Dissertation on Stress

Individual Difference in Response to Stress

Stress can be defined as a negative reaction to exogenous irritants accompanied by fear. It can also bring a feeling of loss, lack of control, confusion and aggression. Stress is manifested on both – physical and emotional levels. It can also touch mental abilities – stressed people can not concentrate on anything, lose ability to ratiocinate. Health problems often accomplish stress. Sometime people experience stress and other health problems, which follow it, but do not even know about that. Stress can be treated rather like a state of being than an illness and should be treated accordingly.

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There are different signs of stress, such as panic, suspicion and pain. It can be accompanied by feelings of aggression, anger and depression. Feeling of fatigue and suppression also can become often a signs of depression.

There are many reasons which can cause stress. Many changes in our life can cause stress. Any impact, even positive can become a reason of stress. In addition, stress can become a reason of many physical illnesses and psychological problems.

When a person experiences stress his most important living functions fall to lower levels, he tends to start using alcohol or drugs, suffers from insomnia and decreased concentration of memory and logical thinking, could even have constant headaches and nervous tic, some cases lead even to suicide attempts (Achmon 1989, 160).

Individual differences have very important influence on the stress level of an individual. As states Masters: “Two people may be affected quite differently by the same stimulus. This identifies differences in the physiological and psychological responses resulting from perceiving a situation as threatening or noxious… As a result of viewing people as cognitive creatures, a sociological approach sees human needs as shaping perceptions of situations and therefore as an important factor in understanding stress. Needs are learned and sustained through social encounters. Those who are unable to meet demands involving important needs experience stress.” (Masters 2002, 164).

Such factors as age, gender, ethnicity, genetic predisposition, history of trauma and abuse, personal history, copying skills, physical shape, and social support influence on the type of reaction to stress shown by different people. In addition, social and physical environment have very strong influence on human physiology and behavior. These factors have also a strong influence on the process of adaptation. Adaptation is one of core issues when we speak about dealing with stress. Good adaptation abilities give people more opportunity to fight stress. Adaptation ability can depend on age, genes, early development, present life style, past experience. All these factors taken together make core differences in the impact stress has on different individuals.

Turner, Beidel and Larkin give very bright examples of different reaction to stress in their article called “Individual Differences in Stress Responses”. They describe the reaction of two men after the Hurricane Andrew. Two men were in equal conditions after the hurricane. Their houses were ruined but nobody from their families was hurt. The first man cried and told that he had lost everything, while the second man was quite and said he was happy that all the members of his family were alive. 

Examples like that give very vivid illustrations how people of the approximately same age and social standing, under the same conditions can demonstrate completely different reactions to stressful factors. Scientists tried to define the measure of impact of stress on individual and bodily reactions on it.

They measure the way human body responds to stress and its ability to adaptation in “allostatic load”. The study of physical reactions should combine different sciences, such as biology, physiology, sociology and political science. “These fields provide a description and analysis of the social and cultural institutions and economic forces that affect individual human health. Specific examples of shared concepts and terminology are given to illustrate progress towards consilience in the study of socioeconomic determinants of health” (Turner, Beidel, Larkin, 2008).

There are many classifications of specific factors which influence attitude to stress. The most common classification divides individual difference variables to three groups. The first group includes demographic and historic development factors. These factors and stable during the entire life of an individual and can not be changed. The next group consists of psychological variables. These factors can be influenced and modified through the intervention within an individual behavior. The last group consists of social variables which are conditioned by the environment and can be changed in the other environment.

It becomes more and more evident, that for many people the place of their work or other social institutions became the main source of stress, which they later spread to other spheres of life, leisure and family. “Two people may be affected quite differently by the same stimulus. This identifies differences in the physiological and psychological responses resulting from perceiving a situation as threatening or noxious… As a result of viewing people as cognitive creatures, a sociological approach sees human needs as shaping perceptions of situations and therefore as an important factor in understanding stress. Needs are learned and sustained through social encounters. Those who are unable to meet demands involving important needs experience stress.” (Masters 2002, 165).

Despite all people are different and have different life conditions, but at the same time, there are common problems, which are typical for everybody. Most people express same time of stress at work and in the family. Unfortunately, most people react with stress and can not cope with pressure in the family and at the office. At the same time there are different factors, which make different people perceive stress differently.

For somebody his work would be the most important part of his life, somebody would risk his career development for the same of some family values.

Gender factor is one of the factors that can explain different reactions and responses to stress. Maternal care which is characteristic for the female behavior is responsible for the individual differences in stress. “Maternal care also influences the maternal behavior of female offspring, an effect that appears to be related to oxytocin receptor gene expression, and which forms the basis for the intergenerational transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity.

Patterns of maternal care that increase stress reactivity in offspring are enhanced by stressors imposed on the mother” (Turner 2008). For women, any problems connected with their family are more stressful than for men. Divorce or lost of child can lead to long-lasting depression among women. 

Women’s natural function is perpetuation of oneself and women’s response to stress can be explained by this factor. Men, in their turn, being aimed to make a successful career, are more fragile if they have problems in this sphere. The effect of stress in connection with professional sphere is greater for men than for women.

Stress in families is usually connected with the impossibility to combine different gender and social roles.

Gender is an important factor, which influences ability to meet stress and human reaction to it. About 80 % of people say that they mostly have stress because of lack of balance between work and family and about 32 % of working mothers are “highly-time stressed”, which is of course a substantial number (Clark 1983). There is a common source of stress, which is often associated with stress. This source of stress is a conflict between work and family. It is important to keep in mind that men and women react differently to this kind of stress. Besides not all families can afford some high-quality childcare. In the year 1995 there was a survey done, which proved that full-time working women in average have to spend seven days on personal and family issues, for men the number was only one day.

Age is another factor that forms our response to stress. People becoming older are more sensitive to different stressful factors. Aging itself is a stress for a person because becoming older the person is less energetic, active and lively. The person is not able to do what he could easily do early and it goes without saying that it affects his or her world perception and responses to stresses. Old people are sensitive to stresses and that is why they have more often nervous and heart diseases than in their youth (Agras 1982).

To sum up, stress is a negative reaction to the changeable surrounding that is usually followed by fear, anxiety and unstable inner state. Stresses are often caused by personal and job problems.

Unfortunately, these sources of stress have become a usual part of our lives. Individual differences easily explain different reactions and responses to stress. Every person has his own fears and obstacles in life and, so people are more predisposed to stresses and other are less. Individual differences include gender, age, personal features of character, life experience and events, life values, attitude to life and even profession, religion, family state and heredity. The most meaningful factors are gender, age and personal features. These factors influence human reaction to stress and condition abilities to cope with it.

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