AS Psychology Unit 2: Stress Life Changes and Daily Hassles revision

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Unit 2: Biological Psychology (Stress) Revision

Life changes and Daily Hassles.

Life changes – Alterations or events in our lives that may be stressful, including house moves, job changes etc.

Rahe et al (1970 LCU score and illness study)

Method: In a correlational study, more than 25000 American Navy Seamen were given a form of the SRRS to complete just before they set sail on military duty. They had to indicate all of the events that they had experienced over the previous six months.

Results: Higher LCU scores were found to be linked to a higher incidence of illness over the next seven months.

Evaluation: The results are not representative of the population and can only be generalised to American Navy seamen. Also, the results don’t explain individual differences in response to stress. There are also limitations associated with using correlational research. You can’t assume a causal relationship between the variables – the correlation might be caused by a third unknown variable. As well as this, there are problems with using the SRRS to rank stressful events.

Social Rating Readjustment Scale – A scale designed by Holmes and Rahe (1967) to measure the effects of life events on health. The higher the score the greater, the likelihood of suffering from subsequent physical illness.

Evaluation of SRRS:

·        It’s a correlation: Life events

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