Understanding the have-knots: The role of stress in just about everything

What’s more, the confirmation that the mind directly affects the body can work as much in our favor as it does to our detriment, as the personality-and-stress research above indicates.

As Carol Dweck, Stanford University, has argued, personality is mutable. In theory, if our outlooks and beliefs about ourselves can be changed, so can our vulnerability to life’s slings and arrows. Relaxation techniques such as meditation and yoga, for example, have been confirmed to quell stress demons.

Even if you are a determined workaholic glued to your cell phone or a fearful and angry urban neurotic, stress-reduction methods are readily available to cope with stress in the short term and even alter perceptions of stressors in the long term. The bottom line: Stress is not inevitable.

Current Research on Stress:

At the University of Chicago, APS President John Cacioppo and Louise Hawkley have studied the health effects of social isolation, an increasingly common malady in the modern world. Among their findings are that lonely older adults show more arterial stiffening and higher blood pressure than their nonlonely counterparts and that the association between loneliness and blood pressure increases with age.

In middle-aged and older adults (but not young adults), loneliness is associated with higher levels of epinephrine in the blood, and lonely people of all ages show elevated levels of cortisol. By desensitizing the mechanism whereby cortisol turns off more cortisol production, the social isolation frequently experienced by older adults may hasten physical decline. Lonely individuals of all ages also have poorer sleep than nonlonely people and therefore get less of sleep’s essential restorative benefits.

Humans and other social animals particularly seek the company of others when facing threats — both for safety and for social support. The general affiliative response — what Shelley Taylor, UCLA, has called “tending and befriending.” Oxytocin rises during times of separation or disrupted social relations. Just as the familiar “adrenaline rush” of epinephrine induces the familiar fight-or-flight reaction, it is oxytocin that causes us to desire company and social togetherness.

It may be especially important in females, reflecting their different reproductive and survival priorities from those of males — i.e., caregiving (tending offspring) and lessening social tensions through friendly overtures (befriending).

Author Contact: Eric Wargo

The full article appears in the December 2007 issue of the Observer, the monthly magazine of the Association for Psychological Science. For a copy of the article or magazine please contact Katie Kline at .