WEEK 6 Appraisal, Coping, and Health - Appraisal of event, coping strategies, how you feel and managing feelings, and social support/status  Modulators of stress response Appraisal Coping OutcomeEvent Primary: What is at stake? - Nothing- Positive - Stressful Secondary: what can I do? What are my coping options? Cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage the situation and ones emotional response to it -Emotional adjustment - HealthKey Dimensions of Stress Appraisal 1. Threat & Challenge - Combination of primary (Is there something at stake? Yes) and secondary appraisal (Do I have the resources to meet it) - Threat: insufficient resources to meet the demand, associated with feelings of stress, fear, and worry- Results in a less efficient cardiac output, heart not pumping blood as well- Challenge: resources sufficient to meet situational demand, associated with feelings of control and challenge - Creates a more efficient cardiac output, greater blood flow - Same pattern seen during aerobic exercise, representing efficient energy mobilization for coping. - These appraisals are associated with an increased cortisol response after being exposed to an acute stressor. 2. Can I Control it?- Control is an important regulatory of physiobiological responses. - Uncontrollable  our behavior or response won’t influence the outcome- Meta-analysis: uncontrollable stressors create an acute cortisol increase.- Job Control Experiment- Low levels of job control  higher blood pressure - Health Related Control Experiment: Asked kids with asthma how much control they feel over their health. - Low control led to an increased amount of cytokines (IL-4) that makes asthma worse and poor pulmonary function 3. Am I being evaluated? - Social self-preservation may also be just as important as physical - Threats to social self: loss of social esteem, social status, or social acceptance - Trier Social Stress Test - Evaluation vs. Non-evaluation conditions. - Both conditions elicit a cardiovascular response- Only evaluation elicits a stress response- Larger Audience magnified effects- Heart rate affected by just doing the task but the cortisol response is affected by the amount of people. - Social evaluation is the component that influences cortisol  Presence of inattentive confederate does not induce cortisol response. - Daily Life Threat - Participants reported experiences of social evaluation throughout the day - Higher levels of threat associated with a higher blood pressure. - Meta-Analysis: Stressors with Social Evaluation lead to acute cortisol increases- Lowest to highest: Motived performance with uncontrollability, motived performance with social-evaluative threat, motivated performance with social-evaluative threat and uncontrollability. - Lack of control + social evaluation leads to an increase in the pro-inflammatory response to stressManipulating Appraisals 1. Arousal - Reappraising arousal (feeling of being stressed), experimentally manipulate the feeling by telling participants that arousal is functional and adaptive which leads to beneficial effects on physiology and performance. - Experiment #1: Participants were in three conditions, reappraising their arousal to a stressful task as adaptive, ignore, or control group - Those in the reappraisal group showed a better cardiovascular response - GRE Experiment: Participants randomly assigned to reappraise their arousal to a practice test and scored higher on the actual test2. Stress - Telling people stress is good for them- Experiment: three groups; stress is enhancing, stress is debilitating, and control - Those who saw a video about how stress is enhancing had improved health symptoms and work performance. - Those in Debilitating condition had the most health symptoms and worst stress mindset, but a better work performance the post-test 3. Exercise - Housekeeper Study: Informed group vs. Control - Informed group was told that their regular daily activities met the CDC standard for daily exercise. - 4 weeks later the informed group perceived they were getting more exercise despite no change in behavior - Informed group also lost weight and saw improvements in blood pressure 4. Calories - Milkshake Study: the effect of your perceived caloric intake on ghrelin (hungry hormone that is released when the stomach is empty to induce sensation of hungry, suppressed with full) secretion- Two conditions: indulgent shake and healthy shake  both really the same calories - Steeper decline in ghrelin after shake in “indulgent” condition, which means they felt more full than the other group, also goes up higher in anticipation of the shake - Can eat the same exact thing and have a different physiological response. Summary - Changing appraisals has the following effects on physiology - Cardiovascular responses, performance, weight, blood pressure, ghrelin- No one knows the mechanisms that create these changes. Power Poses Experiment - Randomly assigned to high or low power poses - High: taking up more space, open limbs - Those in the high condition felt more powerful, were more likely to take risks in gambling, and had lower cortisol levels. Coping - Efforts to deal with demands taxing or exceeding one’s resources - Anything you do to mange your response to a stressful situation- May/may not be deliberate and cognitive, behavioral, or emotional Approach Coping - Designed to deal with situation and/or ones thoughts and feelings about it - EX: problem solving, planning, seeking social support - “I’ve been getting help and advice form other people” - “I’ve been taking action to make the situation better”Avoidance Coping - Designed to avoid situation and/or one’s thoughts and feelings about it - Ex: disengagement, denial- “I’ve been giving up trying to deal with it” Mental Heath - Avoidance strategies are helping for dealing with short term, unavoidable stressors  Cognitive avoidance led to lower anxiety for women undergoing mammography - Avoidance coping is bad in the long term - Avoiding thoughts and feelings around persistent stressors predicts elevated stress (cancer patients, coping with terrorist attacks) - Predicts poor behavioral outcomes like risky sexual behavior and lower medical regimen adherenceCoping in HIV Approach Coping Avoidance Coping - Increased positive affect - Decreased negative affect- Better health behaviors - Better physical health- Decreased positive affect - Increased negative affect - Worse