Social Psychology in Action

1. Social Psychology Entering: Health psychology
Social Psychology :
Social psychology is about understanding individual’s behavior in social context.
Baron, Byrne and Suls (1989) defines Social psychology as
“The scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior in
social situations.”
It therefore looks at human behavior as influenced by other people and the social context in
which this occurs.
Health Psychology:
“Health psychology is relatively a new subfield of psychology that studies the psychological
factors related to how people stay healthy, why they become ill and how they respond when they
become ill.”
Social psychologists also interested in health related issues and study how the social issues
contributes in the illness.
Social problem influence the health.
Stress and Health:
“Stress is an unpleasant state of arousal that arises when we perceives that the demand of a
situation threaten our ability to cope effectively.”
Nobody knows the precise extent of the problem, but stress is potent killer. Regardless of who
you are, when you were born, or where you live, you have doubt experienced stress.

2. For example : losing your job and looking for work, living in a high crime neighborhood and
caring for a loved one who is sick are examples of stresses that influences our health.
There are two questions that are relevant to the health and wellbeing:
1) What causes stress?
2) How does stress “get into” the body?
What causes stress?
There are different causes of stress or stressors and three major categories are discussed here:
1) Catastrophes
2) Major life events
3) Daily hassles.
Crisis and Catastrophes:
Natural disasters and other catastrophic events can have harmful and serious long term effects of
on mental and physical health.
Natural disaster can devastate entire populations the scarring effects of large scale disasters are
without disputed. Based on their review of 52 studies , found that high rates of psychological
disorders ____ such as anxiety, phobias, depression, alcohol abuse, and somatic complaints
___are common among residents of areas that have been hit by the catastrophic events.
Disasters such as flood, hurricanes, and earthquakes can cause serious consequences on the
mental and physical health of people. Wars also impact on the health of persons as in World War
2 Posttraumatic stress disorder is identified in population of that time. PTSD has enduring

3. symptoms such as recurring anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, flashbacks, and social
withdrawal.
Even war can traumatize civilian population as well. People with PTSD suffer from
psychological and physical symptoms long after the event is over. Soldiers exposed to combat
often suffer from PTSD.
Major Life Events:
 Early research suggested that all change is stressful.
 However, more recent studies suggest that only negative events are harmful.
Some people are lucky enough to avoid major catastrophes but nobody can completely avoid
stress. Indeed, change itself may cause stress by forcing us to adapt to new circumstances.
Major life events includes;
 Death of spouse
 Divorce
 Marriage
 Imprisonment
 Job loss
 Pregnancy
 School transfer
 And even vacations
 Lockdown

4. These events produce stress in the life of persons and impact on their both physical and mental
health.
Micro stressors: The Hassles of Everyday Life
 The most common sources of stress are minor everyday hassles.
 Constant noise, job pressure, exam pressure and living in shared space are all stressful in
this regard.
How Does Stress Affect the Body?
 Selye coined the term stress upon observing that different stressors produce similar
physiological effects on body.
The General Adaptation Syndrome
 The body respond to stress in three stages alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
 The stress response is designed for acute emergencies, not for the constant long term
stress that human often experience.
What Stress Does to the Heart?
 Stress is the major risk factor in coronary heart disease (CHD).
 Early research suggested that the hard driving Type A personality, also called coronary
behavior pattern, and is associated with CHD.
What Stress Does to the Immune System?
 The immune system contains specialized white blood cells called lymphocytes that detect
and destroy foreign substances in the body.

5.  Laboratory and field research shows that the stress affects the activity of these cells,
sometimes resulting in a weakened immune response.
 Stress can “get into” the immune system by causing people to behave in unhealthy ways
or by triggering the release of stress hormones that suppress immune cell activity.
The Links between Stress and Illness
 Stress weakens the immune system, so people under stress are more likely to catch a cold
when exposed to a virus.
 There may also be a link between negative emotional states and serious diseases such as
cancer, but the evidence is less strong.
So it is clear that our day to day social issues can causes serious consequences in the life of
humans and also these social issues have great impact on the physical and mental health of
humans such as different traumas psychological disorders, medical problems like cancer, heart
attacks or diseases, blood pressure etc.
Social psychologists take interest in health psychology to study how our day to day stresses
impact on the person’s mental and physical health.
References:
1. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S.A.(1963). Vicarious and imitative learning. The Journal
of Abnormal and Psychology, 67(6), 601.
2. Murchison, C.(1935).A handbook of Social Psychology.
3. McLeod, S.A.(2007).Social Psychology.SimplyPsychology.
Kassin, S.(2011).Social Psychology(8th ed.).Wadsworth;wads