Thus one result of the OR is to send a surge of anticipatory energy through the body. Stored energy exists in such sites as the muscles and the sweat glands. As the neural system pulses in response to novelty, its synaptic vesicles discharge small amounts of adrenalin and nor-adrenalin. These, in turn, trigger a partial release of the stored energy. In short, each OR draws not only upon the body's limited supply of quick energy, but on its even more limited supply of energy-releasers.
It needs to be emphasized, moreover, that the OR occurs not merely in response to simple sensory inputs. It happens when we come across novel ideas or information as well as novel sights or sounds. A fresh bit of office gossip, a unifying concept, even a new joke or an original turn of phrase can trigger it.
The OR is particularly stressing when a novel event or fact challenges one's whole preconceived world view. Given an elaborate ideology, Catholicism, Marxism or whatever, we quickly recognize (or think we recognize) familiar elements in otherwise novel stimuli, and this puts us at ease. Indeed, ideologies may be regarded as large mental filing cabinets with vacant drawers or slots waiting to accept new data. For this reason, ideologies serve to reduce the intensity and frequency of the OR.
It is only when a new fact fails to fit, when it resists filing, that the OR occurs. A classical example is that of the religious person who is brought up to believe in the goodness of God and who is suddenly faced by what strikes him as a case of overwhelming, senseless evil. Until the new fact can be reconciled or his world view altered, he suffers acute agitation and anxiety.
The OR is so inherently stressing that we enjoy a vast sense of relief when it is over. At the level of ideas or cognition, this is the 'a-hah!' reaction we experience at a moment of revelation, when we finally understand something that has been puzzling us. We may be aware of the 'a-hah' reaction on rare occasions only, but OR's and 'a-hah's' are continually occurring just below the level of consciousness.
Novelty, therefore – any perceptible novelty – touches off explosive activity within the body, and especially the nervous system. OR's fire off like flashbulbs within us, at a rate determined by what is happening outside us. Man and environment are in constant, quivering interplay.
While novelty in the environment raises or lowers the rate at which OR's occur, some novel conditions call forth even more powerful responses. We are driving along a monotonous turnpike, listening to the radio and beginning to daydream. Suddenly, a car speeds by, forcing us to swerve out of our lane. We react automatically, almost instantaneously, and the OR is very pronounced. We can feel our heart pumping and our hands shaking. It takes a while before the tension subsides.
But what if it does not subside? What happens when we are placed in a situation that demands a complex set of physical and psychological reactions and in which the pressure is sustained? What happens if, for example, the boss breathes hotly down our collar day after day? What happens when one of our children is seriously ill? Or when, on the other hand, we look forward eagerly to a 'big date' or to closing an important business deal?
Such situations cannot be handled by the quick spurt of energy provided by the OR, and for these we have what might be termed the 'adaptive reaction.' This is closely related to the OR. Indeed, the two processes are so intertwined that the OR can be regarded as part of, or the initial phase of, the larger, more encompassing adaptive reaction. But while the OR is primarily based on the nervous system, the adaptive reaction is heavily dependent upon the endocrine glands and the hormones they shoot into the bloodstream. The first line of defense is neural; the second is hormonal.
When individuals are forced to make repeated adaptations to novelty, and especially when they are compelled to adapt to certain situations involving conflict and uncertainty, a pea-sized gland called the pituitary pumps out a number of substances. One of these, ACTH, goes to the adrenals. This causes them, in turn, to manufacture certain chemicals termed corticosteroids. When these are released, they speed up body metabolism. They raise blood pressure. They send anti-inflammatory substances through the blood to fight infection at wound sites, if any. And they begin turning fat and protein into dispersible energy, thus tapping into the body's reserve tank of energy. The adaptive reaction provides a much more potent and sustained flush of energy than the OR.
Like the orientation response, the adaptive reaction is no rarity. It takes longer to arouse and it lasts longer, but it happens countless times even within the course of a single day, responding to changes in our physical and social environment. The adaptive reaction, sometimes known by the more dramatic term 'stress,' can be touched off by shifts and changes in the psychological climate around us. Worry, upset, conflict, uncertainty, even happy anticipation, hilarity and joy, all set the ACTH factory working. The very anticipation of change can trigger the adaptive reaction. The need to alter one's way of life, to trade an old job for a new one, social pressures, status shifts, life style modifications, in fact, anything that forces us to confront the unknown, can switch on the adaptive reaction.
Dr. Lennart Levi, director of the Clinical Stress Laboratory at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, has shown, for example, that even quite small changes in the emotional climate or in interpersonal relationships can produce marked changes in body chemistry. Stress is frequently measured by the amount of corticosteroids and catecholamines (adrenalin and nor adrenalin, for example) found in the blood and urine. In one series of experiments Levi used films to generate emotions and plotted the resultant chemical changes.
A group of Swedish male medical students were shown film clips depicting murders, fights, torture, execution and cruelty to animals. The adrenalin component of their urine rose an average 70 percent as measured before and after. Nor-adrenalin rose an average 35 percent. Next a group of young female office workers were shown four different films on successive nights. The first was a bland travelog. They reported feelings of calmness and equanimity, and their output of catecholamines fell. The second night they watched Stanley Kubrick's
Similar findings have been demonstrated again and again in the case of men and women – not to speak of rats, dogs, deer and other experimental animals – involved in 'real' as distinct from 'vicarious' experiences. Sailors in underwater demolition training, men stationed in lonely outposts in Antarctica, astronauts, factory workers, executives have all shown similar chemical responsiveness to change in the external environment.
The implications of this have hardly begun to register, yet there is increasing evidence that repeated stimulation of the adaptive reaction can be seriously damaging, that excessive activation of the endocrine system leads to irreversible 'wear and tear.' Thus, we are warned by Dr. Rene Dubos, author of
What of it?
'There is,' Dubos declares, 'absolutely no question that one can overshoot the stimulation of the endocrine system and that this has physiological consequences that last throughout the whole lifetime of the organs.'
Years ago, Dr. Hans Selye, a pioneer investigator of the body's adaptive responses, reported that 'animals in which intense and prolonged stress is produced by any means suffer from sexual derangements ... Clinical studies have confirmed the fact that people exposed to stress react very much like experimental animals in all these respects. In women the monthly cycles become irregular or stop altogether, and during lactation milk secretion may become insufficient for the baby. In men both the sexual urge and sperm-cell formation are diminished.'
Since then population experts and ecologists have compiled impressive evidence that heavily stressed populations of rats, deer – and people – show lower fertility levels than less stressed control groups. Crowding, for example, a condition that involves a constant high level of interpersonal interaction and compels the individual to make extremely frequent adaptive reactions has been shown, at least in animals, to enlarge the adrenals and cause a noticeable drop in fertility.
The repeated firing of the OR and the adaptive reaction, by overloading the neural and endocrine systems, is linked to other diseases and physical problems as well. Rapid change in the environment makes repeated calls on
