Life Changes (AQA A Level Psychology)

Life changes

• Life changes are any events (positive or negative) that cause disruption, such as moving house, getting married or becoming seriously ill

• Life changes can vary in their impact: while the end of a marriage or relationship may be devastating for one person it may be viewed positively by another

• When expected life changes do not occur - maybe a wedding is cancelled or a person does not get a place at university - this can also have a stressful impact

• The bigger the life changes and the more there are of them at any one particular time, the greater the adjustment needed and the greater the level of stress

Despite being a joyful life event, a wedding can also be very stressful.

Daily hassles

• While life changes include mainly big events that are perceived as important, daily hassles are those everyday irritations and annoyances, like being stuck in traffic, that irritate people constantly

• Many psychologists believe that life stress comes from daily hassles more than it does from life changes

• Daily hassles tend to repeat and accumulate, creating chronic stress and with that stress a heightened risk of serious illness

• Daily uplifts are events that raise spirits, such as meeting friends for coffee, and these help neutralise the harmful effects of hassles

The Monday to Friday commute in heavy traffic is an example of a daily hassle.

Research which investigates life changes and stress

• Jacobs and Charles (1980) found that children with cancer came from families who had experienced more life changes than children with other illnesses, suggesting that certain illnesses are more influenced by stress than others

• Sher (2004) suggested a correlation between daily hassles and increased cortisol (stress hormone) levels and that this increased cortisol may lead to depressive disorders in vulnerable individuals

Evaluation of life changes

Strengths

• There is strong evidence that both life events and daily hassles are positively correlated with stress and stress-related illness and so this helps people identify possible stressors early and plan how to deal with them

• Awareness of the link between daily hassles, life changes and stress could inform early intervention strategies to help reduce the escalation of stress and subsequent illnesses

Weaknesses

• Many studies into this topic are retrospective and reliant on the memories of participants who self-report, recalling illnesses and stressful life changes that occurred in the past, which may make the data unreliable

• Research looks at life changes and daily hassles separately, when the two may influence each other with the stressful effects of daily hassles increased if against the backdrop of a stressful life event like a death in the family

Link to Issues and Debates:

The argument that life changes result in stress and increase the chance of stress-related illnesses is an example of environmental determinism and does not take into account individual responses to stress, assuming instead that it is the life events and hassles themselves that are responsible, rather than  a person’s interpretation  of them as stressful. This also ignores the role of free will which would be when a person chooses to engage in some daily uplifts to counteract the stressful daily hassles they are experiencing.