after an examination, during a job interview or whilst undergoing physical activity.
Naturalistic research also examines the impact of ongoing stressors such as work-related
stress, normal ‘daily hassles’, poverty or marriage conflicts. These types of studies have
provided important information on how people react to both acute and chronic stress in
their everyday lives.Costs and benefits of different settings
Both laboratory and naturalistic settings have their costs and benefits:1.The degree of stressor delivered in the laboratory setting can be controlled so that
differences in stress response can be attributed to aspects of the individual rather than
to the stressor itself.
2.Researchers can artificially manipulate aspects of the stressor in the laboratory to
examine corresponding changes in physiological and psychological measures.
3.Laboratory researchers can artificially manipulate mediating variables such as
control and the presence or absence of social support to assess their impact on the
stress response.
4.The laboratory is an artificial environment which may produce a stress response
which does not reflect that triggered by a more natural environment. It may also
produce associations between variables (i.e. control and stress) which might be an
artefact of the laboratory.
5.Naturalistic settings allow researchers to study real stress and how people really cope
with it.
6.However, there are many other uncontrolled variables which the researcher needs to
measure in order to control for it in the analysis.Physiological measures
Physiological measures are mostly used in the laboratory as they involve participants
being attached to monitors or having fluid samples taken. However, some ambulatory
machines have been developed which can be attached to people as they carry on with
their normal activities. To assess stress reactivity from a physiological perspective
researchers can use a polygraph to measure heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure
and the galvanic skin response (GSR which is effected by sweating). They can also take
blood, urine or saliva samples to test for changes in catecholamine and cortisol
production.Self-report measures
Researchers use a range of self-report measures to assess both chronic and acute stress.
Some of these focus on life events and include the original Social Readjustment Rating
Scale (SRRS, Holmes and Rahe 1967) which asks about events such as ‘death of a
spouse’, ‘changing to a different line of work’ and ‘change of residence’. Other measures244 HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY