In conclusion to this study it was suggested that examination stress reduces the function of the immune system, leaving people vulnerable to illness and infections. It s also suggested that psychological variables affect the immune function such as the stress of life events and feelings of loneliness. These are long-term stressors and may leave the individual vulnerable to the added effect of short-term stressors for example exams.
A strong conclusion cannot be drawn about a cause and effect relationship because it was a correlational study. Generalizations should be made with cautions and considerations; this is because only natural stressors were used so it had ecological validity.
Another study so assess in terms of the question would be the ‘executive monkey’ study by Brady et al. this study was preformed to investigate whether the stress of receiving electric shocks would lead to stress-related illness in monkeys and whether this would change with the degree of control over the shocks. The findings of this study where that the monkeys on this schedule could have avoided not all shocks. After 23 days of the ‘executive monkey’ being shocked he began to die due to stomach ulceration; this is usually caused by stress. The monkey who received the shocks but could not avoid them or have any responsibility of the shocks at all remained in a healthy state.
The conclusions of this study are that it wasn’t the shocks that were severely stressful. The critical factor was associated with avoiding the shocks. Brady concluded that not having control over the shocks was the particular stressor in the study, as the executive monkey had more and more severe stomach ulceration than the other monkey.
This study is criticised for the generalization. This is because Brady used monkeys to compare the results to human behaviour and monkeys may respond to stress in a different way as they have a different physiology to humans. This study is unethically and could not be repeated today. This study was also poorly controlled because Brady chose to use the most active monkeys as the executives. The executive monkeys were generally more active than the yoked group (monkey’s who got shocks without being able to avoid them); this could have made the monkeys more sensitive to the stress of the shocks. Both groups should have been made up of monkeys that were equally active.
To evaluate this I would say that suppression of the immune system may not necessarily lead to illness, disease and infection if the immune functions remain in a healthy normal range. Research evidence only suggests that there is a link between stress and the immune system and in some cases this is because of suppression of the immune system.
