CH 14

Question 1

What’s a Stressor?

Answer 1

Specific events or chronic pressures that place demands on a person or threaten a person’s well being.

Question 2

What’s Stress?

Answer 2

The physical and psychological response to internal or external stressors; typical responses to such stressors; and ways to manage stress.

Question 3

What’s Health Psychology?

Answer 3

The subfield of psychology concerned with how psychological factors influence the causes and treatment of physical illness and the maintenance of health.

Question 4

What’s Primary Appraisal?

Answer 4

Access whether of not an event or situation is threatening. Ex, looking at a bill as threatening when you don’t have the money in the bank to cover it.

Question 5

What’s Secondary Appraisal?

Answer 5

Determine whether or not we are in control and if we have resources to deal with the stressor. Ex, if you don’t get paid before the bill is due you may feel trapped or unable to cope.

Question 6

What’s the HPA Axis?

Answer 6

Hypothalamus (activation to a threat), pituitary (secrete stress hormone, ACTH), and adrenal glands (release stress hormone). The is the center of stress response.

Question 7

What’s General Adaptation Syndrome (G.A.S)?

Answer 7

Physical response is the same no matter what the source of stress. A three staged physiological stress response that appears regardless of the stressor that is encountered.

Question 8

What are Chronis Stressors?

Answer 8

Sources of stress that occur continuously or repeatedly.

Question 9

What’s Flight or Fight Response?

Answer 9

An emotional and physiological reaction to an emergency that increases readiness for action.

Question 10

What Are the 3 Stages of G.A.S?

Answer 10

Alarm phase, resistance phase, exhaustion phase.

Question 11

What is Alarm Phase?

Answer 11

In which the body rapidly mobilizes its resources to respond to the threat.

Question 12

What’s Resistance Phase?

Answer 12

The body adapts to its high state of arousal as it tries to cope with the stressor. Continuing to draw on resources of fat and muscle, it shuts down unnecessary processes; menstruation stops; production of testosterone and sperm decreases.

Question 13

What’s Exhaustion Phase?

Answer 13

The body’s resistance collapses. Many of the resistance-phase defenses cause gradual damage as they operate, leading to costs for the body that can include susceptibility to infection, tumor growth, aging, irreversible organ damage, or death.

Question 14

What’s Telomeres?

Answer 14

Caps at the ends of chromosomes that prevent the chromosomes from sticking to each other.

Question 15

What’s Telomerase?

Answer 15

An enzyme that rebuilds telomeres at the tips of chromosomes.

Question 16

What’s the Immune System?

Answer 16

A complex response system that protects the body from bacteria, viruses and other foreign substances.

Question 17

What’s Lymphocytes (including t cells and b cells)?

Answer 17

Produce antibodies that fight infection.

Question 18

What’s Psychoneuroimmunology?

Answer 18

The study of how the immune system responds to psychological variables, such as the presence of stressors.

Question 19

What’s Type A Behavior Pattern?

Answer 19

Characterized by the tendency towards easily aroused hostility, impatience, a sense of time urgency, and competitive achievement strivings.

Question 20

What’s Burnout?

Answer 20

A state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion resulting from long term involvement in an emotionally demanding situation and accompanied by lowered performance and motivation.

Question 21

What’s Repressive Coping?

Answer 21

Avoiding feelings, thoughts, or situations that are reminders of a stressor and maintaining an artificially positive viewpoint.

Question 22

What’s Rational Coping?

Answer 22

Involves facing the stressor and working to overcome it.

Question 23

What’s Reframing?

Answer 23

Involves finding a new or creative way to think about a stressor that reduces its threat.

Question 24

What’s Stress-inoculation Training (SIT)?

Answer 24

A reframing technique that helps people cope with stressful situations by developing positive ways to thinks about situations.

Question 25

What’s Meditation?

Answer 25

The practice of intentional contemplation.

Question 26

What’s Relaxation Therapy?

Answer 26

A technique for reducing tension by consciously relaxing muscles of the body.

Question 27

What’s Relaxation Response?

Answer 27

A condition of reduced muscle tension, cortical activity, heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure.

Question 28

What’s Biofeedback?

Answer 28

The use of an external monitoring device to obtain information about a bodily function and then to possibly gain control over that function.

Question 29

What’s Aerobic Exercise? `

Answer 29

Exercise that increases heart rate and oxygen intake for a sustained period.

Question 30

What’s Social Support?

Answer 30

Aid gained through interacting with others.

Question 31

What’s Religiosity?

Answer 31

Affiliation with or engagement in the practices of a particular religion.

Question 32

What’s Spirituality? Having a belief in and

Answer 32

Having a belief in and engagement with some higher power, not necessarily linked to any particular religion.

Question 33

What’s Problem Focused Coping?

Answer 33

Targets the source of the stress. Ex, complete an assignment to remove that stress.

Question 34

What’s Emotion Focused Coping?

Answer 34

Does not address the stressor, but instead attempts to manage the negative emotions produced by the stressor. Ex, drugs.

Question 35

What’s Internal Focus of Control?

Answer 35

Belief that you may have personal control over events of your life, and thus have the power to make changes,

Question 36

What’s External Locus of Control?

Answer 36

Belief that you have little or no control over events of your life; external forces, or random events are in charge of your destiny.

Question 37

What’s the Sickness Response?

Answer 37

A coordinated, adaptive set of reactions to illness organized by the brain.

Question 38

What’s Psychosomatic Illness?

Answer 38

An interaction between mind and body that can produce illness, explore ways in which mind (psyche) can influence body (soma) and vice versa.

Question 39

What’s Somatic Symptom Disorders?

Answer 39

A person with at least one bodily symptom displays significant health-related anxiety, expresses disproportionate concerns about their symptoms, and devotes excessive time and energy to their symptoms or health concerns.

Question 40

What’s Sick Roll?

Answer 40

A socially recognized set of rights and obligations linked with illness.

Question 41

What’s Malingering?

Answer 41

Medical or psychological symptoms to achieve something they want.

Question 42

What’s Self-Regulation?

Answer 42

The exercise of voluntary control over the self to bring the self into line with preferred standards.