Cross-cultural variations in attachment

A day care center in Kibbutz Nachshon in Israel.

Today's powerpoint is here, which contains the results table from Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg's meta-analysis.

Personality and Stress

We introduced the role of personality in modifying the effects of stressors on health today. A number of different personality types with effects on stress related illness have been proposed, but the ones you need to be able to define and discuss research into are Type A, Type B (the opposite of Type A) and 'Hardy'.

Here is the presentation.

For next Tuesday you need to get your notes up to date on Life Changes and Daily Hassles, Workplace Stressors and Personality. Revise the details of Marmot et al's study of Workplace , Friedman and Rosenman's study of Type A / Type B personality and CHD and Kobassa's 'Hardy Personality' research.

There are several tasks set for you on Kerboodle, including a research task on Workplace Stress which is due to be completed and a presentation handed in (through Kerboodle) by Friday 3rd February.

Workplace Stress

We started today's lesson by tackling an exam question - 15minutes:

a) Outline the findings and conclusions of one study into the relationship between ‘life changes’ and stress. (6 marks)
b) What is meant by ‘hassles and uplifts’? (2 marks)
c) How can the idea of ‘daily hassles’ be used to criticise research into ‘life changes’? (2 marks)

We then introduced the concept of 'Workplace Stress'. Homework for next Tuesday is to bring notes on this section of your textbook including the studies by Marmot et al and Johansson et al.

Here is the presentation from the lesson.

Life Changes

We have moved onto the second section of our stress topic, looking at sources of stress. The first type of these we consider are 'life changes', sometimes called 'life events' - fairly big changes ranging from holidays up to the death of a spouse (husband or wife), and including 'good' and 'bad' changes.

Here is the presentation from the lesson.

Prepare for a question in today (Thursday's) lesson on Rahe et al (1970) - research using the SRRS (Social Readjustment Rating Scale - questionnaire on life change) to see if life change is correlated with illness, and the 'Hassles and Uplifts' approach to the causes of stress which may be more important...

The strange situation

The powerpoint listing the separate stages in the strange situation is here.

The key thing with this area is to make sure you know the difference between type A (insecure avoidance) and type C (insecure resistant). The insecure-avoidance category is characterised by children who tend to avoid social interaction and intimacy with others.

The insecure-resistant category (sometimes called ambivalent) characterises those who both seek and reject intimacy and social interaction. These children respond to separation from their caregiver with immediate and intense distress, but may resist being picked up on reunion whilst still trying to maintain proximity.

Bowlby's evolutionary theory of attachment

"Babies' smiles are powerful things, leaving mothers spellbound and enslaved. Who can doubt that the baby that most readily rewards his mother with a smile is the one who is best loved and cared for?" (Bowlby, 1957).

Today we discussed Bowlby's evolutionary theory of attachment. Bowlby believed that attachment was adaptive and promoted survival in two ways - to ensure the baby is cared for and also so that the child develops an internal working model on which to base future relationships (which can be traced back to Freud's ideas).

The baby has inbuilt social releasers which elicit caregiving - baby faces, noises etc, that prime the parents to care for them. Attachment needs to happen within a critical period for future relationships to function properly.

The sheet of keywords from today's lesson is here and you need to have a good understanding of them all. The powerpoint is here.

Stress, illness and the immune system

We began the lesson with this timed question:
"Outline two ways in which the body responds to stress." 8 marks AO1

It's now common knowledge that psychological stress can lead to poor health and a less effective immune system, but what research is this based on?

Selye's classic research with rats isn't directly named on the specification, so you won't be asked about it directly in the exam, but it's a useful study to know about, and provides evidence for two different stress response systems - here is the presentation.

What you do need to know is what the immune system is and how stress affects is, and you may need to describe and evaluate research into this. Here is a presentation on the immune system which looks at Kiecolt-Glazer (1995) - a study looking at wound-healing and cytokine levels in women caring for relatives with senile dementia.

You need to read and make notes about two other studies - Kiecolt-Glazer (1984) measuring natural killer cell (a type of white blood cell) levels in medical students during their exams - and Cohen, spraying cold viruses up participants' noses and asking them how stressed they felt. You also need notes on the meta-review of stress / immunse system research which provides strong evidence for a link.

We will meet a number of studies in this topic which look at the effects of stress on different aspects of health. These are the only ones that deal specifically with the immune system, and you need to use them for questions which refer to it.

Essay question for Friday 20th January:
"Describe and evaluate research findings relating to the link between stress, illness and the immune system." 6 marks AO1 + 6 marks AO2