Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Daily Hassles
- Hassles
- minor fustrations and
annoyances of everyday
life
- their emotional effects are fairly short lived
- if they accumulate over a period of time this could affect our well-being
- this could result in more serious stress reactions such as anxiety or depression
- research into it
- Bouteyre et al (2007) - investigated
reltationship between daily hassles and
mental health of students during transition period from school to uni
- 1st year psychology students at French uni completed hassles part of the HSUP and the Beck
Depression Inventory as a measure of any symptoms of depression that might be attributable
to the hassles of transition
- found that 41% of students studied suffered depressive symptoms and was a positive
correlation between scores on the hassle scale and the incidence of depressive symptoms
- study shows that transition is frequently fraught with daily hassles and that these can be
considered a significant risk factor for depression
- The Hassles and Uplifts scale (HSUP) (Delongis et al 1982) measures the
respondents' attitudes towards daily situations - instead of focusing on the
more highly stressful life events the HSUP provides a way of evaluating
postitive and negative events that occur in each person's daily life
- they claim that rather than major life changes, it is day-to-day hassels or
small uplifts that determine our overall levels of stress
- Uplifts
- positive events that occur in the course of the day
- they can counteract the negative effects of hassles and help lower
stress levels, improve our performance and self esteem
- Gervais (2005)
- asked nurses to keep diaries for a month, recording all
hassles at work & asked to rate their own performance
over same period
- at end of month - clear that daily hassles were found to
increase job strain and decrease job performance
- nurses felt that some of the uplifts (e.g. compliment from a patient)
counteracted negative effects of daily hassles
- as well as overcoming the stress associated with their daily hassles -
uplifts also improved their performance of the job
- Daily hassles Vs life changes
- daily hassles broadly accepted as comparable to
life changes as a significant source of stress
- in an Australian study (Ruffin 1993) daily hassles linked to
greater psychological and physical dysfuntion than major
negative life events
- evaluation
- a number of studies (e.g Ruffin 1993) have shown that daily
hassles provide a more significant source of stress for most
people than major life events
- explantion of this: an accumulation of minor daily stressors
creates persistant irritations, fustrations and overloads which
then result in more serious stress reactions such as anxiety
and depression (Lazarus 1999)
- most of the data from research on daily hassles is correlational -
means we cannot draw causal conclusions about the realtionship
between daily hassles and well-being
- individual differences: gender
- e.g. Miller et al (1992) found pets for females were
commonly associated with uplifts
- for males they were more likely to be seen as
hassles e.g. time and money