Introduction
Stress has been one of the leading challenges that humans face in their everyday life. Many psychologists have identified a factor that leads to physical, mental and emotional setbacks in growth and development of an individual. As a result therefore, a lot of studies have been conducted in this field. These studies aim at identifying the main causes of stress and how they can be controlled. This will ensure that humans achieve the goals, targets and dreams that have set in their lives.
Stress is a great hindrance to success in a person’s life. It can lead to ill-health; physical, emotional or both. Have you ever been in a situation in the work place or had a family crisis that led to elevated stress levels? High stress levels have been directly associated with certain illnesses such as ulcers of the stomach, insomnia, persistent headaches, anxiety and so on. Stress is major hindrance to activities that we are involved in daily. It can affect the ability of an individual to perform his roles and duties at work, the manner in which an individual relates with others within the societal context and most importantly, the ability of an individual to perform well in education.
To narrow down on the diverse nature of stress, this paper shall focus on one of the mechanism that has been identified as a possible solution of controlling stress levels in individuals. This mechanism is known as self-affirmation. To test on its validity and effectiveness, the mechanism was tested within the context of health and education. Health and education are very sensitive in nature. As a result, stress may affect the mental, physical, emotional and cognitive abilities of an individual hence affecting his/her performance and stability in a negative way. Due to this fact, several studies that have been conducted suggest that self-affirmation can be applied to control stress levels that in turn will increase the overall health condition and performance of an individual.
To expound on this theory, this article critically analyzed two empirical studies. The first study was conducted by Creswell et al (2005) and focused on affirmation of personal values while the second study was conducted by Dutcher (2006) and focused on boosting of performance through self-affirmation. Integrating these studies together clearly brings out the application of self-affirmation in education and how this concept can be used to improve the performance of individuals and reduce stress levels of individuals.
Stress and Health
In various occasions, stress has been labeled as a source of illness to man. This conception has led to the development of measures to relieve stresses on the day-to-day activities. Some of the illnesses that have been linked to stress include migraines, hypertension, chronic fatigue, depression, acid reflux disease and many more as indicated in figure 2 below. Studies that have been done concerning stress and attempts to link it to overall health status in the long-run and the past life experience of individuals have proved to have mishaps. One of the mishaps is that stress in itself is not a single variable that can easily be quantified but it is made up of several independent variables. Many researchers do not consider it but rather, they assume that stress can be taken as a single variable. As a result, they fail to include several steps (Creswell et al, 2005).
According to Creswell et al (2005), stress progressively develops from an array of physical and mental disorders that have accumulated within an individual with time (p.1). In response to this suggestion, they developed a theory that suggested that affirming to personal values might act as a buffer to the growth and development of stress. In this respect therefore, the stress levels of an individual can be controlled in such a way to avoid it developing to adverse levels. To test this theory, the following two research questions were used:
- Does an intervention on personal values buffer physiological and psychological levels of stress within an individual?
- Does the disposition of available resources have any effect in the affirmation of stress levels in an individual?
The study had 85 participants all of whom were undergraduate students. Their ages ranged from 17-33 years. Before the commencement of the study, all the participants were identified as Asian, Caucasian, African-American, Latino and so on. Furthermore, they undertook a medical test prior to the commencement of the study to detect whether any one of them had suffered from a medical condition.
All these participants were involved in a stress challenge that took place in a laboratory. This challenge aimed at measuring the cortisol responses to stress. These levels were to vary depending on the nature and extent to which each participant will affirm to stress. First, the participants listened to an audio tape that clearly explained the instructions of the experiment. From here, they were divided into two groups; value-affirmation group and a control group. Regardless of the group, each participant was given a questionnaire to fill. Here, they were to explain their thought and feelings towards the value that they had selected and rate it on a point scale that ranged from 1-3.
In addition, they were expected to prepare a speech mentally and describe how stressful this process was. To evaluate this process, they would rate the difficult in creating the speech on a seven-point scale. Finally, the participants gave their speeches, each lasting for five minutes. To put them under pressure, time was counted in seconds with the alerts of the last few seconds coming up more frequently. After this, their saliva was collected and analyzed for cortisal.
The results that were gathered for the study showed that participant who had initially affirmed to their values had lower cortisol levels as compared to the control group. They therefore had lower stress levels. Dispositional self-resources acted as a buffer to physiological and psychological stress. Cortisol from the saliva was a good indicator of the level of stress since it has a direct relationship with the neuroendocrine system (Creswell et al, 2005). As a result therefore, an individual who is under stress will produce high amounts of the substance as compared to another who is not under stress. From this study therefore, self affirmation is a reliable buffer to reduce the stress levels of individuals.
On the other hand, Dutcher (2006) conducted a study on university students that focused on the effects of laboratory-test performance of intelligence on self-affirmation. To explore further on the works that had been done by previous Creswell et al (2005) on the topic and to prove their theories, this study aimed at answering the following research questions:
- Does self-affirmation have any effect in the attitudes and perceptions of individuals especially those related to defensive responding?
- Does the acceptance of threatened messages from an individual increase his/her performance?
In this study, participants were given an intelligence test immediately after completing a writing test. An experienced examiner offered the this test. It was tedious and had a strict time limit. This aimed at putting the participants under pressure and at the same time exhaust their physical, mental and emotional abilities. Finally, the examiner communicated negative results to all the participants. They were all told that they had performed below average.
After this, all the participants filled a questionnaire that was used to measure how they perceived their negative results. This was used as a perquisite of their acceptance of bad news hence controlling stress via self-affirmation. This therefore showed the manner in which these individuals and hence the entire population would take in bad news and adapt to the conditions to ensure that they get the best out of the situation.
Practical Solutions
It may appear as if it is impossible to control the levels of stress since some of the factors that cause it are permanent in nature. Some of the sources of stress found in the studies include the high bills and fees to pay, heavy workload, meeting of strict deadlines and so on. All these factors keep on recurring in the lives of people. It is therefore critical for individuals to develop mechanisms that will enable them to cope with stress. By doing so, they will be able to accomplish the tasks and duties that have been vested to them (Dutcher, 2006). A day will always have a limit of 24 hours so it is less likely that the amount of time available will ever be the solution to the problem. The stresses that come about because of family responsibilities may not be solved by running away from them because they will always be demanding.
It is important to know that the victims of stress have a lot more control over the situation than they might think. Studies have shown that the simple realization that the victim is in control of the situation is a big step towards managing stress. Stress management entails controlling what goes on around you and not letting it control you. It requires someone to take control of his/her emotions.
Through stress management, one would be able to get a balance in life. One will be able to set aside time for his or her work, get time with the family and friends, have time to work out the relationship and time to have fun. One would also have the capacity to work under pressure and control the situation rather than letting the situation to take control.
One big step towards managing stress is the identification of the source of stress. This is not always an easy task since the source of stress might not be that obvious. Some might have misguided thoughts about situations and brand it as their source of stress while in reality, they are actually the problem themselves. To identify the actual cause of stress, one has to study his perceptions, excuses and behaviours closely (Dutcher, 2006)
From identifying this cause, it is also important to accept this fact and formulate means through which you can deal with them. Better yet, it is also important to have people around you who will be there for you at your “lows” in life. These people provide emotional support and this greatly helps in increasing the hopes for success for the person. This is true to the saying that, a problem shared is a problem half-solved. Such people help a lot especially when self-esteem is the problem. Their encouragement gives strength to the victim and enables him or her to go through the situation.
Conclusion
Stress has a direct effect on health and well-being. This may be in form of both physical and emotional health but both have a connection. Daily stressing situations may come about as a result of the overwhelming workload at the workplace or some family situations. Stress may lead to low self-esteem that subsequently causes diverse effects to individuals depending on how they react to the situation. Stress has been proven to be one of the causes of ill-health in the workplace and people are supposed to know how to deal with them lest they affect their performance.
It is important to look for help in form of emotional support whenever one is feeling stressed about a situation since emotional support helps a great deal. Those who obtain emotional help are less vulnerable to illnesses caused by stress than those who do not sort for help. When you take time to work on your emotional health, then your body will reciprocate and you will have perfect health.
Additional studies that might be interesting to conduct in the future may be the determination of the effects of stress on the performance at the workplace. Since a person’s health and general well-being is a determinant of a person’s performance at work, then stress would greatly affect the performance. A suitable number of participants should be selected from different companies or organizations and it would be important to consider people of different ages and races to avoid biasness.
Test Yourself
- Stress has been linked directly to cases of illnesses. (True or false). True.
- Nothing can be done about the stress levels one has since most of the sources of stress such as high bills might be there to stay. (True or False). False.
- Stress is a great hindrance to a person’s success and can lead to both physical and emotional illnesses. (True or False). True.
- An increase in the daily hassles causes a decrease in general health and mood of a person. (True or False). True.
References
Creswell, D. J., Welch, W., Shelly, T., Sherman, D., Gruenewald, T., & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16, p. 846-851.
Dutcher, J. M (2006). Improving Performance on a Creativity Task via Self-Affirmation. Health Psychology, 28, p. 554-562.