Chapter 5

Social Influences and Stress

- Peggy Thoits
1. The impact of stress on health is substantial
2. Exposure to it is unequally distributed in the population
3. Members of racial minority groups are burdened by additional stress
from discrimination
4. Stress can continue over the life course and contribute to the differences
in health between disadvantage and advantaged groups
5. The impact of stress is reduced when people have high levels of personal
mastery (control), self-esteem, and social support

Symbolic Interactionist Approach

- Mead
- Views individuals as a creative and thinking organism that can chose
their behaviors instead of reacting mechanically to the influence of social
processes
- People define the situations they are in and respond using their
definition
- Cooley
- Looking-Glass Self
1. We see ourselves in our imagination as we think we appear to the
other person
2. We see in our imagination the other person’s judgement of
ourselves
3. What we see in our imagination about how we are viewed by the
other person impacts our self-feeling (such as satisfaction, pride, or
humiliation)
- Stress can result from the failure of the other person to reflect a self-
image consistent with that intended by the individual
- Thomas
 - The understanding of a crisis resides in the individual’s definition of the
situation
- Rival definitions create a sense of uncertainty and disruption
- The same crisis will not produce the same effect uniformly in all people
- The response will result from an individual’s ability to compare a
present situation with similar ones in the past and to revise
judgement/action based upon past experience
- Crises lie not in situations but in the interaction between a situation and
a person’s capacities to meet it
- Goffman
- Dramaturgy
- For social interaction to be possible people need information
about other participants
- A person’s appearance, past experience with similar
individuals, the social setting, and the information a person
communicates about themselves through words and actions
- Impression Management
- Face
- The image of self that is projected by the individual
to other people
- Center of security
- View of the Self
- An image of an individual formed from the flow of
events in an encounter
- The self as a player in a ritual game
- Stress is induced when people fail at their performance

The Larger Society

- Durkeim
- Individuals are strongly integrated into society as a result of their
acceptance of community values
- Creates a strong social power over people
 - Constrained by “social facts” created by laws and customs
- Suicide
1. Egoistic Suicide
- People become detached from society and are overwhelmed
by the stress of being on their own
2. Anomic Suicide
- People are suddenly dislocated from where their norms and
values are relevant, removing the social control preventing
suicide
3. Altruistic Suicide
- People feel so strong integrated into a demanding society
that their only escape seems to be suicide
- The greater society is capable of creating stressful situations where
people are forced to respond to conditions not of their own choosing
- Brenner
- Economic impact on health
- Recessions causes waves of deaths as the stress manifests as
physical illnesses
- Provocative Hypothesis
- Economic downturns provoke mental disorders
- Uncovering Hypothesis
- Economic downturns uncover existing mental disorders
- Intervening variables can modify the results
- e.g. Social support acts as a buffer against stress

Stress and Health

- Cannon
- Health is not the absence of disease, but the ability of a person to
function effectively within a given environment
- Physiological Responses to Stress
- Fight or flight
- Seyl
 - General Adaptation Syndrome explains the physical impact of
stress
- Once stress progresses beyond the initial reaction, and
secondary stage of prolonged stress a person would become
“weathered” and prone to premature aging
- Defense mechanisms decline
- People can no longer respond to threats due to a decrease in physical
threats and social restraints
- Leaves the body physiologically mobilized for action, which
damages the body over time
- Biomarkers
- Clinical tests that can be used to compare physiological conditions
with interview responses
- Siegrist
- Cardiovascular disease in German blue collar and middle
manager works
- Effort Reward Imbalance Model
- High personal effort and low gains are associated
with increased risk of heart disease