Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Life Changes
- Research on life changes
- Using life changes to measure stress
- Holmes and Rahe
- Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)
- Difficulty of change measured in Life Change Units (LCUs)
- Based on 43 life events from an analysis of 5000 patient records
- Hypothesised that there was a positive correlation between number of life events and illness
- Both positive and negative change can cause stress
- Rahe et al
- Tested Holmes and Rahe's hypothesis
- Tested naval men over 6 months
- Found a positive correlation between LCU scores and illness scores of +11.8
- Recent research on life changes
- Michael and Ben-Zur
- Different life changes can have different effects
- Studied the life satisfaction of 130 men and women
- Half were recently divorced
- Increase in life satisfaction
- Half were recently widowed
- Decrease in life satisfaction
- Evaluation
- Positive and negative life
events
- SRRS suggests that any life changing event has the potential to damage as it entails readjustment
- Some suggest the quality of the event is important
- Uncontrolled changes are the most harmful
- Life changes and daily hassles
- Lazarus
- Suggests that major life changes are relatively rare and so daily hassles are the more significant source of stress
- DeLongis et al
- Found a greater link between ill health and daily
hassles
- Individual differences
- Life changes have different significance for different people
- Spurious relationship
- The relationship between life changes and illness has produced correlational data
- We can't draw causal conclusions