Naturalistic setting

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STRESS
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response on the illness or health status of the individual. Stress reactivity is thought
to be dispositional and may either be genetic or a result of prenatal or childhood
experiences.
Stress recovery: After reacting to stress the body then recovers and levels of
sympathetic and HPA activation return to baseline. However, there is great variability
in the rate of recovery both between individuals as some people recover more quickly
than others and within the same individual across the lifespan.
Allostatic load: Stress recovery is linked with allostatic load which was described by
McEwan and Stellar (1993). They argued that the body’s physiological systems
constantly fluctuate as the individual responds and recovers from stress, a state of
allostasis, and that as time progresses recovery is less and less complete and the body
is left increasingly depleted.
Stress resistance:
To reflect the observation that not all individuals react to stressors
in the same way, researchers developed the concept of stress resistance to emphasize how some people remain healthy even when stressors occur (e.g. Holahan and
Moos 1990). Stress resistance includes adaptive coping strategies, certain personality
characteristic and social support.
Stress reactivity, stress recovery, allostatic load and stress resistance all influence
an individual’s reaction to a stressor. They also all affect the stress–illness link. This is
described in Chapter 11.
MEASURING STRESS
Stress has been measured both in the laboratory and in a naturalistic setting and using
both physiological measures and those involving self-report.
Laboratory setting
Many stress researchers use the acute stress paradigm to assess stress reactivity and the
stress response. This involves taking people into the laboratory and asking them either to
complete a stressful task such as an intelligence test, a mathematical task, giving a public
talk or watching a horror film or exposing them to an unpleasant event such as a loud
noise, white light or a puff of air in the eye. The acute stress paradigm has enabled
researchers to study gender differences in stress reactivity, the interrelationship between
acute and chronic stress, the role of personality in the stress response and the impact of
exercise on mediating stress related changes (e.g. Pike et al. 1997; Stoney and Finney
2000).
Naturalistic setting
Some researchers study stress in a more naturalistic environment. This includes
measuring stress responses to specific events such as a public performance, before and
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