L17 & L18 - Health Flashcards
1
Q
What is the link between stress and health?
A
Stress = negative feelings & beliefs that occur when people feel they are struggling and can’t cope = impacts affect, behaviour and cognitions
2
Q
What was a study on negative life events?
A
- Objective quantification of stressful major life events, assign event and asked people to indicate how stressful the life event would be
- Stressful life events correlate with anxiety and illness
- Issues included with cause & effect, third variables and quantifying stress by life change units ignores subjective perceptions
3
Q
What was a study on perceived Stress and Health? (Subjectivity)
A
- Subjective versions of events are what needs to be considered, not objective events as interpretation is important
- We interpret the same event in different ways
4
Q
What factors make events stressful?
A
When the cause is perceived as uncontrollable, ambiguous and unresolvable
5
Q
Does stress influence physical health?
A
- Ppts listed negative life events to get their subjective stress index
- Exposed to cold virus
- Those who had higher stress index scores had a higher % of ppts that caught a cold (correlation)
- Found that those who had a longer duration of life stressor had a 4 times more likely relative risk of a cold
- Looked at types of chronic stresses e.g interpersonal/work and found the work stressor had the biggest effect on catching a cold
- Subjective stress can lower immunity
6
Q
What is perceived control and what was the study on this?
A
- Belief that we can influence our env
1) Women who felt they had some control over their breast cancer had better psychological adjustment and lived slightly longer
2) Some elderly ppts were allowed to decide arrangement of room/pick movie night/given plants (lasting control) - Ppts in the take control group self-reported being happier
3) Were rated as doing better by nursing staff
4) Spent longer visiting other patients
5) Had lower mortality rate
6) Suggests feelings of control can improve health outcomes
7) Students visit elderly over term: either elderly or student decide time/length of visit (temporary control) - Intervention worked but after 24-42 months, ppts in take control groups
- Less healthy
- Less zest for life
- Higher mortality rate
7
Q
What is learned helplessness?
A
- Attributing negative events to stable, internal and global factors is associated with learned helplessness
- Stable attribution = factors won’t change over time
- Internal attribution = something about you
- Global attribution = factors applied across situations
8
Q
What was a study looking at learned helplessness in university
A
- Many students initially struggle at uni, some students told that people often perform poorly in 1st year, but then improve (challenge attributions)
- Those who were told = had a positive change in GPA and were much more likely to remain in college compared to controls who did negatively in their GPA change
9
Q
How to cope with stress - confiding?
A
- Talking/writing about emotional experiences has positive effects
- 50 healthy undergrad students had to write about personal traumatic events or write about trivial topics for 20 mins for 4 consecutive days
- DV = health centre visits
- Writing about traumatic experience was beneficial and offers new insights and promotes self-awareness - visited health centre less
10
Q
A study about confiding?
A
- Create psychological closure via physical closure
- Ppts write about a recent decision they regret and place the writing into an envelope and give it to experimenter OR just give it to exp THEN rate their current affective state
Those in envelope condition reported less negative emotions mediated by psychological closure
- Ppts write about a recent decision they regret and place the writing into an envelope and give it to experimenter OR just give it to exp THEN rate their current affective state
11
Q
How to cope with stress - suppression?
A
- Suppressing negative thoughts can produce obsession with those thoughts and add to stress (failure of mental control)
- STUDY: White Bear Suppression Inventory e.g ‘I often have thoughts that I try to avoid’
- Correlated with depression, OCD and anxiety
12
Q
How to make interventions effective when trying to improve health behaviour?
A
Theory-driven, allowing for generality
13
Q
What did stone et al do? (Condoms)
A
- Dissonance and condom use
- Ppts (uni students) told to give a message to high schoolers about safe sex
- Half of ppt will be recorded on video to be shown OR to write a page on why it’s good to engage in safe sex: public commitment or not
- Half of ppt are asked to think about when they didn’t engage in safe sex (no condom) and other half did not get asked that
- Baseline was just writing essay, then two conditions of only commitment or mindfulness, last group was hypocrisy was public commitment and mindfulness
- DV = box of condoms given and checking if ppts took any and how many AND asked the proportion of time they used condoms over the next 3 months - hypocrisy condition should have more preventative behaviour
- Hypocrisy condition took more condoms than others and reported a higher % of condom usage over 3 months
- Hypocrisy had desired effect immediately and after a 3 month follow up
14
Q
Does self-esteem moderate effect of hypocrisy?
A
- Dissonance should be more harmful for high SE individuals
- Ppts were all cigarette smokers and looked at hypocrisy and the control condition where they complete measures of self-esteem and intentions to stop smoking
- RESULTS: When no hypocrisy = mean intention to stop smoking = same. When hypocrisy = mean intention to stop smoking for HIGH SE = significantly more
15
Q
What is alcohol myopia?
A
- Alcohol reduces cognitive capacity
- Only react to salient and impelling cues
