Stress, Health,

and Human Flourishing

Chapter 10

Psychology in Everyday Life David G. Myers • C. Nathan DeWall | Sixth

Chapter Overview

• Stress: Some Basic Concepts

• Stress Effects and Health
• Coping With Stress
• Managing Stress Effects
• Happiness and Well-Being
Stress: Some Basic
Concepts (part 1)
• Stress
• Process of appraising an event as
threatening or challenging, and
responding to it

• Stressors
• Things that push our buttons; a
challenge or event

• Stress reactions
• From alarm to exhaustion: physical
and emotional responses
 Stress: Some Basic Concepts
(part 2)
• The events of our lives flow through a
psychological filter.
• How we appraise an event influences how much
stress we experience and how effectively we
respond.
Stress: Some Basic
Concepts (part 3)
• Stressors fall into three main categories.
• Catastrophes
• Significant life changes
• Daily hassles
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
(part 4)

• Stress reactions
• Walter Cannon’s findings
• The sympathetic nervous system responds to the
body’s alarm to stress.
• Prepares the body for the fight-or-flight
response
 • Stress reactions
• Hans Selye extended Cannon’s
findings.
Stress: • The body’s adaptive response

Some
to stress is general; shorter
telomeres with
extreme/constant stress
Basic • Response was named the
general adaptation
Concepts syndrome (GAS)
• Phases
(part 5) • Alarm reaction
• Resistance
• Exhaustions
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
(part 6)
Stress: Some Basic
Concepts (part 7)
• Other stress responses
• Withdrawal
• Tend-and-befriend response
Stress Effects and Health (part 1)

• Psychoneuroimmunology
• Study of how a person’s immune
system and health are affected by
the combination of:
• Psychological processes
• Neural processes
• Endocrine processes

• Emotions affect the brain, which

controls the endocrine hormones,
which influence the immune
system.
Stress Effects and Health (part 2)

• Immune system functions

• When it functions properly, your
immune system keeps you healthy
by capturing and destroying
bacteria, viruses, and other
invaders.

• Four types of cells carry out these

search-and-destroy missions:
• B lymphocytes
• T lymphocytes
• Macrophage cells
• Natural killer cells
Stress Effects and Health
(part 3)
Stress Effects and Health (part 4)

• Dysfunctional immune system

• Affected by age, nutrition, genetics,
and stress level

• Overreacting: The immune

system may attack the body’s own
tissues; forms of arthritis or allergic
reaction; autoimmune disease.

• Underreacting: The immune

system may allow flare of infection,
eruption of dormant herpes virus, or
multiplication of cancer cells.
Stress Effects and Health
(part 5)

• Examples of human
immune system
reaction to stress
hormones
• Surgical wounds heal
more slowly in
stressed people.
• Stressed people
develop colds more
readily.
• Stress can speed the
course of disease.
Stress Effects and Health (part 6)

Heart disease statistics

• About 655,00 Americans die annually from heart
disease; about 1 person per minute.

Coronary heart disease

• Clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart
muscle
• High blood pressure and a family history of the
disease increase the risk.
• So do smoking, obesity, an unhealthy diet,
physical inactivity, and a high cholesterol
level.
Stress Effects and Health (part
7)

• Effects of personality
• Meyer Friedman, Ray Rosenman and colleagues’
research
• Type A: Competitive, hard-driving, impatient,
verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people
• Type B: Easygoing and relaxed people

• People who react with anger over little things are

the most prone to coronary problems.
Stress Effects and
Health (part 8)

• Pessimism increases the risk

for heart attack.
• Depression poses a serious
risk for heart disease.
 • Illness, anger, and depression
• Stress makes people vulnerable to
illness.

Stress • Influences their behavior and

physiology

Effects • Anger or depression, persistent

stressors, and unhealthy behaviors
and trigger the release of stress
hormones.
Health • Leads to headaches, high
blood pressure, inflammation,
(part 9) immune suppression, and
heart disease
Coping With Stress
(part 1)
• Problem-focused coping
• Attempting to reduce stress directly
• Involves changing the stressor or
the way one interacts with that
stressor

• Emotion-focused coping
• Attempting to reduce stress
• Avoiding or ignoring a stressor
• Attending to emotional needs
related to the stress reaction
Coping With
Stress (part 2)
• Personal control: Sense of
controlling one’s environment
rather than feeling helpless
• Studied through correlation
and experimentation

• Learned helplessness:
Hopelessness and passive
resignation that an animal or
person learns when unable to
avoid repeated adverse events
• Involves a dramatic form of
loss of control
• Has negative health
consequences
Coping With Stress (part 3)

• Power of personal control

• Perceived control is basic to human functioning.
• Environments should enhance people’s sense of
control over their world.
• Some freedom and control are better than none.

• Tyranny of choice
• Excess of freedom can result in information
overload, decreased life satisfaction, increased
depression, or behavior paralysis.
Coping With Stress (part 4)

• Who controls your life?

• External locus of control: Perception that
chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal
control determine fate

• Internal locus of control: Perception that each

person controls his or her own fate

• Self-control: Ability to control impulses and delay

short-term gratification for greater long-term
rewards
• Constantly changes; supported by belief in
free will; aids coping
 Coping With Stress (part 5)

Optimism: Anticipation of Pessimism: Anticipation of

positive outcomes negative outcomes
Optimists expect to have control, to cope Pessimists expect the worst and doubt
well with stressful events, and to enjoy that their goals will be achieved.
good health.
Optimism runs in families; optimism-
longevity differences.
Excessive can blind us to real risks.
Coping With Stress (part 6)
• Emotional regulation: How we manage our
emotions, including which emotions we allow
ourselves to feel, when we feel them, and how we
express them.
• Enables more happiness, better life satisfaction, closer
social relationships, and less depression and anxiety.
Coping With
Stress (part 7)

• How do we change our

feelings (James Gross)?

• Strategies
• Situation
selection
• Cognitive
reappraisal
• Suppression
Coping With Stress (part 8)

Emotion Regulation Definition Consequences

Strategy
Situation selection Changing your situation • Greater well-being and happiness
to influence your • More positive emotions; fewer negative emotions
feelings • Less depression
Reappraisal Changing how you think • Better social relationships
about a situation to • Better coping with stress
influence your feelings • More positive emotions
Suppression Hiding or dampening • Feeling less authentic in social life
your emotional • Poorer coping with stress
expression • Fewer positive emotions; more negative emotions
Coping With Stress
(part 9)
• Social support
• Feeling liked and encouraged, and
helped when needed by intimate friends
and family promotes happiness and
health; happy marriage.
• Calms the cardiovascular
system, which lowers blood
pressure and stress hormone
levels
• Fights illness by fostering
stronger immune functioning
Coping With Stress (part 10)
• Having a pet may
increase the odds
of survival after a
heart attack,
relieve depression
among people with
AIDS, and lower
blood pressure and
other coronary risk
factors.
Coping With Stress (part 11)

• Finding meaning in life

• Includes some redeeming purpose in one’s
suffering
• Helps while coping with catastrophes and
significant life changes

• Can occur during hard times in various ways

• Maintaining close relationships; “open heart
therapy”
• Talking or writing about the experience after
gaining distance from the stressful event
Managing Stress
Effects (part 1)
• Aerobic exercise
• Involves sustained activity that
increases heart and lung fitness

• Facilitates more energy, confidence,

better mood, and stronger
relationships

• Reduces depression and anxiety;

increases arousal and serotonin
activity

• Increases stress management

• Enhances quality and quantity of life

Managing Stress Effects
(part 2)
Managing Stress Effects
(part 3)
• Relaxation
• Improves well-being

• Provides relief from

headaches, high
blood pressure,
anxiety, and
insomnia

• Helps wounds heal

better (relaxation
exercise)

• Helps Type A heart

attack survivors
reduce risk of future
attacks
Managing Stress
Effects (part 4)
• Learning to reflect and accept
• Meditation
• Used to reduce suffering and
improve awareness, insight,
and compassion in variety of
world religions
• Is facilitated by today’s
technology (Headspace; Calm)
• Mindfulness meditation
• Is a reflective practice in which
people attend to current
experiences in a nonjudgmental
and accepting manner
• Boosts happiness and lessens
anxiety and depression
• Is linked with improved sleep,
helpfulness, and immune
system functioning
Managing Stress Effects (part
5)

• What going on in the brain when we practice

mindfulness?
• Correlational and experimental studies offer three
explanations.
• Mindfulness:
• Strengthens connections among regions in the brain
• Activates brain regions associated with emotion
regulation
• Calms brain activation in emotional situations
Managing Stress
Effects (part 6)
• Faith communities and health
• Faith factor
• Belonging to a religious collective is
associated with a strong protective
effect.
• Religious involvement predicts health and
longevity.
• Factors that explain this prediction
• Healthy behaviors
• Social support
• Positive emotions
Managing Stress Effects
(part 7)
Managing Stress Effects
(part 8)
Happiness (part 1)

• What is happiness?
• Aristotle (350 B.C.E.)
• Believed that “happiness is the
purpose and meaning of life, the
whole aim and end of human
existence”

• William James (1902)

• Called happiness “the secret of all
we do”

• Dalai Lama (2009)

• Proposed that “the very purpose
of our life is to seek happiness”
Happiness
(part 2)
• Happiness: Having more
positive than negative
feelings; enduring prevalence
of positive emotions

• Subjective well-being: Self-

perceived satisfaction with life

• Feel-good, do-good
phenomenon: Tendency to
be helpful to others when in a
good mood
Happiness
(part 3)
• When are we happiest? How can we
tell?
• Use of positive and emotion words
(emotion notification)
• Friday and Saturday (Kramer,
2010); Friday to Sunday
(Helliwell & Wang, 2014;
others)
• Early to middle part of most
days
• Tendency to bounce back from
bad day to better-than-usual
good mood that following day

• Adaptive-level phenomenon
• Tendency to form judgments of
sounds, of lights, of income
relative to a neural level
defined by past experiences
Happiness (part 4)

• What makes us happy?

• Interplay between nature and nurture
• Genes: 36 percent of variation among
people’s happiness ratings was
heritable-attributable to genes.
• Personal history: Happiness and
psychological well-being measured on
an individual level may be used to
understand national well-being and
refocus national priorities.

• Culture: Variation in traits valued

among cultures; individualism and
communal cultures

• Each person happiness vary around a set-

point.
Happiness (part 5)
Researchers Have Found That Happy However, Happiness Seems Not Much
People Tend to Related to Other Factors, Such as

Be older. Gender (women often self-report more joy, but

also more depression).

Have high self-esteem (in individualist Physical attractiveness.

countries).

Be optimistic, outgoing, and agreeable, and

have a humorous outlook.

Have close, positive, and lasting

relationships.

Have work and leisure that engage their

skills.

Have an active religious faith (especially in

more religious cultures).

Sleep well and exercise.

 Happiness (part 6)
Taking Taking control of your time
• Giving priority to close
relationships
Acting Acting happy
• Focusing and finding
meaning beyond
Seekin Seeking work and leisure that • Challenging your
g engage your skills
negative thinking
Buyin Buying experiences rather than • Nurturing your spiritual
g things
self
Joining Joining the ”movement” movement
• Taking an “awe walk”
• Counting your
Giving Giving the body the sleep it wants
blessings and recording
your gratitude
Happiness (part 7)

• Questioning myths about happiness:

Does money buy us happiness?
• Personal income predicts happiness, but only
to a point
• Having enough to eat, feeling in control of your
life, and experiencing special treats predicts
happiness.
• Buying power of money after achieving comfort
and security is less important.
• Extreme poverty often means misery; money
helps avoidance of certain type of pain.
• Improving economic wealth in countries did not
raise happiness and life satisfaction; rising
inequality predicts unhappiness.
 • Questioning myths about happiness:
Must bad
events cause long-term unhappiness?
• Extremely stressful events can
negatively affect happiness; but

Happiness eventually most stress lessens.

• 9/11; COVID-19 pandemic

(part 8) • Grief over the loss of loved ones or

anxiety about serious trauma, can
linger.

• Resilience helps people cope and

with stress and recover.
Happiness (part 9)

• Questioning myths about happiness: Is our happiness

independent of others?
• Many people (individualist cultures) believe our happiness
is independent of others.

• Across many studies, people perceived the social lives of

others to be more active than their own.
• Relative deprivation; social comparison

• Worldwide, life satisfaction suffers when people with low

incomes compare themselves with those of higher
incomes.