478 ChapTER 13 Emotion, Stress, and Health
aspect of emotional experience, including which emotions are
considered appropriate or wrong, and what people feel emotional
about.• Culture strongly influences display rules, including those gov-
erning nonverbal body language, that regulate how and whether
people express their emotions. Emotion work is the effort a
person makes to display an emotion he or she does not feel but
feels obliged to convey.
• Women and men feel the same range of emotions, but gender
rules shape differences in emotional expression. North American
women on average are more expressive than men, except when
it comes to expressing anger at strangers. But both sexes are
less expressive to a person of higher status than they, both sexes
will do the emotion work their job requires, and some situations
foster expressiveness in everybody. Moreover, gender differences
vary across cultures.
The Nature of Stress
• The relationship between emotions and stress is both physiologi-
cal and psychological. Chronic negative emotions can become
chronically stressful, and chronic stress can create negative
emotions.
• Hans Selye argued that environmental stressors such as heat,
pain, and danger produce a general adaptation syndrome, in
which the body responds in three stages: alarm (during which
the body mobilizes a fight-or-flight response), resistance, and
exhaustion. If a stressor persists, it may overwhelm the body’s
ability to cope, and illness may result.
• Modern research has added to Selye’s work. When a person is
under stress or in danger, the hypothalamus sends messages to
the endocrine glands along two major pathways. One activates
the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system,
releasing adrenal hormones from the inner part of the adrenal
glands. In the other, the hypothalamus initiates activity along
the HPA axis. Chemical messengers travel from the hypothala-
mus to the pituitary, and in turn to the outer part (cortex) of the
adrenal glands. The adrenal cortex secretes cortisol and other
hormones that increase energy. Excess levels of cortisol can be-
come harmful in the long run.
• When the stressors of poverty and unemployment become
chronic, they can increase people’s stress levels and increase
their chances of illness. But responses to stress differ across in-
dividuals, depending on the type of stressor and the individual’s
own genetic predispositions.
• Health psychologists and researchers in the interdisciplinary
field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) are studying the interac-
tion among psychological factors, the nervous and endocrine
systems, and the immune system (particularly the white blood
cells that destroy harmful foreign bodies, called antigens).
Chronic stress can even shorten telomeres, protein complexes at
the end of chromosomes that determine cell life.
• Psychological factors affect responses to stress. Realistic opti-
mism, conscientiousness, and having an internal locus of control
improve immune function and also increase a person’s ability to
live with ongoing problems and recover more speedily from ill-
ness. Cultures differ in the kind of control they emphasize and
value: primary control, trying to change a stressful situation, or
secondary control, learning to accept and accommodate to a
stressful situation.Stress and Emotion
• Researchers have sought links between emotions, stress, and
illness. Chronic anger, especially in the form of cynical or an-
tagonistic hostility, is a strong risk factor in heart disease. Major
depression also increases the risk of later heart disease. No link
has been found between personality traits and cancer.
• The effort to suppress negative emotions, worries, secrets, and
memories of upsetting experiences can become stressful to the
body. Two ways of letting go of negative emotions include con-
fession and forgiveness. The goal is to achieve insight and un-
derstanding, distance oneself from the bad experience, and let
go of grudges. Forgiveness can be harmful, of course, if it keeps
people in violent or abusive relationships.Coping With Stress
• The first step in coping with stress and negative emotions is to
reduce their physical effects, such as through meditation and
exercise. The second is to focus on solving the problem (prob-
lem-focused coping) rather than on venting the emotions caused
by the problem (emotion-focused coping). A third approach is to
rethink the problem, which involves reappraisal, learning from
the experience, and comparing oneself to others.
• Social support is essential in maintaining physical health and
emotional well-being. A touch from a supportive partner calms
the alarm circuits of the brain and raises levels of oxytocin,
which may result in reduced heart rate and blood pressure.
However, friends and family can also be sources of stress.
Couples who quarrel in a hostile and negative way show impaired
immune function. Giving support to others is also associated
with health and hastens recovery from traumatic experiences.Psychology in the News, Revisited
• We may not always be able to control the physiological arousal
produced by stress or intense emotions, but we generally are
able to decide how to behave when we are upset. Coping with
stress does not mean trying to live without pain or problems. It
means learning how to live with them.Taking Psychology With You
• Ventilating anger when you are angry often backfires, making
both sides angrier and the problem worse. Constructive alterna-
tives include cooling off before saying or doing anything; not
taking a disagreement personally; finding the right verbal and
nonverbal ways of making your complaint understood; and think-
ing about how to express anger to get the results you want.