Stress & Coping

Question 1

Stress

Answer 1

a mental and bodily response that shifts the organism towards a fight or flee reaction.

Question 2

Disclosure writing

Answer 2

• involves writing about a very upsetting or traumatic event from one’s past.
• produces long term reductions in distress & improvements in bodily health.
• individuals who showed the most improvement disclosed information they ACTIVELY held back from telling others.

Question 3

Cognitive reappraisal

Answer 3

involves re-framing the underlying meaning of an affective situation to change one’s emotional response.

Question 4

Misattribution of Arousal Study

Answer 4

• male participants who crossed a scary bridge were more likely to call a female confederate after the experiment.
• participants attributes the arousal from the bridge to attraction towards the female.
• shows that individuals can re-frame negative arousal as positive arousal (affects cognition and behaviour).

Question 5

Free Choice Paradigm

Answer 5

after choosing between one of two objects, people begin to show increased liking for the chosen object and decreased liking for the non-chosen one.

Question 6

PTSD

Answer 6

an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a traumatic event.

Question 7

components of PTSD

Answer 7

1) avoidance.
2) intrusive memories.
3) negative mood.
4) constant state of hyper-arousal.

Question 8

Hans Selye

Answer 8

• stress causes flight or fight response.

- experimented with rats and noticed that stressful conditions gave experimental group and placebo group rats ulcers.

Question 9

Sympathetic system

Answer 9

Activates body to deal with a stressful situation.

Question 10

Parasympathetic system

Answer 10

Keeps bodily systems functioning effectively in a calm state.

Question 11

Stress responses

Answer 11

• mobilize energy to get muscles to move.
• enhance cognition: lower thresholds to boost attention.
• suppress long-term building projects i.e growth.

Question 12

Impacts of Stress on Health

Answer 12

1. ) diabetes (releasing too much glucose, metabolism will be impaired).
2. ) heart disease (constricting blood vessels by controlling blood pressure).
3. ) ulcers.
4. ) neuron death in hippocampus (crucial to form new memories).

Question 13

Predictor of health improvement (disclosure writing)

Answer 13

using causal and self-reflective words in disclosure writing predicted whether people were likely to improve.

Question 14

Why does disclosure writing work

Answer 14

the act of inhibition is a type of low level stress, when you free your mind from repressing, your body systems can focus on other areas.

Question 15

Mindfulness Meditation

Answer 15

• attending to the present moment, on purpose, and with non-judgement.
• when people reported that their mind was on task they reported being happier.
• can be used to prevent depression relapse.

Question 16

Memory re-consolidation

Answer 16

when a memory trace is re-activated, it temporarily enters a malleable state where it can be altered before being transferred again into long-term memory.

Question 17

Affect of regulation

Answer 17

Ex of decreasing positive affect: when people with bipolar disorder are having a manic episode.

Ex of increasing negative affect: watching a sad movie to trigger sad emotions and have an emotional release.

Question 18

Can we erase the past?

Answer 18

beta- blockers like propranolol bind to norepinephrine, (reducing its impact)