Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

social support
A mutual network of 
caring, interested others.
Neuroscience in Your Life: 
Stress and Social Support
FIGURE 6 
Participants in a study were threatened by being told they would be receiving a 
shock. When they were provided social support, areas of the brain that become activated 
during stress showed reduced activation. Specifi cally, social support in this study was having 
either a stranger or the participant’s spouse hold his or her hand. In the fi gure, the color 
green highlights brain areas that showed reductions in activity when a spouse held the 
participant’s hand, and the color blue highlights reductions in activity when either a spouse 
or a stranger held the participant’s hand. 
(Source: Coan, Schaefer, & Davidson, 2006, Figure 3.)
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Module 43 
Stress and Coping 
483
supply temporary living quarters to a person whose house has burned down, or 
they can offer study help to a student who is experiencing stress because of poor 
academic performance (Natvig, Albrektsen, & Ovamstrom, 2003; Takizawa, Kondo, 
& Sakihara, 2007). 
Findings that attendance at religious services (as well as spirituality in general) 
provides health-related benefi ts also illustrate the importance of social support. For 
example, healthy people who regularly attend religious services live longer than 
those who do not attend regularly (Miller & Thoresen, 2003; Powell, Shahabi, & 
Thoresen, 2003; Gilbert, 2007). 
Recent research is also beginning to identify how social support affects brain 
processing. For instance, one experiment found that activation of the areas of the brain 
refl ecting stress was reduced when social support—simply being able to hold the 
hand of another person—was available (see Neuroscience in Your Life , Figure 6 ; Coan, 
Schaefer, & Davidson, 2006). 
How can we deal with the stress in our lives? Although there is 
no universal solution because effective coping depends on the 
nature of the stressor and the degree to which it can be 
controlled, here are some general guidelines (Aspinwall & 
Taylor, 1997; Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000): 
• Turn a threat into a challenge. When a stressful situation 
might be controllable, the best coping strategy is to treat 
the situation as a challenge and focus on ways to control it. For instance, if you 
experience stress because your car is always breaking down, you might take a 
course in auto mechanics and learn to deal directly with the car’s problems.
• Make a threatening situation less threatening. When a stressful situation seems to be 
uncontrollable, you need to take a different approach. It is possible to change 
your appraisal of the situation, view it in a different light, and modify your 
attitude toward it. Research supports the old truism, “Look for the silver lining in 
every cloud” (Smith & Lazarus, 2001; Cheng & Cheung, 2005).
• Change your goals. If you are faced with an uncontrollable situation, a reasonable 
strategy is to adopt new goals that are practical in view of the particular situa-
tion. For example, a dancer who has been in an automobile accident and has lost 
full use of her legs may no longer aspire to a career in dance but might modify 
her goals and try to become a choreographer.
• Take physical action. Changing your physiological reaction to stress can help with 
coping. For example, biofeedback (in which a person learns to control internal 
physiological processes through conscious thought) can alter basic physiological 
processes and allow people to reduce blood pressure, heart rate, and other 
consequences of heightened stress. Exercise can also be effective in reducing 
stress (Langreth, 2000; Spencer et al., 2003; Hamer, Taylor, & Steptoe, 2006).
• Prepare for stress before it happens. A fi nal strategy for coping with stress is proactive 
coping, anticipating and preparing for stress before it is encountered. For example, 
if you’re expecting to go through a one-week period in which you must take a 
number of major tests, you can try to arrange your schedule so you have more 
time to study (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997; Bode et al., 2007).