Sources of stress

daily hassels, life changes

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  • Created by: Matt Dale
  • Created on: 01-06-11 15:09

Life Changes


Who:
Holmes & Rahe: stated that both positive and negative life events, involve change, that lead to a change in experiencing stress.

 Procedure: Used 5000 hospital patients records, noting any major life changes, before the participant became ill. They found; patients had experienced life changes before they became ill, stating; more serious life changes caused more stress + illness…

 They ranked these changes/life events on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)

- Made from 43 common life events, asked 400 people to rank to events in order of stress level. Measured in Life change units (LCU)
- Death of spouse was highest
- The SRRS shows a positive correlation between likelihood of illness and score on the SRRS.

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AO2 Life changes

A02 (srrs): Correlation, only link, no cause, SRRS doesn’t separate positive and negative life changes (wedding), daily hassles not consider, individual differences

Supporting Evidence: Rahe
Procedure: 2500 American Navy seamen, complete SRRS form before duty (indicating all events over last 6 months). Higher LCU, more illness within navy men in next 7 months. (.118 correlation score) < positive
Conclusion: Stress levels higher, higher chance of illness.
A02: individual differences, correlation, cannot be generalised

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Daily Hassles + Uplifts

Who: Delongis; Hassles and Uplifts Scale (HSUP)

What it is: The HSUP measures responses to daily situations, the HSUP provides a way of evaluating events that occur is a persons everyday life

Research includes:

Daily Hassles: Bouteyre et al

Daily Uplifts: Gervais

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Daily Hassles

Who: Bouteyre et al, Investigated the relationship between daily hassles and mental heath of students, from school to university. 

Procedure:
1st year Psychology students, competed the HSUP hassles, to show any hassles in their life's when going to university

Results: 41% showed depressive symptoms when moving to university.

Conclusions: Daily hassles can cause problems, causing depressive behaviours

A02: Sample bias, culture bias (french), individual differences 

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Daily Uplifts

Who: Gervais,  

Procedure: 
Asked nurses to keep a diary, for a month, recording all the daily hassles and also daily uplifts. (e.g. not enough beds GRR) or (got a compliment today, wicked)

Results: Daily hassles did increase job strain, performance and stress, however, uplifts counteracted with these hassles. 

Conclusions: Daily hassles can cbe counteracted by daily uplifts

A02: Sample bias, cindivdual diffrences, 

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Evaluation of daily hassles

Accumulation effect: Daily hassles will basically be greater as they add on to each other, minor stressors can accumuate to cause irritations, which can cause anxiety or depression

Amplification effect: When suffering from chronic stress (divorce), daily hassles (like arguing with children) may be blown up, they will suffer higher levels of stress from this daily hassle 

Indivdual diffrences

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