Life Changes & Daily Hassles (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

Life changes

• Life changes are any events (positive or negative) that cause disruption to one's life, such as moving house, getting married or becoming seriously ill

• Life changes can vary in their impact

  • While the end of a marriage or relationship may be devastating for one person, it may be viewed positively by another

• When expected life changes do not occur – maybe a wedding is cancelled or a person does not get a place at university – this can also have a stressful impact

• The bigger the life changes and the more there are of them at any one particular time, the greater the psychological adjustment needed and the greater the level of stress

Life changes and illness

• Life changes can trigger physical and psychological illnesses

• Holmes & Rahe (1967) created the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), which measures stress by assigning a number of life change units (LCUs) to each item on a list, e.g. divorce = 73, marriage = 50, death of a close friend = 37

  • Higher LCU scores mean more stress and greater health risk

• Rahe (1972) found that illness likelihood increases with LCU score

  • Under 150: reasonable health in the following year

  • 150–300: around 50% experienced illness in the next year

  • Over 300: around 80% reported illness within the next year

Research which investigates life changes and stress

• Rahe et al. (1970) used the SRRS in a prospective study of US Navy personnel assigned to three ships, who completed a version of the scale covering the six months before deployment on a tour of duty, with an illness score then calculated for each participant from medical records during the six months aboard ship

  • They found a significant positive correlation of .118 between LCU scores before departure and illness scores aboard ship, concluding that life changes were a reasonably robust predictor of later illness

• Byrne & Whyte (1980) asked participants who had experienced a myocardial infarction (heart attack) to rate the desirability of the life changes they had selected on the SRRS, and found that undesirable or negative life events caused most of the stress measured by the scale, whereas positive life changes as such did not

  • This suggests that the effects of life changes may be due to the frustration associated with negative events rather than to the readjustment they require

Evaluation of life changes

Strengths

• Lietzén et al. (2011) used data from over 160,000 adults in Finland who did not have asthma at the start of the study, and found that a high level of life change stress was a reliable predictor of asthma, even when known risk factors such as having a cat or dog at home or smoking were controlled for

  • This suggests a moderate but robust and significant correlation between the stress of life changes and illness

• Some research has used a prospective approach (tracking participants over time), which strengthens the reliability of the findings by predicting future illness from past life changes, which could inform early intervention strategies to help reduce stress and subsequent illnesses

Limitations

• Many studies into this topic are retrospective, relying on participants recalling illnesses and life changes from the past, which may reduce the validity of the data

• The relationship between life changes and illness is only correlational, so it is possible that another causal factor, such as having less money, explains the relationship rather than life changes causing illness

Daily hassles

• Daily hassles are those everyday frustrations and annoyances, like being stuck in traffic, that irritate people

• Many psychologists believe that life stress comes from daily hassles more than it does from life changes

• Daily hassles tend to repeat and accumulate, creating chronic stress and with that stress a heightened risk of serious illness

• Daily uplifts are events that raise spirits, such as meeting friends for coffee, which may help offset the harmful effects of hassles

Life changes, daily hassles and illness

• Life changes affect well-being indirectly by disrupting daily routines and increasing daily hassles

• These hassles make everyday tasks feel more difficult, especially after major events like illness

• Life changes are distal stressors (indirect), while daily hassles are proximal (direct and immediate) sources of stress

Research which investigates daily hassles and stress

• DeLongis et al. (1988) studied the effects of hassles in 75 married couples over a six-month period, and found that the more hassles participants experienced, the more likely they were to suffer consequent health problems such as headaches and flu

  • There was no such relationship between life changes and illness in this study

• Lazarus and colleagues argue that daily hassles are more important sources of stress than life changes when it comes to effects on our health, because the accumulative force of many minor everyday stressors is greater than that of a few relatively rare major events

Evaluation of daily hassles

Strengths

• DeLongis et al. (1988) found that daily hassles predicted health problems such as headaches and flu, while life changes showed no such relationship, supporting the validity of the hassles approach

• The amplification hypothesis explains that daily hassles can intensify the impact of major life changes, offering a more complete understanding of stress than life changes alone

Limitations

• Most studies are retrospective, as they rely on participants recalling daily hassles from the past, which can be inaccurate and reduce the validity of findings

• Hassles research shows correlations with illness but cannot confirm causation—other factors (e.g., personality) might influence both stress and health

Issues & Debates

• Research into life changes and daily hassles uses a nomothetic approach, aiming to identify general patterns and laws about how stress affects health

  • While useful for predicting illness across populations, it overlooks individual differences in how people perceive or cope with the same life events

• Stress models are reductionist as they reduce complex emotional and physical responses to simplified scales of life events or daily hassles, potentially ignoring social, emotional and cultural factors

  • This limits the holistic understanding of how stress impacts health over time