Chapter 13 Flashcards
What are the four types of stress? What are the specific types of conflict? Could you recognize examples?
Types of stress: Frustration, conflict, change, and pressure
Types of Conflict:
Approach-Approach Conflict: A choice must be made between two attractive goals
Example: You have a free afternoon- Should you play tennis or racquetball
Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict: A choice must be made between two unattractive goals
Example: Should you continue to collect your unemployment checks, or should you take that boring job at the car wash?
Approach-Avoidance: A choice must be made about whether to pursue a single goal that has both attractive and unattractive aspects
Example: You’re offered a promotion that will mean a large increase in pay, but you’ll have to move to a city you hate
What are the common behavioral coping strategies and how do they lessen (or exacerbate) stress? What does constructive coping involve?
Constructive coping: Relatively healthful efforts that people make to deal with stressful events
Constructive coping involves: Confronting problems directly, based on reasonably realistic appraisals of your stress and coping resources, reappraising stressful events in less threatening ways, making efforts to ensure that your body is not vulnerable to physical damage.
Common Behavioral Coping Strategies: Giving up and blaming oneself, striking out at others, indulging oneself, defensive coping, and constructive coping.
Giving up and blaming oneself lessens stress by passively accepting setbacks. Learned helplessness
Striking out at others: Gets pent up emotion out of one’s system, cathartic
Indulging oneself: Self-indulgence. People engage in unwise patterns of eating, drinking,spending money, and so fourth when faced with stress.
Defensive coping: Defense mechanisms (listed in another problem)
What factors exacerbate stress? Study the following topics:
Lack of control, including the research on learned helplessness (from the book) and the results of the Langer & Rodin (1977) nursing home study (from class).
Learned helplessness: Passively accepting setbacks that could be dealt with effectively. Occurs when individuals come to believe that events are beyond their control. Can contribute to depression
Langer and Rodin: Studied the effects of enhanced personal responsibility and choice in a group of nursing home patients. One floor was told the workers were there to help, they got worse. The other floor was encouraged to make their own decisions and they improved.
Type A/hostile personality. Know the results of the study discussed during the Scientific American Frontiers video “Worried Sick”.
Type A/Hostile personality participants were at a higher risk for heart disease.
What factors can reduce stress? Study the following topics:
Optimism and conscientiousness. Why are they associated with lower stress?
Optimism: A general tendency to expect good outcomes
Conscientiousness:
Optimists are more likely to engage in action-oriented, problem-focused coping, and they are more likely to emphasize the positive in their appraisals of stressful events.
People who are high in conscientiousness are less likely than others to exhibit unhealthy habits, they tend to rely on constructive coping strategies and are persistent with their efforts so they may handle stress better than others.
Social support and social network diversity.
Social support: refers to various types of aid and emotional sustenance provided by members of one’s social networks
Know the methods and results of the “marriage-immune system” study from the Scientific American Frontiers video (“Worried Sick”).
Methods: Married couples are given superficial wounds on their arm (8 small blisters), see how well the blisters heal within the next month, healing process is measured both visually and how quickly the blisters dry out, the couple is supposed to start arguing, stress hormones measured by blood samples.
In an unstressed couple, stress hormones were not produced and their blister wounds healed faster
In a mildly stressed couple, not many stress hormones produced and their blister wounds did not clear as quickly
RESULTS: Happy marriage= healthier immune system
