Biological Psychology Studies

Front 1

Effect of stress on the heart

Back 1

Krantz et al
LABORATORY EXPERIMENT INDEPENDANT GROUPS DESIGN
Method - 39 participants did one of three stress inducing tasks (A maths test, a stroop test or public speaking). There blood pressure and the extent to which there blood vessels around there heart contracted was measured.
Results - the greater the contaction of the blood vessels the larger the increase in blood pressure
Conclusions - Stress can hav a dirct influence on the heart, making cardiovascular dissorders more likely.
Evaluation - not a causal relationship, not everyone showed the same reaction, low validity, high reliability.

Front 2

Effect of Stress on the Immune System

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Kiecolt-Glaser et al
INDEPENDANT GROUPS DESIGN
Method - A punch biopsy was carried out on 13 women who cared for relatives with Alzheimer's diease. A control group also took part.
Results - Wound healing took on average 9 days longer for the careres.
Conclusion - Long term stress impairs the effectivness of the immune system to heal wounds.
Evaluation - Low reliabilits as the effects shown by the carers could be due to poor diet, lack of sleep etc, small sample for more reliable results repeats should be taken with larger groups.

Front 3

Relationship between Life Change Units score and Illness

Back 3

Rahe et al
CORRELATIONAL STUDY
Method - 2500 American navy seamen were given a form of the SRRS to complete just before they set sail on military duty.
Results - Higher LCU scores were found to be linked to be linked with a higher incidence of ilness over the next 7 months.
Conclusion - The stress involved in the changes that life events is linked to an increase risk of illness.
Evaluation - results are not representative of the population and can only be generalised to Americal Navy seamen. You cannot assume a causal relationship.

Front 4

Stress and Daily Hassles

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Kanner et al
CORRELATIONAL STUDY
Method - 100 adults completed a questionnaire each month which asked them to choose which hassles they had experienced each out of a list of 117. They then had to rate each hassle to show how sevre it had been for them This was repeated for 9 months.
Results - Certain assles ocured more frequently than others such as worrying about weight, family health an the rising cost of living. They found that those with high scores were more likely to have physical and pschological health problems.
Conclusion - daily hassles are linked to stress and health.
Evaluation - not a causal relationship, using questionnaires resulted in quntitive data which is good for making comparisons, demand characteristics and questionaires rely on participants recall being accurate.

Front 5

Lack of Control and Illness in the workplace

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Marmot et al
CORRELATIONAL STUDY
Method - over 7000 civil service employees working in London were surveyed. Information was obtained about their grade of emloyment, how much control they felt they had and how much support they felt they had.
Results - After 5 years those on lower employment grades who felt they had less control over their work were found to be more likely to have cardiovascular disorders.
Concluion - Beleiving u have little control over your work leads to work stress and the development of illness.
Evaluation - only looked at 'white collar' workers-biased sample, not causal relationship smoking was also possitively correlated with lack of job control this could have caued he ill health, questionnaires - socially desirable answers.

Front 6

Type 'A' Personality and Illness

Back 6

Freidman and Rosenman
Method - Approxiately 3000, 39-59 year old males were asseed for their personality characteristics, using interviews and observation. At the start none of them had CHD.
Results - Eight years later 257 of them had developed CHD. 70% of these were classed as type 'A' personality. These results wer also found hen the extraneous variables of weight and smoking were taken into account.
Conclusion - Type a personalities seem to be at a higher risk of of CHD.
Evaluation - Only having two personality types is too simplistic, not a causal relationship, biased sample so can't generalise results, social desirability bias.