Psychology in Action

Tag: stress

  • Acute vs. Chronic Stress: Can it ever be both?

    In the field of health psychology, there is still much debate as to what constitutes an acute stressor versus a chronic stressor. The importance of this clarification is crucial for researchers in this field, because stress is a key factor in many areas of research including coping processes, health behavior, disease progression, and psychoneuroimmunology among…

  • Solving the problem of adverse childhood stress

    Solving the problem of adverse childhood stress

    Recently an article in the New York Times caught my eye. It was about something called “toxic stress” and its effect on children. Exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACE), like abuse, neglect, and domestic violence, has long term impacts on a child’s psychological and physical well-being. These negative experiences can induce what researchers at the…

  • Bossing stress away

    Imagining the stereotypical executive doesn’t exactly conjure up the image of a zen-like state. Instead, we tend to associate leadership roles with too many demands and not enough time to meet them—in essence, a pretty stressful lifestyle. After all, managers typically have to juggle more responsibilities and contend with more personalities than do their subordinates.…

  • Stress Affects Risk Taking Differently for Men and Women

    by Andrew Sanders and Kate Humphreys Making decisions can be a difficult task. How do we choose to get from point A to point B? Does our decision change whether we are running late for an important engagement? Does stress facilitate our decision making, and if so, does it matter whether we are trying to…

  • Know When to Put on Rose-Colored Lenses: When Bias is Useful

    The idea of “positive illusions” is one that has been popular in social psychology since Taylor and Brown published their 1988 paper, “Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.” Simply put, positive illusions are biased perceptions of reality that are thought to be good for mental health. For instance, studies have shown…

  • Does stress make you sick? What we know about stress and the immune system

    How does stress impact your health? That question has been studied intensely by psychoneuroimmunology researchers for over 30 years.

  • How Does Early Life Stress Affect Health Across the Lifespan? — Professor Shelley Taylor, UCLA

    How does early life stress affect health across the lifespan? This question has intrigued our research team for many years. People who experience early life stress, in the form of poverty, exposure to violence, noise, and other stressors, or who experience a harsh early family environment in the form of conflict-ridden, cold non-nurturant parenting, or…

  • Childhood adversity and disease

    Mounting evidence has demonstrated long-term negative physical and psychological health effects of stressors experienced in early childhood (Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman, 2002). But as health psychology researchers, what we’re interested in is why. How is it possible that something that happened in childhood could affect your health 50 or 60 years later? What are the…

  • Possible link between poverty and health

    About a year ago I went on a field trip to the California Science Center to dissect cow eyes with a class of third graders. I am a mentor for a 3rd grade student through an organization called I Have a Dream (IHAD). I was awestruck by how smart, funny, adorable, and happy these children…

  • Gene expression difference in lonely versus socially integrated people

    Psychoneuroimmunology is a field you may not have heard of before, but if you break it down it’s pretty clear what the field studies: psych is for psychological, neuro for neuroendocrine (read: hormones), and  immunology for immune system. So it’s a field that studies how the mind effects the body. And specifically, how stress effects…