Invitation to Psychology

ChapTER 13 Emotion, Stress, and Health 463

significant neural responses to overhearing par­

ents’ enraged quarrels. Babies are extremely sensi­

tive to the emotional tone of the voices they hear,

and anger has a particularly powerful and dis­

turbing effect on areas of their developing brains

involved in emotion, reactivity to stress, and emo­

tion regulation (Graham, Fisher, & Pfeifer, 2013).

Because work is central in most people’s

lives, the effects of persistent unemployment can

threaten health for people at all income levels,

even increasing their vulnerability to the com­

mon cold. In one study, heroic volunteers were

given either ordinary nose drops or nose drops

containing a cold virus, and then were quaran­

tined for five days. The people most likely to get

a cold’s miserable symptoms were those who had

been underemployed or unemployed for at least a

month. As you can see in Figure 13.4, the longer

the work problems lasted, the greater the likeli­

hood of illness (Cohen et al., 1998).

Nonetheless, people’s responses to stress vary

according to their learning history, gender, preex­

isting medical conditions, and genetic predisposi­

tion for high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity,

diabetes, or other health problems (Belsky &

Pluess, 2009a; McEwen, 2000, 2007). This is why

some people respond to the same stressor with

much greater increases in blood pressure, heart

rate, and hormone levels than other individuals

do, and why their physical changes take longer

to return to normal. These hyperresponsive indi­

viduals may be the ones most at risk for eventual

illness.

The Immune System: PNI. LO 13.11 Researchers

in the growing field of health psychology (and its

medical relative, behavioral medicine) investigate

all aspects of how mind and body affect each other

to preserve wellness or cause illness. An interdis­

ciplinary specialty with the cumbersome name

psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI for short, investigates

psychoneuroimmunol-

ogy (PNI) The study of

the relationships among

psychology, the nervous

and endocrine systems,

and the immune system.

One result of HPA axis activation is increased
energy, which is crucial for short­term responses
to stress (Kemeny, 2003). But if cortisol and other
stress hormones stay high too long, they can lead
to hypertension, immune disorders, other physi­
cal ailments, and possibly emotional problems.
Elevated levels of cortisol also motivate animals
(and presumably humans, too) to seek out rich
comfort foods and store the extra calories as
abdominal fat.
An understanding of the cumulative effects of
external sources of stress may partly explain why
people at the lower rungs of the socioeconomic
ladder have worse health and higher mortality
rates for almost every disease and medical condi­
tion than do those at the top (Adler & Snibbe,
2003). In addition to their lack of access to good
medical care and reliance on diets that lead to
obesity and diabetes, people in poverty often live
with continuous environmental stressors: higher
crime rates, discrimination, fewer community ser­
vices, run­down housing, and greater exposure to
hazards such as chemical contamination (Gallo &
Matthews, 2003).

Watch the Video Special Topics: Health
disparities at MyPsychLab
Children are particularly vulnerable to the
stressors associated with poverty or parental mal­
treatment and neglect: The more years they are
exposed to family disruption, chaos, and instabil­
ity, the higher their cortisol levels and the greater
the snowballing negative effect on their physical
health, mental health, and cognitive abilities in
adolescence and adulthood. By the time they are
adults, they have an elevated risk of cardiovascular
disease, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and early
mortality (Evans & Kim, 2012; Miller, Chen, &
Parker, 2011). The harmful effects of these envi­
ronmental stressors may even begin in infancy. An
fMRI study of the brains of 6­ to 12­month­old
infants, taken while the babies were sleeping, found

Alas, the same stress hormones that help in the short run can have unwanted long-term consequences.

© CATHY 2000 Cathy Guisewite. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.