his theory and resource loss is central to the idea of loss appraisal, for example in the
grief process (e.g. Lazarus and Folkman, 1984; Lazarus, 1999). His view is therefore
that the COR approach is ‘fundamentally unsound and fails to advance us beyond what
we know’ (Lazarus, 2001: 381). Others take a more moderate view. For example,
Schwarzer (2001) suggests that Hobfoll’s and Lazarus’ views differ in emphasis rather
than in fundamental principles. He argues that the difference lies in the centrality of
either objective or subjective resources. Thus Lazarus takes the view that objective
resources are simply antecedents, which lead to appraisals (subjective resources) that
are the direct precursors of perceptions of stress. In contrast, Hobfoll examines both
objective and subjective resources but emphasizes the former. Schwarzer (2001)
further suggests that the inclusion of the notion of resource investment and proactive
coping introduces a forward time perspective, which opens up new research questions.
Thus, he suggests that this theory represents an advance on the earlier theories rather
than a major paradigm shift.
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE GET ILL IN RESPONSE TO STRESS
AND OTHERS DO NOT?
It is often claimed that stress can cause all sorts of diseases including cancer. In fact
consideration of the life events literature suggests that the evidence linking stress and
many diseases is far from clear. Evidence is much clearer that experiencing certain
stressors can have negative impacts in terms of increasing risk of coronary heart disease
and can impact on immune functioning and day-to-day deterioration in health
outcomes (e.g. Everson et al., 1996a, 2001; Cohen, 2005). However, not everyone
who feels stressed becomes ill, distressed or experiences stress-related disruptions to
their normal health behaviours. In fact, researchers now believe that certain individuals
are more vulnerable to the effects of stress due to differences in their psychological as
well as biological make-up. As you will see in Chapter 5, the effects of stress can be
buffered by having a good social support network of friends and family and being well
equipped to cope with different stressful situations. Personality also plays an important
role in the stress process and will be covered in detail in Chapter 6. A number of
personality traits have been found to predispose people to respond negatively to stress
(e.g. type A personality, neuroticism, perfectionism). This is another example of the
stress-diathesis paradigm. For example, individuals who have perfectionistic tendencies
are more likely to experience serious psychological distress after each stressful encounter
as it represents a chance for them to fail to meet their high standards (see O’Connor,
O’Connor and Marshall, 2007). Therefore, as you can imagine, people who are
perfectionistic may be more vulnerable to suffering from the negative effects of stress
in the future.
As well as psychological differences, researchers have identified biological differences
in the way people respond to and recover from stressful situations. It has been
proposed that certain individuals generally may have a large physiological response to
stress (this process is known as stress reactivity), while for others the body may take
much longer to return to normal once the stressor has passed (this process is known
as stress recovery). In both cases, over time, the body is likely to experience greater
62 STRESS AND HEALTH