Source: Health Psychology, Michigan State University
Difficulty: Intermediate. Prerequisites: Part 1 of these notes (stress mechanisms, fight-or-flight, GAS, allostatic load).
Part 1 covered what stress is and how your body responds to it. This part covers where stress comes from, how researchers study it, and how it plays out in everyday life, including the workplace and across gender roles. You will need to understand the dimensions that make events more stressful, the tools researchers use to measure stress (and their limitations), and how chronic stressors like workplace demands and role conflict contribute to health outcomes.
Stressful events are worse when they are negative, uncontrollable, ambiguous, or central to your life. Researchers measure stress using tools like the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (which has known flaws) and acute stress paradigms. Workplace stress, daily hassles, early life adversity, and conflicting gender roles are major real-world sources of chronic stress with measurable health consequences.
Chronic strain
Develops when a stressful event becomes a permanent or chronic part of the environment. Unlike an acute stressor, it grinds on without a clear end point.
Daily hassles
Minor stressful events of everyday life (traffic, arguments, lost keys) that accumulate and contribute to psychological distress, physiological changes, and increased use of health care services. Think of it as death by a thousand paper cuts.
Acute stress paradigm
A research method in which people perform stressful tasks in a controlled setting so researchers can measure their psychological and physiological responses.
Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)
A measurement tool developed by Holmes and Rahe that assigns numerical values to major life events (death of a spouse = 100, divorce = 73, vacation = 13) to index cumulative stress. In simple terms, a checklist that scores how much life change you have been through recently.
Role conflict
Occurs when a person receives conflicting information about work tasks or standards from different individuals. Creates stress because expectations are incompatible.
Demand-control-support model
A model of workplace stress proposing that the most stressful jobs combine high demands, low personal control, and little social support.
Ambiguity (in the workplace)
Stress that arises when an employee is not sure what to do and there is no clear work standard or expectation.
Risky families
Families characterised by conflict, neglect, or abuse. Children raised in risky families show problems with emotion regulation, social skills, and heightened stress reactivity.
Not all events are equally stressful. Five dimensions determine how much stress a given event produces:
Negative events are more stressful than positive ones
Uncontrollable events are more stressful than those you can influence
Ambiguous events are more stressful than clearly defined ones (uncertainty itself is a stressor)
Overload increases stress: too many demands at once
Central life domains matter more: a threat to something core to your identity (your family, your career) is more stressful than a threat to something peripheral
Chronic strain develops when a stressful event becomes a permanent or chronic part of the environment
How well someone adapts depends on the type of stressor, their subjective experience of the stress, and the indicators used to measure stress
Anticipating stress is as stressful as the actual event. Worrying about an upcoming exam or procedure produces real physiological stress responses.
After-effects of stress persist long after the stressor ends:
Shortened attention span
Poor performance on tasks
Ongoing psychological distress
Continued physiological arousal
A controlled method for studying stress in the laboratory:
People perform stressful tasks (e.g. giving a speech, doing mental arithmetic under pressure) and researchers measure their psychological and physiological responses
Useful for identifying individuals who are most vulnerable to stress
Has shown that stress responses can be reduced by the presence of a partner or even a stranger
A more direct research method:
Researchers intentionally expose participants to viruses and then assess whether they get ill and how intense their illness is
Finding: people experiencing more stress are more likely to get sick and show stronger immune responses (e.g. more coughing), which seems counterintuitive but reflects the body mounting a larger inflammatory response
Developed by Holmes and Rahe to index how much adjustment different life events require:
Assigns numerical values: death of a spouse = 100, divorce = 73, detention in jail = 63, being fired = 47, vacation = 13, Christmas = 12
Higher cumulative scores are associated with greater risk of illness
Some items on the list are vague
Individual differences and personal choice are not considered (getting married is stressful for some, not others)
Does not assess whether stressful events have been successfully resolved
The time between stress and illness does not correlate cleanly
Minor stressful events that accumulate over time. Effects include:
Psychological distress
Adverse physiological changes
Physical symptoms (you are more likely to notice things "wrong" with your body when stressed)
Increased use of health care services
Low socioeconomic status, exposure to violence, and living in poverty-stricken neighbourhoods all create chronic stress from childhood
Community-level stressors compound individual ones
Children raised in risky families:
Have problems with emotion regulation and social skills
Struggle to form good social relationships
Can develop heightened sympathetic reactivity, exaggerated cortisol responses, or chronic inflammation
Long-term, grinding stressors that contribute to both psychological distress and physical illness
Difficult to study because isolating the effects of chronic stress from other variables is methodologically challenging
Workplace stress is important to study because most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, and stress-related disorders lead to disability and social security costs.
Causes of workplace stress:
Sedentary work lifestyle
Work overload
Ambiguity (unclear expectations) and role conflict (conflicting instructions from different people)
Inability to develop satisfying social relationships at work
Lack of control over one's work life
The demand-control-support model: the most stressful jobs combine high demands, low control, and little social support
Unemployment: associated with psychological distress, physical symptoms, physical illness, alcohol abuse, low birth weight of offspring, elevated inflammation, and compromised immune functioning
Outcomes of workplace stress:
Higher rates of absenteeism
Job turnover and tardiness
Job dissatisfaction
Sabotage and poor performance
Reducing workplace stress:
Minimise physical stressors, unpredictability, and ambiguity
Involve workers in decisions that affect their work
Make jobs interesting and reward good work
Help workers develop meaningful social relationships
Look for signs of stress and add workplace perks that enhance quality of life
Conflicting home and work responsibilities increase stress
Working women with children show higher cortisol levels, higher cardiovascular reactivity, and more home strains
Single women raising children on their own are at the greatest risk for health problems
Combining motherhood and employment can be beneficial:
Improves self-esteem, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction
Less stressful when combined with: control and flexibility at work, good income, domestic help, adequate childcare, and a supportive partner
Men are most distressed by financial strain and work stress
Combining employment and marriage is protective for men's health
Stressful interpersonal events at work can spill over into increased conflicts with children
Employed, unmarried fathers are more vulnerable to psychological distress
Six factors shape how a person appraises a stressor:
Duration: acute (short-lived) vs. chronic (ongoing). Chronic stressors produce more sustained damage.
Valence: negative vs. positive. Negative events are more stressful, though positive events (a wedding, a promotion) can still require significant adjustment.
Control: how much a person can influence outcomes. Greater perceived control reduces stress.
Predictability: predictable stressors are less stressful than unpredictable ones because the person can prepare.
Definition: how clearly defined the stressor is. Ambiguous, poorly understood stressors are harder to cope with than clear-cut ones.
Centrality: how important the affected life domain is. A stressor that hits close to your identity, values, or core relationships is more distressing than one that feels distant or peripheral.
The demand-control-support model is the reason workplace wellness programmes focus on giving employees more autonomy and building team culture, not just reducing workload. Jobs with high demands are manageable when people feel in control and supported.
Daily hassles research explains why people sometimes "snap" over something trivial: it is rarely about the one event but about the accumulated minor stressors piling up.
Students often think the SRRS is a reliable predictor of illness. It is a useful historical tool, but it has significant drawbacks: it ignores individual differences, resolution of events, and the vague nature of some items.
Students often assume that only negative events cause stress. Positive life changes (marriage, a new baby, a promotion) also require adjustment and can produce stress.
Students sometimes believe workplace stress is just about working too many hours. The demand-control-support model shows that lack of control and poor social support matter as much or more than volume of work.
Students often overlook the role of anticipation: worrying about a stressor produces real physiological stress responses, not just emotional discomfort.
⚠️ Know the five dimensions of stressful events: negative, uncontrollable, ambiguous, overload, central life domains.
⚠️ Be able to list the drawbacks of the SRRS. This is a common exam question.
⚠️ Understand the demand-control-support model and how it applies to workplace stress.
⚠️ Know the six factors in stress appraisal: duration, valence, control, predictability, definition, centrality.
⚠️ Be prepared to discuss gender differences in stress, including how multiple roles affect women vs. men differently.
⚠️ Understand the difference between daily hassles and major life events as sources of stress.
True or False: The SRRS accounts for individual differences in how people experience life events. (False: it does not.)
Fill in the blank: The demand-control-support model says the most stressful jobs have high ______, low ______, and little ______. (Demands, control, social support.)
True or False: Anticipating a stressful event produces no real physiological response. (False: anticipation is as stressful as the actual event.)
Fill in the blank: The six factors in stress appraisal are duration, valence, ______, ______, ______, and ______. (Control, predictability, definition, centrality.)
True or False: Combining motherhood and employment is always harmful to women's health. (False: it can be beneficial, especially with supportive conditions.)
Q: Name the five dimensions that make stressful events more impactful, and briefly explain each.
A: (1) Negative events are worse than positive. (2) Uncontrollable events are worse because you cannot influence the outcome. (3) Ambiguous events are harder to cope with because the threat is unclear. (4) Overload, meaning too many demands at once. (5) Central life domains: stressors that affect core areas of identity and values are more distressing.
Q: What are the main criticisms of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale?
A: Items are vague, individual differences and choice are ignored, it does not assess whether events have been resolved, and the time between stress and illness does not correlate reliably.
Q: Describe the demand-control-support model of workplace stress.
A: The model proposes that the most stressful work environments combine high demands (heavy workload, time pressure), low control (little autonomy or decision-making power), and little social support from colleagues or supervisors.
Q: How do multiple roles affect women's and men's health differently?
A: Working women with children show higher cortisol, higher cardiovascular reactivity, and more home strains, with single mothers at greatest risk. For men, financial strain and work stress are primary concerns. Combining employment and marriage is protective for men. In both cases, support, flexibility, and adequate resources buffer the negative effects.
Q: What is the acute stress paradigm, and what has it shown?
A: It is a research method where participants perform stressful tasks in a controlled setting while researchers measure their responses. It identifies individuals most vulnerable to stress and has demonstrated that the presence of another person (even a stranger) can reduce stress responses.
Workplace stress and the demand-control-support model connect to later material on occupational health psychology and interventions. The discussion of risky families ties into developmental psychology and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which predict adult health outcomes. The SRRS and its limitations connect to broader methodological issues in health psychology research, including the challenge of measuring subjective experience with standardised instruments.
Daily hassles, chronic strain, acute stress paradigm, Social Readjustment Rating Scale, SRRS, Holmes and Rahe, life events, workplace stress, occupational stress, role conflict, role ambiguity, demand-control-support model, Karasek, work overload, unemployment and health, risky families, early life stress, adverse childhood experiences, gender and stress, multiple roles, women and stress, men and stress, stress appraisal factors, duration, valence, control, predictability, centrality, health psychology, PSY 320