Chapter 11 Flashcards
is an unpleasant physical or psychological reaction to circumstances you perceive as challenging.
Stress
an automatic emotional and physical reaction to a perceived threat that prepares you to either attack it or run away from it.
Flight-or-flight response
is any event or change in your life that causes you stress.
Stressor
is determining how stressful an event is to you.
Primary appraisal
is determining how capable you are of coping with the event.
secondary appraisal
the psychological specialization that focuses on the relationship between mind and body.
Health Psychology
a widely accepted understanding of the way bodies respond to ongoing stress, consisting of the three-step sequence of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
General Adaptation Syndrome
help us to handle short-term stressors
Alarm, resistance
the body’s alarm keeps sounding, but eventually the resistance wears off (like an army simply overwhelmed by never-ending waves of enemy attacks). which leaves you vulnerable to disease.
exhaustion
is your body’s innate method of defending against bacteria, viruses, infections, injuries, and anything else that could cause illness or death.
Immune system
any illness that stress can cause, worsen, or maintain.
Psychophysiological illnesses
a personality featuring high levels of competitiveness, drive, impatience, and hostility. ( They are hurried and cutthroat in their attempts to attain their goals—not just when such qualities might be appropriate or necessary, but all the time.)
Type A personality
a personality very much unlike Type A personality, in which the person is noncompetitive, easygoing, relaxed, and rarely angry
Type B personality
is a personality featuring a low level of emotional expression, a high level of agreeableness with other people, and a tendency to feel helpless. (she holds her feelings in and goes along with whatever they want to do, but she is bothered by a sense that she doesn’t have as much control over her life as she would like.)
Type C personality
is a personality featuring high levels of negative emotions, like depression and anxiety, and a reluctance to share those emotions with others.
Type D personalities
a psychological disorder lasting at least a month characterized by feeling continuously on edge, avoiding reminders of the traumatic event, having difficulty sleeping and concentrating, and frequently recalling or reliving the event.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
efforts to reduce or manage your experience of stress.
Coping
is a style of coping with stress that emphasizes changing the stressor itself. This kind of coping involves tackling the problem head-on in an attempt to solve or minimize it
Problem-focused coping
is a style of coping with stress that emphasizes changing your emotional reaction to the stressor (rather than changing the stressor itself). ( you basically accept the stressor as unchangeable, so you instead focus on changing the way you feel while facing it)
emotion-focused coping
behaviors that reflect resilience under stressful circumstances. Hardy people welcome stress. They see it as an opportunity for improvement and success rather than failure and pain.
Hardiness
an attitude toward the future characterized by hope or expectation of a positive outcome. buffers us from stress
Optimism
Born in New York with parents from China, she helped create the Marana Community Mental Health Clinic that serves Yaqui Indians, migrant workers, and indigent people in the rural communities of Tuscon. she was the first ethnic minority woman to serve on the American Psychological Association (APA) Board of Directors. She has won many distinguished awards for her contributions to psychology and her community.
Alice F. Chang, Ph.D.
