Although this experiment does prove the hypothesis that if you have control you are less stressed, it might not account for humans because the experiment was done on rats. Humans and rats have different behaviour patterns but they couldn’t do this on humans because it is unethical. This was a laboratory experiment which meant that it wasn’t set in real life and if it was set in the real world the results might have been different. They measured the immune system to test to see if they were more stressed.
An experiment which relates more to humans is what Lundberg did. He did a study of male passengers on a train and found out that in general as the train got more and more crowded stress levels increased even though all the passengers managed to get a seat. Passengers didn’t have control over where they wanted to sit if they got on the train later because there was less choice of seats so that meant that they were not in control as much and had to sit where there was a seat so they didn’t get a choice of seat.
The experiment was only looking at male passengers who used the train. They didn’t know much about the passengers because if passengers had done this journey day after day their stress levels wouldn’t be as high because they would be used to it but if they only do this journey once a month it would be more stressful for them. This was only done on males so it is gender bias. The good thing about it is that it was done on humans but because they knew they were being watched it might have made them more stressed. In general for males the less control they had the more stressed they were.
In traffic jams lots of people get stressed and beat their horn because they are frustrated and angry. There is nothing they can do about a traffic jam but stay there and wait. This gets most people frustrated and they aren’t in control of the traffic jam and they don’t know when they will get to their destination so their stress levels will go up because a traffic jam would make them late and delay all their plans.
One of the other experiments that helps prove that the role of control does effect stress levels is another animal experiment which again you wouldn’t be allowed to do now because of ethics and in the modern day you can’t do that to animals. There was an executive monkey and another monkey. The executive monkey could control the electric shocks by pressing the leaver but a yoked control was also restrained and had no control over the shocks and got shocks when the first monkey didn’t press the leaver. What happened was after 23 days the executive monkey died of an ulcer and the control monkey had no ulcers or any abnormalities.
This shows that the ulcers were caused due to psychological stress not physiological stress but it suggests that being in control is what creates the physiological stress. Like the rat experiment this was not done with humans but monkeys are fairly close to humans and again it is not set in a natural environment.
I think that to a certain extent you do get more stressed when you aren’t in control as you might have to rely on someone/something else. Control makes you feel more in power. From these experiments it shows that there is a link between control and stress but seeing as you can’t so the animal experiments to humans we are not sure that humans would act in the same way as the animals.
