Chapter 11 - Stress and Health Flashcards
Stress
Physical, emotional cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging
Stressors
Uma Ramamurthy
Houston
…or any other person/place/thing that causes stress
Distress
Unpleasant feeling caused by stressors
Eustress
Good stress that motivates you to do something (go to class instead of sleeping in)
Cognitive Appraisal Approach to Stress
How one appraises a stressor determines how stressing it is
Primary Appraisal
Knee-jerk reaction
Varies by individual
Determine whether entity is stressful or not
E.g., is test easy or hard (stressful or non-stressful)?
Secondary Appraisal
Conscious appraisal
E.g., you realize there are 6 days before the test left to study
Catastrophe
Unpredictable, large-scale event
Causes intense feeling of threat for an individual
Induces need to adapt/adjust
E.g., war, hurricane
PTSD Symptoms
Flashbacks Depression Hypervigilance (fear of loud noises) Nightmares Focus issues
Hypervigilance
Fear of loud noises
Associated with PTSD
ASD
Acute Stress Disorder
PTSD but only for <30 days
Pressure
Psychological experience produced by outside demands (college, self-pressure, etc.) Pressure causes (leads to) distress
External Locus of Control
One’s environment dictates one’s behavior
No free will or ability to choose
Frustration
Experience of being blocked from a desired goal
Displaced aggression
Take out frustration on lesser target
Escape (frustration)
Physical self-removal from situation
Withdrawal (frustration)
Psychological self-removal from situation
E.g., drink alcohol, exercise, listen to music
Anhedonia
Depressive symptoms
Inability to experience fun/pleasure
Associated with burnout
Approach-approach conflict
“Eustress” conflict
Two good choices
E.g., graduate in one semester versus become CougarCS President
Avoidance-avoidance conflict
“Distress” conflict
Two bad choices
E.g., Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump (but Joe Biden isn’t that bad)
Approach-avoidance conflict
TBD
Sympathetic system
Triggered when experiencing stressor
BPM/blood pressure go up, nausea, sweat
Physical bodily reaction
Stages of General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
Alarm
Resistance
Exhaustion
Parasympathetic system
“Renormalizes” body after stress
Alarm (GAS)
Burst of energy, fight-or-flight
Resistance (GAS)
Body prepares to adapt to stressor
Exhaustion (GAS)
Resistance occurs too long, bear/shark eats you
HPA Axis
3 glands involved in stress response (‘drip” stress hormones into system)
H - Hypothalamus
P - Pituitary
A - Adrenal
Suppresses immune system, causes health problems
Psychoneuroimmunology
Study of psychological factors on immune system
Natural killer cell
Immune system cell responsible for killing viruses and tumor cells
Mindfulness/meditation on stress
Greatly reduce stress
More effective than general stress-reduction class
Type A personality
Hardworking, time-conscious, ambitious
High levels of hostility and anger
Easily annoyed
Increased risk of Coronary Heart Disease
Type B personality
Relaxed, lazy
Less driven and competitive
Slow to anger
Type C personality
Pleasant but repressed
Internalizes anger/anxiety
Difficulty expressing emotions
Increased risk of cancer
Hardy personality
Me
Thrives on stress
Like Type A but lacks anger and hostility
Poverty (stress)
Very stressful
Poor areas are high-crime, and stressful to be around crime
Burnout
Negative thoughts from prolonged stress
Symptoms: Anhedonia
Acculturative stress
Results from need to change/adapt to new majority culture
E.g., moving to new country
Four methods of acculturation
Integration
Assimilation
Separation
Marginalization
Integration (acculturation)
Least stressful
Ideal
Maintain positive aspects of original culture
Form positive relationship with new culture
Assimilation (acculturation)
Somewhat stressful
Lose original cultural identity (be Americanized)
Full assimilation into new culture
Separation (acculturation)
Quite stressful
Happens to immigrant geezers
They try to maintain original culture
Find pockets of cultural identity (Chinatown)
Marginalization (acculturation)
Very stressful
No contact with either culture
No social support
E.g., someone moves to US for work, doesn’t find pockets of original culture, does not engage with Americans
Problem-focused coping
Bad coping
Get rid of the stressor entirely
Drop out of school/work
Emotion-focused coping
Good coping
Manage emotions
Learn “relaxation techniques”, “deep breathing”
Can use negative techniques like drinking
Freudian Defense Mechanisms
Subconscious distorts perceptions of reality to reduce stress and anxiety
Denial (Freudian defense mechanisms)
Subconscious mind distorts reality to protect one from seeing terrible things
E.g., don’t see “cheating”
Same as first stage of grief
Repression
Uncommon
Child’s mind blocks out memory of terrible memory (bad car accident)
Rationalization
Subconscious justifies bad behavior
E.g., accidentally stealing something from office is okay because they have tons of money and stuff
Projection
What Republicans do
Accuse opposition of doing the thing they secretly want to do
Reaction formation
Opposite attitude or emotional reaction to inside feeling
E.g., anti-gay individual is actually gay
Displacement
Similar to displaced aggression, generalized to all emotions
E.g., “love” on person but can’t do it, so redirect to someone else
Regression
Person acts immature instead of adulting, because of impatience
E.g., Ted Cruz at the airport
Compensation (substitution)
Person feels inferior in some way so they compensate in another way
E.g., buy the big huge truck
Sublimation
Channel unacceptable urges into something socially acceptable
E.g., become surgeon if one wants to cut people up
E.g., become a boxer if one wants to fight all the time
