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 SR (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