optimistic thinking, building social support - Improves health - People who have been upbeat about themselves and their future tended to enjoy health promoting social ties - Aerobic exercise, relaxation, meditation, spiritual communities help
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Aerobic exercise
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- Sustained exercise that increase heart and lung fitness; may also alleviate depression and anxiety - Passing of genes, lower exercise means that we pass genes that produce lower amounts of proteins and leave us more able to get 20 chronic diseases - Reduces stress, depression and anxiety BUT - Depressed and stressed people exercise less - Randomly assigned stressed, depressed or anxious people to an aerobic exercise group or control group - Measure whether the exercise produced change in stress, depression or anx or some other health related outcome --> women in aerobic exercise reported greatest decrease in depression - Contributes to sense of accomplishment and improved physique and body image = better emotional state
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Biofeedback
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- System of recording, amplifying and feeding back info about subtle physiological responses, many controlled by ANS - Mirror person's own efforts, enabling them to learn techniques or control of a physiological response that they typically don't control --> Works best on tension headaches
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Relaxation
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- Time may heal wounds - Relaxation speeds up the process STUDY - Surgery patients assigned to two groups but both received standard treatment - Group 2 however go 45 min relaxation exercise and got recordings of relaxation before and after surgery - A couple weeks later, group 2 showed better healing
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Meditation
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- Used to reduce suffering and improve awareness, insight and compassion - Relax and silently attend to your inner state, no judgment
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Practicing mindfulness
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- Improves health measures - Levels of anx and depression were lower among those who got the therapy - Linked to reduction in sleep problems, smoking, binge eating, and alcohol and substance disorders
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What happens in the brain during mindfulness
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Correlational and experimental studies 1. Strengthens connections among regions in our brain - Affected regions are those associated with focusing attention, processing what we see and hear, and being reflective 2. Activates brain regions associated with more reflective awareness - Labeling emotions, "mindful people" show less activation in the amygdala, which is associated with fear, and more activation in the prefrontal cortex for emotional regulation 3. Calms brain activation in emotional situations
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Faith communities and health
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"Faith factor" - Religiously active people tend to live longer than those who are not - Women are generally more religiously active than men, and women outlive men (so the faith factor might just be related to gender) - Faith often involves: healthy habits, social support and positive emotions
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Practice: What are some tactics we can use to manage successfully the stress we can't avoid?
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- Aerobic exercise - Relaxation procedures - Mindfulness - Meditation - Religious engagement
