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levels were higher in the one community in which alcohol was freely available

(Schmitt et al. 1995 ), and in one community epinephrine levels were elevated on

paydays, which corresponded with high levels of gambling activity that apparently

were experienced as stressful (Schmitt et al. 1998 ).

Studies of people undergoing culture change have utilized stress measures as a

means to ascertain how people cope with this change. A review by Jenner et al.

( 1987 ) showed that people who lived in traditional settings tended to have lower

epinephrine levels than people who were modernizing. James and coworkers

studied men in Samoa who were rapidly modernizing and compared men who lived

in rural villages with people living in the capital city of Apia. In Apia, participants

were either laborers who maintained fairly traditional home lives with exposure to

modern conditions during the workday, or sedentary workers or students who

experienced modernized conditions at both work and home. Results showed that
villagers averaged lower average epinephrine levels both at home and work than

urban men, and urban laborers had similar daytime but lower nighttime epinephrine

levels than the sedentary workers and students (James et al. 1985 , 1987 ), pre-

sumably because the laborers were only exposed to modernized environments

during the daytime while at work. A study among the Yakut in Siberia showed

higher stress levels, as measured by increased Epstein–Barr virus antibody levels, in

individuals with a greater level of lifestyle incongruity due to rapid culture change

(Sorensen et al. 2008 ).

The relation between stress and the culture change associated with moderniza-

tion depends upon specific attributes of the circumstances of change. In a study of a

rural Chinese population on Hainan Island, China, stress levels, as measured by

levels of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) antibodies, were increased in individuals whose

Percentage of times reported anxiety

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Z-score of diastolic blood pressure

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Filipino Amer

European Amer

% Reported Anxiety Z-score of Diastolic BP

Fig. 7.5 Ethnic differences between European Americans and Filipino Americans in percentage
of time anxiety reported, andZ-scores of diastolic blood pressure while doing household chores
(Brown et al. 1998 ; Brown unpublished data)

132 D.E. Brown