426 CHAPTER 11
to pay for the copy machine, try to read your friend’s handwriting, and so on—all stress-
ful situations. Actually, all the events listed on both the SRRS and the CUSS are stressful
not just because some of them are emotionally intense but also because there are so many
little details, changes, adjustments, adaptations, frustrations, and delays that are caused
by the events themselves. The death of a spouse, for example, rates 100 life change units
because it requires the greatest amount of adjustment in a person’s life. A lot of those
adjustments are going to be the little details: planning the funeral, deciding what to do
with the spouse’s clothes and belongings, getting the notice in the obituaries, answering
all of the condolence cards with a thank-you card, dealing with insurance and changing
names on policies, and on and on and on. In other words, major life events create a whole
host of hassles.THINKING CRITICALLYWhat aspects of college life do you find most stressful? What makes these particular ones more
stressful than others?
The response entered here will be saved to your notes and may be
collected by your instructor if he/she requires it.SubmitHASSLES Although it’s easy to think about big disasters and major changes in life as
sources of stress, the bulk of the stress we experience daily actually comes from little
frustrations, delays, irritations, minor disagreements, and similar small aggravations.
These daily annoyances are called hassles (Lazarus, 1993; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
Experiencing major changes in one’s life is like throwing a rock into a pond: There will
be a big splash, but the rock itself is gone. What is left behind are all the ripples in the
water that came from the impact of the rock. Those “ripples” are the hassles that arise
from the big event.
Lazarus and Folkman (1984) developed a hassles scale that has items such as “mis-
placing or losing things” and “troublesome neighbors.” A person taking the test for has-
sles would rate each item in the scale in terms of how much of a hassle that particular
item was for the person. The ratings range between 0 (no hassle or didn’t occur) to 3
(extremely severe hassle). Whereas the major life events of Holmes and Rahe’s scale
(1967) may have a long-term effect on a person’s chronic physical and mental health,
the day-to-day minor annoyances, delays, and irritations that affect imme-
diate health and well-being are far better predictors of short-term illnesses
such as headaches, colds, backaches, and similar symptoms (Burks & Martin,
1985; DeLongis et al., 1988; Dunn et al., 2006). In one study, researchers found
that among 261 participants who experienced headaches, scores on a scale
measuring the number and severity of daily hassles were significantly better
predictors of headaches than were scores on a life-events scale ( Fernandez &
Sheffield, 1996). The researchers also found that it was not so much the num-
ber of daily hassles that predicted headaches but rather the perceived severity
of the hassles.
Research has indicated that hassles may also come from quite different
sources depending on a person’s developmental stage (Ellis et al., 2001). In
this study, researchers surveyed 270 randomly selected people from ages 3 to- The participants were asked to check off a list of daily hassles and plea-
sures associated with having “bad days” and “good days,” respectively, as
well as ranking the hassles in terms of frequency and severity of impact. For
children ages 3 to 5, getting teased was the biggest daily hassle. For children
in the 6 to 10 age group, the biggest hassle was getting bad grades. Children 11 to 15 years
old reported feeling pressured to use drugs, whereas older adolescents (ages 16 to 22)
hassles
the daily annoyances of everyday life.
Children in the preschool-age range find teasing by their peers
to be the biggest daily hassle they experience. This boy may
be upset because he has been teased by the other children.
What other hassles might a child in this age range experience?