Health & Well-Being

Question 1

Social Context, Biology, and
Behavior Combine to Affect Health

Answer 1

Question 2

Our relationships with others are also critical to health

Answer 2

• Many people find it easier to change behaviors linked with health when their family or romantic partner also changes with them
• The people around us powerfully shape our behavior because we learn from them, care what they think, and desire to live up to their expectations.
• Extends to our larger social groups

Question 3

Cultural and Societal Influences…

Answer 3

• Beliefs and behaviors about health are determined by the norms and conditions of our cultures and communities.
• Societal factors such as how public environments are structured and how much money a country can dedicate to health care can affect health for the better or the worse.

Question 4

Life Expectancy Increases with Healthy Activities

Answer 4

Question 5

Causes of Mortality

Answer 5

 In the United States people are now more likely to die from the following than from infectious diseases:
 heart disease
 cancer
 strokes
 lung disease  accidents
 All of these causes of death are at least partially
outcomes of lifestyle.
 Daily habits such as poor nutrition, overeating, smoking, alcohol use, and lack of exercise contribute to nearly every major cause of death in developed nations.

Question 6

Inequities in Societies Contribute to Health
Disparities Among Social Groups

Answer 6

 Health Disparities: Differences in health outcomes
between groups of people.
 Worldwide, large health disparities exist among different racial and ethnic groups.
 According to the CDC, health disparities have been documented between White people and members of other ethnic groups in nearly every chronic disease and major illness.

 Immigrant Paradox: Pattern among immigrant communities in which foreign‐born immigrants to the US have better health than people in later generations.

Question 7

Inequities in Societies Contribute to Health
Disparities Among Social Groups

Answer 7

 Although life expectancies have increased in the United States over the last four decades, African Americans continue to have a lower life expectancy than white Americans.

Question 8

Inequities in Societies Contribute to Health Disparities Among Social Groups

Answer 8

 Socioeconomic Status: Relative standing in society as a function of resources such as income, wealth, and education.  People with lower socioeconomic status have worse health than
people with higher socioeconomic status, even when accounting
for access to health care.
 This kind of disparity is known as the socioeconomic status health gradient.

Question 9

Behaviors to Promote Wellness and Prevent Illness

Answer 9

 A report released by the CDC in 2014 indicated that over a quarter of a million early deaths could be prevented each year if people made better health choices
 Eat a healthy diet
 Don’t start or quit smoking  Engage in physical exercise

Question 10

What is Stress?

Answer 10

CONDITION IN WHICH A STRONG EMOTIONAL RESPONSE OVERWHELMS A PERSON’S PERCEIVED ABILITY TO MEET THE DEMANDS OF A SITUATION

Question 11

Different ways to view stress

Answer 11

`Stimulus view
- Focus on the situation that causes stress

Response view
- Focus on the physiological changes that occur when faced with a
challenging situation

Relational view
- Focus on relationship between people and the situation

Question 12

Stress as a stimulus

Answer 12

 Measuring stress in terms of life events  Hassles and Uplifts Scale
 Social Readjustment Rating Scale
 Death of a spouse  Divorce
…
 Change in school  Vacation
 Christmas

Question 13

College Undergraduate Stress Scale

Answer 13

Question 14

Stress as a response

Answer 14

The way we respond to stress varies from person to person
 Looking at stress as a response allows us to take into consideration the person’s reaction to a situation, as opposed to the situation alone.

Question 15

Relationship between a person and the situation

Answer 15

Question 16

What happens when we get stressed and how do we deal with it?

Answer 16

PHYSIOLOGY OF STRESS COPING MECHANISMS

Question 17

Physiology of Stress

Answer 17

 How we adapt to stress
 Two processes by which the body achieves stability through physiological change
Homeostasis
 A simple adjustment in physiological
state to compensate for the situation
Allostasis
 Includes multiple homeostatic mechanisms

Question 18

Physiology of Stress

Answer 18

 Neuroendocrine system
 Adrenal‐medullary system
 Norepinephrine causes sympathetic response, increasing heart rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure.
 Hypothalamic‐pituitary‐ adrenal axis (HPA)
 Cortisol circulates throughout the body and to various brain areas ‐the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala.

Question 19

Sex Differences
in How We Respond to Stressors

Answer 19

Cannon’s fight‐or‐flight response
 Increased heart rate, redistribution of blood to muscles and brain, deepening of respiration, dilation of the pupils, inhibition of gastric secretions, and increase in glucose released from the liver

-Researchers avoided using women in their studies
-Women & men often respond differently to stressors
 Tend‐and‐befriend response
 It is possible that the release of oxytocin during social stress
encourages women to affiliate with or befriend others (Taylor et al., 2010)

Question 20

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Answer 20

Generalized, nonspecific set of changes in the body that occur during extreme stress
 Stage 1: Alarm
 Stage 2:
Resistance
 Stage 3: Exhaustion

Question 21

Burnout

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Allostatic Load

Answer 22

Cumulative “wear & tear” on biological systems, including the stress, digestive, immune, cardiovascular, and hormonal systems, after repeated or chronic stressful events.
- Over time, these experiences can cause the systems to become “stuck” in certain states and less responsive to changing conditions in the world.
- One way of understanding why experiencing frequent stress in early life
is a risk factor for developing psychological disorders later in life

Emerging research also suggests that stress experienced by mothers may be passed along to their offspring through epigenetics (genetic changes due to environmental factors).
- Thus, highly stressful experiences can affect behavior across generations.

Question 23

Effects of Stress and Coping on Health

Answer 23

Question 24

Relationship Between Stress and Illness

Answer 24

 Physiological reactivity model
 Examines how sustained physiological activation associated with the stress response can affect body systems to increase illness

Question 25

Coping is a Process

Answer 25

To deal effectively with stressors we use cognitive appraisals that link feelings with thoughts

Lazarus’ two‐part cognitive appraisal process:
- Primary appraisals: We decide whether stimuli are
stressful, benign, or irrelevant
- Secondary appraisals: Once we perceive an event as
stressful, we evaluate our response options and choose coping strategies

Anticipatory coping: coping that occurs before the onset of a future stressor

Question 26

Types of Coping

Answer 26

Folkman & Lazarus’ (1988) general coping categories:
-Problem‐focused coping: a type of coping in which people take
direct steps to confront or minimize a stressor
-Emotion‐focused coping: a type of coping in which people try to
prevent having an emotional response to a stressor

Three strategies can help people use positive thoughts to deal with stress:
 Positive reappraisal
 Downward comparisons
 Creation of positive events

Most people report using both emotion‐focused coping and problem‐ focused coping

Question 27

Problem‐focused coping

Answer 27

 Generally used when the individual feels as though the situation is one under their control  Solve the problem
 Seek social support
 Take assertive action

Question 28

Emotion‐focused coping

Answer 28

Often used when the individual does not feel in control of the situation. It aims to regulate the experience of the stressful situation.

-Distancing (repressive)- Characterized by avoiding situations or thoughts that are
reminders of a stressor and maintaining an artificially positive viewpoint.
-Reappraise (reframe)- Finding a new or creative way to think about a stressor that
reduces its threat
-Rational coping

Question 29

Rational coping

Answer 29

 Facing a stressor and working to overcome it
 Three step process
1. Acceptance
 The stressor exists and
cannot be wished away
2. Exposure
 Attending to the stressor, maybe even seeking it out
3. Understanding
 Working to mind the
meaning of the stressor in your life

Question 30

Social Support is Associated
with Good Health

Answer 30

Social interaction is beneficial for physical and mental health
- Ill people who are socially isolated are likely to die sooner than ill people who are well‐connected to others (House et al., 1988)
- Men with fewer friends were 2.3 times more likely to die than comparable men with more friends
- Women with fewer friends were 2.8 times more likely to die than comparable women with more friends.

Question 31

Social Support is Associated
with Good Health

Answer 31

 The health risks of having few social connections might be attributable to chronic loneliness, which is linked with numerous psychological and health problems
 A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM, 2020) quantifies the relation between social isolation and loneliness and illness and death among older adults.
 The magnitude of the impact of isolation was comparable to that of high blood pressure, smoking, and obesity.
 To make matters worse, loneliness is on the rise in
industrialized societies

Question 32

Social Support is Associated
with Good Health

Answer 32

Social support helps people cope and maintain
good health in two basic ways:
- People with social support experience less stress overall.
- Social support needs to imply that people care about the recipient of the support.

Buffering hypothesis: when others provide emotional support, the recipient is better able to cope with stressful events
- Receiving social support can prompt feelings of gratitude and reduces loneliness.

Question 33

Individual Differences in Coping

Answer 33

 People differ widely in their perceptions of how stressful life events are
 Stress resistant (‘hardy”) people are capable of adapting to life changes by viewing events constructively
 Three components: commitment, challenge, and control
 Stress‐resilient people show greater emotional flexibility and recover from threats more quickly than do those low in resilience (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004).
 Some researchers believe that people can learn to become more resilient

Question 34

Positive Psychology

Answer 34

 Emphasizes the strengths and virtues that help people thrive. Its primary aim is an understanding of psychological well‐being.
 Optimists vs. Pessimists  The benefits of control
 Hardiness & Resilience
 Finding meaning
 Positive psychological traits/states

Question 35

Well‐Being In the United States

Answer 35

 According to positive psychologists, happiness has three components:
Positive emotion and pleasure
Engagement in life
A meaningful life

Question 36

Being Positive Has Health Benefits

Answer 36

Across multiple studies and types of measures, positive emotions are related to considerable health benefits:
 Higher levels of hope and curiosity are associated with reduced risk of
disease (Richman et al., 2005)
 A positive affect, or being generally positive, has multiple beneficial
effects on the immune system (Marslandet al., 2007)

Very few studies on positive affect and health are experimental.
 We do not know for sure whether positive affect causes good health
but across multiple studies and types of measures, positive emotions are related to considerable health benefits.

Question 37

What should you take away from this chapter?

Answer 37

 Sources of stress are not always obvious
 Chronic stress can affect your health
 There are multiple ways of coping with stress. Some are more productive than others
 Some behaviors that we acquire to help us cope with stress can further harm the immune system
 Some behaviors can facilitate the reduction of stress, and help support the immune system

Question 38

Taking Care of Mind and Body

Answer 38

 Strategies to enhance your health and well‐being:  Eat natural foods
 Eat only when you are hungry.
 Drink alcohol in moderation, if at all.
 Keep active.
 Do not use tobacco.
 Practice safe sex.
 Learn to relax or mediate.
 Build a strong support network.
 Consider your spiritual life
 Try some of the happiness exercises