IB 139 Lec 14 Appraisal

• The events of our lives flow through a psychological filter
• How we appraise an event influences how much stress we experience and how effectively we respond

(take screenshot)

• Inject 2 groups w/ epinephrine (adrenaline)
• Tell one group to expect side effects; tell the other there are none
• Send them to waiting room which has one other person (a confederate) who is acting either euphoric or irritated
• Observe the subject

• Subjects told to expect effects from the injection such as racing heart, body flush, rapid breathing felt little emotion
• Subjects told that the injects would have no effect 'caught' the apparent emotion of the person in the room... happy w/ the euphoric person, testy from the irritated person

The exact same physiological arousal was experienced as VERY different emotinos depending on how it was interpreted and labeled

• Those w/ personality type A
• More than smoking, high cholesterol levels, and overweight people

• Cardiologists in the 1950's
• Meyer Friedman and R.H. Rosenman

• Impatient
• Competitive
• Hostile
• Low self-esteem
• Hard time relaxing

• Upholstery guy noticed he was replacing the chairs in the cardiology unit the most
• Noticed wear and tear on the edges of the seats and arm rests

• Coronary Heart Disease
• Disease in which lipid depositions, called plaque, builds up inside the coronary arteries
• These arteries supply oxygen-rich blood to your heart muscle
• Develop atherosclerosis
• Narrows and restricts the passage of blood

A condition when plaque builds up in the arteries

Occurs over many years

• High hostility = high mortality
• Vice versa

Pessimistic adult men are twice as likely to develop heart disease over a 10 year period

• Predictable stressors tend to have less impact than unpredictable ones
• Especially when the stressors are intense and occur for relatively short periods

• Perception of control mediates the effects of stressors
• The belief that a stressor is controllable can reduce the impact of the stressor
• Health consequences of a loss of control

• 3 rats: Executive, Subordinate, Control
• Executive: Shocked, but Escapable stress (ES) - Control
• Subordinate: Shocked, but Inescapable stress (IS) - No control rat
• Control: No shock - No stress rat

• Rats exposed to IS, but not ES:
• Later fail to learn to escape in a different context
• Less active in the presence of aversive stimuli
• Less agressive and less dominant
• Less interactive socially with both adult and juvenile conspecifics
• Eat and drink less
• Neophobic (afraid of new things/novelty)
• However:
• ES and IS induce the same magnitude and duration HPA axis response (at the level of corticosterone, ACTH, and CRF)

• Want to know whether previous experience with a stressor can influence learning
• Previous experience with shock vs. No previous experience
• Similar experiment as rats but w/ dog where there is escapable stress, then becomes inescapable

• Affects ability to learn
• Uncontrollable bad events -> Perceived lack of control -> Generalized learned helpless behavior

A disruption in motivation, affect, and learning following exposure to noncontingent (uncontrollable) outcomes

A constellation of behavioral changes that follow exposure to stressors that are not controllable by means of behavioral responses

• Contingency
• Cognition
• Behavior

Refers to the objective relationship between actions and outcomes

For helplessness to occur, there must be no relationship between a person's actions and the outcome he or she experiences

Refers to how individuals perceive the contingency, explain it, and extrapolate from this understanding

• The perception of uncontrollability (noncontingency) may be accurate or inaccurate, but once it occurs individuals attempt to explain it.
• From this explanation they make extrapolations about the future and, when learned helplessness occurs, they expect that their behavior won't influence future outcomes

Refers to the observable effects of being exposed to uncontrollable outcomes

• Most often, the effects of learned helplessness on behavior involves a sense of giving up, a behavior incompatible with new learning
• The response is also accompanied by negative emtions such as anxiety and sadness

Weaker attempts to control the situation or even failure to do so at all

• Gave them one age-appropriate and one hard math test
• Documented their response patterns to failure- Learned helpless and Mastery oriented

• Involved criticizing their abilities upon encountering failure
• Overestimating the number of problems they did not solve
• Expressing considerable self-doubt
• Negative feeling (anxiety, sadness, etc.)
• Performance deteriorated
• They were less likely to solve problems after experiencing failure even when the problems were identical to those solved before the failure

• Mood remained positive
• Maintained the belief in their ability to perform well

• Challenge
• Learning opportunity
• Not as indictment of their ability

The behavioral and neurochemical consequences of exposure to the event

Experience of control over a potent stressor

Control-induced activation of ventral medial prefrontal cortical (vmPFC) inhibitory control over brainstem and limbic structures

• Experience of control alters vmPFC in such a way that later uncontrollable stressors now activate the vmPFC circuitry
• Leads to inhibition of stress-responsive limbic and brainstem structures
• Ex. Stressor resistance

• Dorsal Raphe Nucleus
• Largest serotonergic nucleus
• Located in brainstem

Provides a substantial proportion of the serotonin (5-HT) innervation to the forebrain

• Mediates stress control
• Inhibits stress response

Results in inhibition of 5-HT release

Positive stress

• Motivates, focuses energy
• Short term
• Perceived as within our coping abilities
• Feels exciting
• Improves performance

• Upside down curve
• Eustress located at peak of behavioral efficiency

Something that mitigates the stress effects

Resilience can respresent an active, adaptive process and/or the absence of pathological responses that occur in more susceptible individuals

• Studies have shown that people who believe stress is having an adverse effect on their health suffer more serious health problems
• Another study found that those who believed stress affected their health "a lot or extremely" had 50% greater risk of dying from heart attack

• Reality testing
• Error monitoring

Top-down guidance of attention and thought

• Hypothalamus
• Striatum
• Inhibition of inappropriate actions

• Amygdala
• Regulating emotion

• Following stress in young animals, there is reversal/recovery of the dendritic remodeling
• Following stress in aged animals, there is no recovery of the dendritic remodeling effects