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The Strong Psychological Situation

and Stress Manifestation in the


Academic Context.

PETREA GALINA.ULIM. 2018


SYNAPSE:
1. STRESS AND COPING – DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS
2. STRONG VS WEAK SITUATION
3. STRESS AND COPING MECHANISMS IN ACADEMIC
CONTEXT
4. CONCLUSIONS.
STRESS CONCEPTUALIZATION
Benjamir & Walz (1990) conclude that stress can best be understood as the
product of interaction between three elements:
 the environment (the organizational or social climate, interpersonal
relationships, operating procedures),
 the nature of the stressor (daily pressures or life threatening events),
 the individual’s vulnerability to stress (difference to coping styles, support
groups, health history values).
Mills (1982) defined stress as our inner reaction to things that happen to us
and demands that are placed on us. We all experience stress when we are
anxious, worried, shamed, or angry, whether the source of our feeling is
ourselves, some other person, or something that happens to us. We can deal
with stress adequately only when we consider both components of stress: the
external events and demands in our lives and our inner reaction to them.
LEVELS OF ANALYSIS OF STRESS
MODELS OF STRESS
 Systemic Stress Model by Walter Cannon and Hans Selye – the phsysiological,
mechanicist approach that sees stress as a SR (stimulus  response)
relation, of the organism to pressures, threat from the environment. Selye has
developed the theory of General Adaptation Syndrome – by which human body
responds to stressful events.
 Richard Lazarus has introduced an essential element in the stress
conceptualization and namely – the APPRAISAL – a cognitive evaluation that
the subject undertakes: primary evaluation – on the nature of the stressor and
how threatening it is on one hand and secondary evaluation which takes place
simultaneously – an evaluation of his own resources whether the stressor –
stressful event, exceeds his possibility of coping .
MODELS OF STRESS
 Stevan Hobfoll based his Model of Resource Conservation on Abraham
Maslow’s hierarchy of Motives and also on Albert Bandura’s social cognition
theory that states that people engage actively in their environment so as to
increase their chances to get gratification and rewards.
Stevan Hobfoll defines the psychological stress as: a reaction to the environment
which 1) presents a threat for losing resources; 2) as a result of loss of resources;
3) or a lack of gain of resource after having already invested in resources.
Equally a real loss as well as a imagined, potential one – are represented as
sufficient motives to cause stress.
There are four basic types of resources: Resource Objects; Conditions; Personal
Characteristics; Energy.
COPING WITH STRESS
Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman (1984) defined coping to be the constantly
changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal
demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person.
According to Stevan Hobfoll (1988), coping is one specific domain of activities for
resisting the vicissitudes of stress.
Moreover, the term coping in stress research refers to the set of behaviors we used in
our efforts to manage stressful situations, regardless of whether such attempts are
beneficial (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
Different individuals use different coping strategies, in addition to that different
problems lead individuals to use different coping strategies in different times. And
according to Buettner et al., (1995), coping is a process that it changes over time. A
person may use an emotion-focused strategy and then shift to a problem-focused
strategy or vice versa.
COPING THEORIES
 Esther Greenglass, Ralf Schwarzer, & Steffen Taubert, 1999 have developed a theory
and a coping inventory (7 scales, 55 items) based on Reactive and Proactive Strategies
of coping.
 Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman have elaborated the Ways of Coping
Mechanisms Questionnaire in 1980 with 8 subscales 66 items with two basic strategies
Problem –centered coping (cognitive, focusing on solving problems from external
side that are threatening and cause stress); Emotion –Centered coping strategy is
oriented on the internal resources of the subject, and managing his emotional states
to cope with the stress.
 Stevan Hobfoll 1994 elaborated the Strategic Approach to Coping Scale – D-
Dispositional and Situational SACS-S , with the final variant containing 52 items, 9
subscales which can be grouped into 6 fundamental strategies of coping:
Active/Passive; Direct/Indirect; Prosocial/Antisocial.
This one I chose to use in my research.
PSYCHOLOGICAL SITUATION
David Funder and John Rauthman are among the leading researchers in the domain of
the psychological situation, as previously the situation was the object of study of the
social psychology, sociology, but they brought the necessity of the concept into general
psychology so as to complete the theory of personality and behaviour.
From the Triade Personality-Behaviour-Situation, the personality is sufficiently studied
in psychology, the behaviour elicited by personality traits and motives, predictions, has
also received sufficient attention, as for the situation it used to be neglected, so that
they focus on the context and the PSYCHOLOGICAL SITUATION – where the
personality of the subject unfolds and acts – behaves in accordance with situational
affordances.
“Actual behavior occurs in a situation, or the aspect of the ecology that a person
perceives and reacts to immediately” (see also Murray, 1938, p. 40 and Lewin, 1936, p.)
PSYCHOLOGICAL SITUATION
Block & Block made a comprehensive classification of situations which includes three
basic levels:
 Physical environment properties – are readily observable, objective properties of the
environment: physiological signs of effort, stress, tension, affect, location, setting,
places.
 Canonic-consensual properties - shared knowledge or commonly detained. A party,
funeral, a conference, a lecture are situations based on a group consensus with a
corresponding behaviour and represented in the group vocabulary. The canonic
properties of the situation are built upon those physico-biological in the situation in
point, but the latter ones are less observable, are culture specific and derived from the
group.
 Functional – subjective properties – of the situation do not necessarily involve
knowledge shared by the group, these are only those to which the individual refers and
nothing more. These are called functional because these influence the individual
behaviour.
SITUATION ELEMENTS
John Rauthman’s - A situation contains cues which can be used to infer this
situation’s characteristics. To the extent that situations share similar levels and
profiles of characteristics, there may be classes of situations - 3Cs of the
situation. His conceptualization of perception of the psychological situation
includes five major components:
 Situation cues
 Concurrent information processing
 Person aspects
 Situation characteristics, and
 Behaviour.
STRONG VS WEAK PSYCHOLOGICAL SITUATION
Walter Mischel (1977) stated that situations that signal non-ambiguous, clear, cues will
lead individuals to perform uniform behavior independent of their personality. Mischel
(1977) claims that these “strong situations”
1. Lead everyone to construe the particular events in the same way,
2. Induce uniform expectancies regarding the most appropriate response pattern,
3. Provide adequate incentives for the performance of that response pattern and
4. Require skills that everyone has to the same extent” (Mischel, 1977, p.34, ).
For weak situations the same characteristics with opposite directions apply. Various
research on the strong situation hypothesis lead Mischel and Shoda to state that
behavior can be influenced by creating an environment that sends out non-ambiguous
cues, which lead to the paradigm of Person (P) x Situation (S) interactionism.
STRONG VS WEAK PSYCHOLOGICAL SITUATION
P x S interactionism implies to be a dynamic mechanism that lead individuals to
inhibit stable if… then… patterns of situation-behavior relationships.
This implies that if a strong situation occurs, then all individuals will perform
the same action. While if a weak situation occurs, then individuals will perform a
random action.
PROJECT DESIGN
The object of my study is the manifestation of stress and coping strategies in an
academic context – thus a formal framework – a strong situation per se with enforced
rules and happening in a consensual settled environment and adjusted setting in a
continuous interaction with others present with similar motives and aims. According to
the above described theory this can be characterized as a strong situation. Although a
canonical strong situation may become less stressful such as everyday class situation
where the rules of behaviour are clear and automatized, individuals – students interact
collaboratively towards accomplishing certain common goals but also pursuing some
individual subjective aims. I applied psychometric instruments – questionnaires to
confront the level and manifestations of stress during a normal practical lesson vs a Test
– Term exam. The instruments applied were in the first case – SACS –D. In the second
case I applied the TEST TAKING QUESTIONNAIRE – which measures different
emotions elicited by stress such as Tension, Worry, Bodily Symptoms, Self-Efficacy,
Test-Efficacy but also the SACS –S with the task to refer to the situation in point and
what they are experiencing.
Number of subjects – 20-20. Here are the results.
• T = Tension: a high sense
of distress or unease before
or during tests.
• W = Worry : engaging in
multiple cognitive or
thought-based symptoms of
anxiety, such as fear of
failing or negative self-talk.
• TI = Test-Irrelevant
Thinking: tendency to
become distracted by
thoughts or worries
unrelated to the test itself.
• B = Bodily Symptoms:
experiencing many physical
symptoms of anxiety, such
as headaches, nausea,
shaking, or sweating.
• Self-Esteem scale
• TEST EFFICACY SCALE
BEHAVIOUR MODEL
• Modelul de comportament al subiectului poate fi calculat după formula:
Mc (%) = (Nnx100):S, unde Nn este un număr, obținut pe fiecare subscală (n=1…9), S
este suma indicatorilor tuturor 9 susbcale.
Mc (%) = (Nnx100):S S=17.4
Mc = (3.6x100):17.4=20.6
• Modelul de comportament poate stimula sau obstrucționa succesul depășirii
stressului în dependență de Gradul de constructivitate a strategiei. Pentru a
determina Gradul de constructivitate a modelului de comportament se calculează
IC = 9.3:7.8 = 1.19
AP=9.3
PA=7.8

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