Module 34: Health and Happiness

Question 1

Coping

Answer 1

Alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive or behavioral methods.

Question 2

Problem-focused coping

Answer 2

Attempting to alleviate stress directly - by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.

• Use this when we feel a sense of control over a situation and think we can change the circumstances

Question 3

Emotion-focused coping

Answer 3

Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to our stress reaction.

• Use this when we believe we cannot change a situation.

Question 4

Personal Control

Answer 4

• Feel hopeless, helpless, depressed after a series of bad events beyond our personal control.

Our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless.

Question 5

Learned Helplessness

Answer 5

The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or person learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

Question 6

Why does perceived loss of control predict health problems?

Answer 6

• Losing control provokes an outpouring of stress hormones

- – Blood pressure increases, immune responses drop

Question 7

External locus of control

Answer 7

The perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.

Question 8

Internal locus of control

Answer 8

The perception that we control our own fate.

• Achieve more in school and work, enjoy better health, and feel less depressed

Question 9

Self-control

Answer 9

The ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long-term rewards.

• More likely to develop when we have a sense of personal control over our lives
• Predicts good health, higher income, better school performance

Question 10

How does our outlook impact stress?

Answer 10

Our outlook - what we expect from the world - influences how we cope with stress

• Pessimists expect things to go badly
• – When bad things happen, they knew it along
• Optimists expect to have more control
• – Cope better with stressful events and enjoy better health

Question 11

Aerobic Exercise

Answer 11

Sustained exercise that increases heart and lung fitness; also helps alleviate depression and anxiety.

• Do it at least three times a week
• – Manage stress better, exhibit more self-confidence, feel less depressed

Question 12

Mindfulness Meditation

Answer 12

A reflective practice in which people attend to current experiences in a nonjudgemental and accepting manner.

Question 13

The faith factor

Answer 13

Religiously active people tend to live longer than those who are not religiously active.

Question 14

Feel-good, do-good phenomenon

Answer 14

People’s tendency to be helpful when in a good mood.

Question 15

Positive Psychology

Answer 15

the scientific study of human flourishing, with the goals of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities thrive.

Question 16

Subjective well-being

Answer 16

Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. Used along with measures of objective well-being (for example, physical and economic indicators) to evaluate people’s quality of life.

Question 17

Adaptation-level phenomenon

Answer 17

Our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience.

Question 18

Relative deprivation

Answer 18

The perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself.