Stress & Stress Management:Dealing with the Demands of Life and Work

Prepared for UHS 2062 lectures, UTM Skudai, Malaysia. srsiwok@ gmail.com

Stress influence our behaviour and thus our relations with others at work

Stress has serious health implications if not properly managed.

To properly manage stress, it has to be identified, understood, and learn ways to handle it.

Introduction

What is stress? Stress is the psychological and physical

reaction to certain life events or situations (Aamodt, 2007)

Stress is the non-specific responses of the body to any demand made on it. (Hans Selye, 1930 in Huffman, 2007).

Stress is the general term describing the psychological and physical response to a stimuli that alters the body’s equilibrium (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984 in Kosslyn & Rosenberg, 2006)

The stimulus that throws the body out of its equilibrium state is called a stressor.

The body’s response to a stressor is the stress response.

This response consists of the bodily changes to help us cope with the stressor. Eg: the production of endorphins and enkephalins when we get a puncture wound.

Stress and stressor

The body is nearly always in a some state of stress, whether pleasant or unpleasant, mild or severe (Huffman, 2007).

A total absence of stress means a total absence of stimulation , which would eventually lead to death!

When stress is beneficial, it is called eustress. The bad or harmful one is called distress. Because health psychology has been chiefly

concerned with negative effects of stress, the word “stress” usually refers to the harmful stress.

Stress and stressor

Types of stressors

Acute Chronic

Physical Injured in a car crash Having cancer; being underfed

Psychological Working against a deadline

Chronically pressured at the workplace

Social Being humiliated Chronic isolation; overcrowding

Categorisation of stressors

Duration of Stressors

Eustress is the type of stress you experience right before you have the need to exert physical force. The feelings of stress is converted into positive energy and motivates the person.

Eustress prepares the muscles, heart, and mind for the strength needed for whatever is about to occur.

Eustress

Eustress can also apply to creative endeavors. When a person needs to have some extra energy or creativity, eustress kicks in to bring them the inspiration they need.

An example is the anxiety you feel before taking the exam, without the anxiety, you might not have the motivation and energy to spend the necessary time to study.

Eustress

Some major stressors

Sources of stress

Life changes

Hassles

Occupational stressors

Frustration

Conflict

Cataclysmic events

Eg : the tsunami (2004), hurricane Katrina (2005)…. they occur suddenly and affect many people simultaneously.

Devastating effect to all parts of the victims’ lives.

Survivors may develop a prolonged and severe stress reaction known as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) .

Cataclysmic events

The largest source of chronic stressor is work or occupation.

Researchers documented that stress at work can cause serious stress at home.

Occupational stressor can be grouped under two broad categories: job characteristics and organizational characteristics

Work

Three job characteristics cause stress: ◦role conflict◦role ambiguity ◦role overload

Job characteristics

Role conflict occurs when our work expectations and what we think we should be doing don’t match with the work we actually have to do.

Role conflict also occurs when an employee has competing roles or conflicting roles.

Role conflict

Role ambiguity occurs when an individual’s job duties and performance expectations are not clearly defined

Role ambiguity

Role overload develops when individuals either feel they lack the skills or workplace resources to complete a task or perceive that the task cannot be done in the required amount of time

Role overload

Organizational characteristics that are likely to cause stress include factors such as person-organization fit, organization rules and policies, supervisory relationships and organizational change.

Organizational stressors

Organizational stressor

Person-organizational fit refers to how well factors such as your skills, knowledge, abilities, personalities, values etc match those of the organization.

Besides the “work related” fit, there are other areas in which compatibility is critical for an employee to feel “fit” into an organization and perform well, such as the philosophy of the organization.

Person-organizational fit

A major contributor to organizational stress is change in the work place: such as downsizing and restructuring

Change

Co workers and customers can be a major source of stress.

Relations with others

Meta analyses by a number of researchers found that an important source of employee stress is the perceived use of organizational politics.

Organizational politics

Noise Temperature

Stressors in the physical work environment

Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe believed that change of any kind that required some adjustment in behaviour or lifestyle could cause stress.

Life changes

Hassles are little problems of daily living, which are not significant in themselves but sometimes pile up to become a major source of stress.

Some hassles are shared by all, such as time pressure , problems with family and co-workers and financial concerns.

Reactions to hassles may vary- compared to women, men tend to have more impairment to their immune system and increased heart rate in response to hassles ( Delahanty et al, 2000, in Huffman, 2007)

Hassles

Conflict occurs when we have to make a choice between at least two incompatible alternatives.

The amount of stress produced by the these forced choices depends on the complexity of the conflict and the difficulty involved in resolving it.

Conflict

Frustration is a negative emotional state generally associated with a blocked goal.

The more motivated we are, the more frustration we experience when our goals are blocked.

Frustration

Impairment of immune system functioning There is evidence that stress can affect the

growth of some cancerous tumors, due to:◦ The inability of the NK cells to work well to

prevent the spread of tumors cells when the immune system is suppressed.

◦ Stress facilitate the growth of capillaries feeding into the tumor.

Consequences of Stress

Heart disease Eliciting negative emotions such as anger,

fear, sadness and helplessness. When the stress is chronic, it can lead to

despair, helplessness and depression. Depression appears to be associated with

greater likelihood of heart disease. Likeability to engage in health-impairing

/self-destructing behaviours.

Consequences of Stress

Organizational consequence of stress

Chronic stressors on the job, physical and mental exhaustion , a sense of little accomplishment add up to burnout .

Burnout is a state of being overwhelmed by stress.

Symptoms : lack of energy, frustration , tension, dreading to come to work and may seems to display detachment toward people.

Burnout

Absenteeism and turnover

Drug and alcohol abuse

Other consequences

Exercise Laughter Diet Stop smoking Sleep Support network Self empowerment Improve coping skills

Management of Stress

Easing the child-care facilities:◦On site child-care facilities◦Voucher system

Easing the elderly –care burden Providing rest through paid time off. Easing the daily-chore burden:

◦Flexi hours ◦Increasing the no. of annual leaves◦Providing essential services on site

Stress reduction intervention related to the life/work issues

There appear to be individual differences in the extent to which people are susceptible to stress (predisposed to tolerate stress) {Aamodt, 2007}.

One of the way to explain the differences is that some personalities are tend to respond to stressors negatively than others. These include individuals with Type A personalities and neurotics (Aamodt, 2007)

Predisposition to stress

These are individuals characterised mainly by achievement, striving , impatience, urgency, hostility and anger.

Type A personality tends to be multitasking, fast-paced individuals( who talk and walk fast) seem to always on the go, achievement-orientated, competitive and place work before pleasure.

The characteristics of Type A personality become exaggerated when experiencing stress (Schaubroeck, Ganster & Kemmerer, 1994 in Aamodt, 2007).

Type A personality

Type A employees under stress are more likely than others to exhibit high blood pressure and high levels of stress-related hormones.

Type A individuals are slow to recover after a stressor is removed (Schaubroeck, Ganster & Kemmerer, 1994 in Aamodt, 2007)

Type A personality

Type B individuals are more laid-back. When a stress-producing event occurs,

Type B personality are better at keeping things in perspective and use positive ways to deal with it. Type B personalities are more relaxed and more agreeable.

Type B personality

Several personality traits such as pessimism, negative affectivity, reduced hardiness and low self-esteem fall under the general trait call neuroticism.

Neurotics are anxious, often depressed , pessimistic and lack of hope, perceived events as being stressful.

Neurotics are also more likely to have negative reactions to stressful events than are people who are more emotionally stable (Conard & Matthews, 2005 in Aamodt, 2007

Stress and neurotics

Most models of stress construe personality as having one or more roles in the stress process: ◦ Direct effect on stress outcome: example- anxious

people may be more tense in all kinds of situations, which can lead to psychological and physical health problems.

◦ A moderating effect in the stress or strain relationship; which means that certain personality characteristics are more affected than others by an aspect of their work situation.

◦ A direct perceptual effect. Personality may have impact on a person’s perception of what a job is like .

Personality and stress

Studies have shown that people with high anxiety levels suffer more from role conflicts than do people who are more flexible in their approach to life)

Anxiety-prone individuals experience role conflict more acutely and react to it with greater tension than people who were anxiety-prone (.

Personality and stress

Studies by Sparks and Cooper, 1999 and Cooper et al., 2001 (in Arnold, 2005) have shown that the locus of control, the hardy personality and Type A behaviour are moderators between the stressors and strains in the stress process; that is, personality or lifestyle factors can mitigate the effects of a stressor, as well as eliminating or minimising the stressor itself.

Personality and stress

Hardy personality refers to the a combination of internal locus of control, self-confidence and motivation {especially to recover from disappointments} (Arnold, 2005).

Personality and stress

Locus of control refers to the extent to which a person believes s/he has control over his/her life. In many circumstances having an internal locus of control (i.e believing one is in control ) is helpful because it encourages a person to do something about the stressful situation.

If there is really nothing that a person can do (really beyond his/her control), having a high internal locus of control may increase a person’s frustration.

Personality and coping

Aamodt, M.G (2007). Industrial /organizational psychology. An applied approach. Belmont, CA: Thomson.

Huffman, K ( 2007). Psychology in Action (8th ed). New Jersey: Wiley

Arnold, J. (2005). Work Psychology. Understanding Human Behaviour in the WorKplace. England: Pearson Education Ltd

Kosslynn, S. M. & Rosenberg, R. S (2006). Psychology in Action (3rd. Ed). Boston: Pearson International

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