Behavior, Health, and Environmental Stress PDF
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Behavior, Health, and Environmental Stress Behavior, Health, and Environmental Stress Sheldon Cohen Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Gary W. Evans and Daniel Stokols University of California at Irvine Irvine, California and David S. Krantz Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Bethesda, Maryland Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Behavior, health, and environmental stress. Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. 1. Medicine and psychology. 2. Environmentally induced diseases. I. Cohen, Sheldon, 1947- . [DNLM: l. Behavior. 2. Environment. 3. Stress. Psychological -etiology. WM 172 84186] R726.S.B38 1986 616.07'1 86-480 ISBN 978-1-4757-9382-6 ISBN 978-1-4757-9380-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-9380-2 First Printing-April 1986 Second Printing-June 1991 © 1986 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1986 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher For our wives-Mary Miller, Merrie Wilent, Jeanne Stokols, and Marsha Douma-and our children Tristan Evans-Wilent, Eli Stokols, Michael Douma, and Della Elizabeth Krantz. This book is also dedicated to David C. Glass, whose teaching and research significantly influenced our in tellectual perspective. Finally, this volume is a tribute to the collegiality and friendship among the four authors, which, despite the demands of the project, sustained our efforts to pro duce something of lasting value. Preface Eight years ago, four psychologists with varying backgrounds but a common in terest in the impact of environmental stress on behavior and health met to plan a study of the effects of aircraft noise on children. The impetus for the study was an article in the Los Angeles Times about architectural interventions that were planned for several noise-impacted schools under the air corridor of Los Angeles Interna tional Airport. These interventions created an opportunity to study the same chil dren during noise exposure and then later after the exposure had been attenuated. The study was designed to test the generality of several noise effects that had been well established in laboratory experimental studies. It focused on three areas: the relationship between noise and personal control, noise and attention, and noise and cardiovascular response. Two years later, a second study, designed to replicate and extend findings from the first, was conducted. The experience of conducting the Los Angeles Noise Project and the varied experiences as active scientists in the fields of environment, health, and social psychology we have had since its completion have provided us with a broad and in depth perspective on stress and human well-being. This volume is our attempt to summarize and pass on some of what we have learned during this period. It includes critical reviews of research on environmental stress and control, cognitive perfor mance, and health; discussions of methodological issues in the study of environ mental stress, including many practical issues often not raised in print; the presenta tion of two theoretical approaches (cost-of-coping and contextual analyses) that we feel are essential in understanding the effects of environmental and psychosocial stresses in the everyday lives of people; and data from the Los Angeles Noise Project, presented in the context of each of the preceding discussions. The volume has multiple goals and is directed at multiple audiences. The targeted audiences include those actively investigating the effects of stress on be havior and health, interested researchers in related fields, professionals and pol icymakers interested in the effects of environmental stress, and graduate students in psychology, sociology, and epidemiology. The research reviews (Chapters 3, 4, & 5) provide state-of-the-art information for policymaker and researcher alike. Poten tially, our analysis of the costs of coping (Chapter 1) could help organize a broad literature on stress and coping and help direct future research in the stress field. The contextual analyses (Chapter 6) are designed to sensitize researchers to the impor tance of context in stress analyses and provide an organization to aid in future vii viii Preface contextually based research. We have also made a special attempt to describe the important issues in designing and evaluating correlational field research both as a teaching tool and so that the uninitiated could appreciate (and criticize) the work we present (Chapter 2). Finally, the data from the noise project help clarify many of our arguments and answer and raise a number of questions about the stress and coping process. We owe a great deal to the institutions that helped fund this research. An initial grant-in-aid was received by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues that allowed us to get the project started in time to take advantage of the natural intervention. Subsequent grants were received from the National Science Foundation (BNS 77-08576 and BNS 79-23453), the National Institute of Environ mental Health Sciences (ES0176401 OBR), the University of Oregon Bio-Medical Fund, and the Focused Research Program on Stress at the University of California at Irvine. We would like to thank Sheryl Kelly, Laura Martin, and Laurie Poore for assistance with various aspects of this project. We also appreciate the expert tech nical accomplishments of AI Murphy, Nick Garshnik, and Fran Renner. Sybil Carrere, David Glass, Richard Lazarus, Ed Lichtenstein, M. N. Palsane, and Ronald Kessler provided comments on specific chapters; we sincerely appreciate their help, and note that it is we and not they who are responsible for any errors or misinterpretations. Finally, we are indebted to the children, parents, teachers, and administrative staff of the schools participating in this research. Without their interest and cooperation, this research program would not have been possible. SHELDON CoHEN w. GARY EVANS DANIEL STOKOLS DAVID S. KRANTZ Contents Chapter 1. Stress Processes and the Cost of Coping 1 Plan of the Book 2 Models of Stress 2 Effects of the Coping Process 7 On Studying Children under Stress 22 Making the Most of This Volume 23 Chapter 2. Correlational Field Methodology in the Study of Stress 25 Designing Naturalistic Studies of Environmental Stress 25 Basic Requirements for Sound Field Research 30 Los Angeles Noise Project Studies 35 Chapter 3. Personal Control and Environmental Stress 47 Personal Control 4 7 Control and Environmental Stressors 58 Learned Helplessness 68 Los Angeles Noise Project: Control and Environmental Stress 87 Methods, Results, and Discussion 88 Conclusions 98 Chapter 4. Environmental Stress and Health 103 Psychophysiological Mechanisms in the Study of the Effects of Stress on Health l 03 Psychosocial and Other Environmental Risk Factors l 07 Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Children ill Noise and Health 113 Population Density and Health 123 ix X Contents Air Pollution and Health 129 Los Angeles Noise Project: Blood Pressure 134 Methods, Results, and Discussion 135 Conclusions 140 Chapter 5. Environmental Stress and Cognitive Perfonnance 143 Experimental Studies of Stress and Human Performance 143 Field Studies of Noise and Performance 152 Theories of Stress and Human Performance 157 Los Angeles Noise Project: Cognitive Processes 169 Methods, Results, and Discussion 170 Conclusions 181 Chapter 6. Contextual Analyses of Environmental Stress 185 The Emergence of a Contextual Perspective in Psychology 186 Assumptions and Strategies of Contextual Research 188 Strategies for Delimiting the Effective Context of Environmental Stress 195 Applying Principles of Contextual Analysis to Empirical Research on Stress 206 Contextual Analyses of Los Angeles Noise Project Data 217 Summary and Conclusions 230 Chapter 7. Summary and Implications 235 Costs of Coping 235 A Contextual Perspective 237 Environmental Stress and Health 238 Environmental Stress and Control 240 Environmental Stress and Cognition 241 Influencing Public Policy 242 Some Final Comments 243 References 245 Author Index 273 Subject Index 281 1 Stress Processes and the Costs of Coping Increased public attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s to the importance of the physical environment in shaping our health and behavior stimulated a renewed interest in these issues on the part of social and health scientists. To a great extent, work during this period was stressor-specific. Independent groups of researchers studied noise, population density, temperature variations, and the like with little cross-stressor integration of theory or data. This work was also conducted in relative isolation from theoretical and empirical work on similar problems. For example, even though Lazarus (1966), Janis (1958), and others had described and empirically demonstrated the role of cognition in mediating the associations between stressor exposure and behavior and/or health, those studying environmental stressors tended to focus on stressor intensity alone with only a handful of researchers considering cognitive factors. Since the mid-1970s research on the impact of environmental stressors on behavior and health has become increasingly integrated into the larger field of psychological stress research. This book documents that integration and discusses its implications for the study of stress and coping processes. We develop a broad theoretical framework that emphasizes the commonalities between psycho social stress and environmental stress as well as the commonalities between various environmental stressors. We focus on issues that we view as central to understand ing the stress and coping process and present original data that exemplify and occasionally provide answers to the questions we raise. In order to place this discussion in context, we include critical reviews of the literatures on the impact of environmental stress on cognition, control, and health. The data that we report are from the Los Angeles Noise Project-a set of naturalistic studies of the effects of aircraft noise on children. Noise project data are presented in the context of discussions of the issues we view as central to the understanding the generic stress-coping process. Our theoretical perspective places particular emphasis on the deleterious effects of the process of coping, the impor tance of the context in which a stressor occurs, and the role of one's perceptions of the stressful situation as a predictor of health and behavioral outcomes. In many instances, the scope of our theoretical formulations is considerably broader than that of the data. Our hope is that our perspective will stimulate others to fill in missing evidence. 1
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