A Brain-Changer: How Stress Redesigns our Decision-Making
Right now, stress is thriving, especially in the United Kingdom. This year the Mental Health Foundation have performed the largest known study of UK stress levels to date, with more than 4,500 participants, and the results are staggering. During the past year, 74% of respondents reported feeling so stressed that they felt “overwhelmed or unable to cope” [1].
This is no small claim, and the statistic underlies an unacceptable situation that more and more people are having to endure. The result highlights the increasingly urgent need to understand what is causing such overwhelming stress levels, and to recognise the potential consequences if we do not act to remedy the situation.
What is stress?
To some extent, the reaction which we might refer to as ‘stress’ on a daily basis can be unavoidable, and simply a part of normal life. However, stress is officially defined by HSE as a reaction to “excessive” pressures or demands [2], as distinguished from ordinary day-to-day pressure. This means that stress is not, and should not be treated as, the norm. On the contrary, consistent stress should be treated as a warning sign that the demands placed on the individual need to be reduced.
Certainly, acute stress has its place in evolutionary terms. In primal situations of danger, like being chased by an animal predator, stress was a useful mediator of response choices. Its function was to take the reins to promote our survival. On sight of a predator, our stress response would activate the sympathetic nervous system and catapult us straight into a fight-or-flight state. Distractions like hunger were helpfully suppressed, to prevent our energy and attention from being diverted away from the life-or-death choice between standing our ground or fleeing.
While we may no longer have to run from predators on a daily basis, our bodies continue to produce the same physical response to modern-day causes of acute stress. This is why we might lose our appetite and feel like running away before a big presentation at work.
References
[1] “Mental Health Statistics: Stress”, Mental Health Foundation, accessed June 04, 2018, https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-stress.
[2] “Work-Related Stress and How to Tackle It”, Health and Safety Executive, accessed June 04, 2018, https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/what-to-do.htm.
[3] Hideki Miura, Norio Ozaki, Makoto Sawada, Kenichi Isobe, Tatsuro Ohta and Toshiharu Nagatsu, “A link between stress and depression: Shifts in the balance between the kynurenine and serotonin pathways of tryptophan metabolism and the etiology and pathophysiology of depression”, The International Journal on the Biology of Stress 11, no. 3 (2008): 198-209, doi:10.1080/10253890701754068.
[4] José M. Soares, Adriana Sampaio, Luis M. Ferreira, Nadine C. Santos, Fernanda Marques, Joana A. Palha, João J. Cerqueira, and Nuno Sousa, “Stress-induced changes in human decision-making are reversible”, Translational Psychiatry 2, no. 7 (2012): e131, doi:10.1038/tp.2012.59.
[5] Alexander Friedman, Daigo Homma, Bernard Bloem, Leif G. Gibb, Ken-ichi Amemori, Dan Hu, Sebastien Delcasso, Timothy F. Truong, Joyce Yang, Adam S. Hood, Katrina A. Mikofalvy, Dirk W. Beck, Norah Bguyen, Erik D. Nelson, Sebastian E. Toro Arana, Ruth H. Vorder Bruegge, Ki A. Goosens, and Ann M. Graybiel, “Chronic Stress Alters Striosome-Circuit Dynamics, Leading to Aberrant Decision-Making”, Cell 171, no. 5 (2017): 1191-1205, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2017.10.017.
[6] “Work-Related Stress”, Eurofound, accessed June 04, 2018, https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/comparative-information/work-related-stress.
[7] “Labour Force Survey (2017)”, Health and Safety Executive, accessed June 04, 2018, https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causdis/stress/.
[8] “European Comparisons”, Health and Safety Executive, accessed June 04, 2018, https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/european/european-comparisons.pdf
[9] “Workplace Stress: A Stigma in the UK”, Slater and Gordon, accessed June 04, 2018, https://www.slatergordon.co.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2014/07/workplace-stress-a-stigma-in-uk/
About the Author
Hannah Potts
Hannah completed a conversion MSc in Psychology at Brunel University, having taken her undergraduate degree at Cambridge in English Literature. With several years’ experience working in business (finance and insurance), her particular interests lie in applying cognitive psychology to decision-making and its application in consumerism and the workplace.
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