Learning can also occur through relaxation. In order to reduce blood pressure the patient is told to relax, and this leads to changes in muscle tone and ANS activity. Relaxation leads to restoration of homeostasis, the body’s normal state of balance. Selye’s GAS model suggested that stress disrupts the body’s normal state, so relaxation helps the body to regulate the various physiological activities that are out of control, such as blood pressure.
Empirical support for biofeedback comes from Dworkin and Dworkin (1988) who successfully used biofeedback to teach sufferers of scoliosis (curvature of the spine) to control their back muscles and alter their posture. There are also reports of its usefulness with asthma, incontinence, anxiety, hypertension, migraine circulatory problems, irritable bowl syndrome, pain control, and bed wetting (Underhill 1999)
Biofeedback certainly works with voluntary responses. However, apparent changes in involuntary control may be due to relaxation and control of unused voluntary muscles. Attempts to replicate the work of DiCara and miller have never been as successful (Dworkin and Miller 1986). This kind of treatment is costly time consuming and requires effort and commitment, if these cant be given it will not work. On the other hand biofeedback is non-invasive, has virtually no side-effects, and can be effective over the long term.
Other physical methods of stress control include exercise as this improves circulation which strengthens the heart. Goldwater and collis (1985) found that exercise was positively related to decreased anxiety. Emotional discharge, expressing emotion through crying, anger or humour is also thought to help stress management.
The psychological approach
Stress inoculation therapy was proposed by Meichenbaum (1985). He proposed a form of therapy to protect an individual before dealing with stress rather than dealing with it afterwards. This is a form of cognitive therapy because it aims to change the way the individual thinks about their problem rather than changing the problem itself.
There are three main phases to this therapy. These are:
- Assessment, the therapist and patient discuss potential problem areas.
- Stress reduction techniques are taught such as relaxation using self-coping statements such as ‘stop worrying, because it’s pointless’.
- Application and follow-through, here a patient practices stress reduction techniques in role play, and then uses them in real life.
Meichenbaum (1977) compared stress inoculation with desensitisation (a form of learning therapy where patients learn to relax with their feared object). Patients had both snake and rat phobias, one of which was treated with one of the methods. Meichenbaum found that both methods were effective but stress inoculation also greatly reduced the non-treated phobia, showing that the patient had learned general strategies for coping with anxiety.
Stress inoculation therapy is good for coping with moderate stress but not as effective for severe stress. Not all individuals are able to use this method effectively
Kobassa (1986) suggested that people who were psychologically hardy find it easier to cope with stress.
Hardiness training consists of three techniques:.
- Focusing: people are often unaware they are stressed, so they should become more aware of the signs of stress, such as tight muscles.
- Reconstructing stress situations: think of a stressful situation and write down how it could have turned out better or worse.
- Compensating through self-improvement: find tasks that can be mastered. This reassures you that you can cope.
Sarifino (1990) claimed that people following such a program report feeling less stressed, and having lower blood-pressure than before. Some people find this sort of strategy doesn’t work. It requires considerable effort and determination which are the characteristics of a hardy person.
Lazarus and Folkman (1984) developed a transactional model of stress which emphasised the role of perception of stress. Coping with stress is more related to perception of an event rather than the event itself.
There are three forms of appraisal these are as follows
- Primary appraisal, here an event may be seen as irrelevant, positive, or stressful.
- Secondary appraisal, here we weigh up alternatives and likely outcomes
- Reappraisal, this is making use of the new information to reassess the situation and our responses to it. This emphasises the transactional nature of the model
.
Support comes from Lazarus et al 1965 who tried to show how situational factors affected the stress response. Using 66 students he performed a laboratory experiment. Participants were shown a stressful film called “Woodshop” it contained some scenes of accidents in a sawmill. There were three situations under which the film was shown.
- Situation 1: denial: participants were told that the people were actors, the events were staged and nobody was injured.
- Situation2: intellectualisation: They were asked to consider the film in terms of its value for monitoring safety at work.
- Situation 3: control: no instructions.
Stress was assessed by measuring participants GSR and heart rate while they watched the film. They were also asked at the end to evaluate how stressful they thought the film was.
In groups 1 and 2 they found lower physiological stress while watching the film and reported less after. From this they concluded the same event may be threatening or not, depending on how its contents are appraised. This can be used to explain individual differences in stress response to the same stressors.
The model is especially appropriate to human behaviour because it incorporates the role of appraisal in the stress response. A weakness is that the model is descriptive rather than explanatory.
