Unit 6.1: Stress, coping, adjustment and health

Question 1

Do behavioral variables have implications on health?

Answer 1

yes (e.g. sleep, exercise, etc.)

Question 2

What is stress?

Answer 2

feeling triggered by events perceived as uncontrollable and threatening to goals

Question 3

What does the interactional model state?

Answer 3

personality factors determine the impact of events by moderating the relationship between stress and illness via the coping response

Question 4

What does the transactional model state?

Answer 4

the interpretation of the event plays a very important role, as well as selection and evocation of environments

Question 5

What does the health behavior model add?

Answer 5

personality affects health indirectly through health-promoting or degrading behavior

Question 6

What’s the difference between coping responses and health behaviors?

Answer 6

health behaviors: not specific to situation (food, sleep, etc.)
coping responses: specific to situation (e.g. meditation)

Question 7

What does the predispositional model state?

Answer 7

personality and illness as expressions of underlying predispositions

Question 8

What does the illness behavior model say about illness and illness behavior?

Answer 8

illness: presence of objectively measurable abnormal psych. process
Illness behavior: action people take when they think they have an illness

Question 9

What causes stress?

Answer 9

stressors:
- tend to be extreme
- threaten important goal
- perceived as uncontrollable

Question 10

Stress response

Answer 10

pattern of emotional and physiological reaction accompanying stress (fight-flight response)

Question 11

different types of stress responses

Answer 11

stress response to specific stimulus
stress response on a chronic basis

Question 12

Stages of the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Answer 12

1. Alarm stage
2. Endurance stage
3. Exhaustion stage

Question 13

Major life events

Answer 13

events that require people to make major adjustments in their lives (likely evoke stress)

Question 14

Does increased stress cause an increased likeliness of illness?

Answer 14

yes

Question 15

Daily Hassles

Answer 15

small daily issues that may accumulate and evoke a stress response

Question 16

Types of stress

Answer 16

1. Acute stress (fight or flight to appearance of a threat)
2. Episodic acute stress (repeated episodes of acute stress, related to GAS)
3. Traumatic stress (Massive instance of acute stress)
4. Chronic stress (stress doesn’t end and grinds us down until resistance is gone)

Question 17

Which cognitive events need to occur in order for stress to be evoked for a person?

Answer 17

Primary appraisal: perception of events as threat to personal goals
secondary appraisal: assessment of personal available resources to cope

Question 18

Are attributional styles (optimistic vs pessimistic) linked with later health?

Answer 18

yes, opt: predicts good health, pess: tendency to die at younger age

Question 19

dispositional optimism

Answer 19

expectation that good events will be plentiful and bad events will be rare

Question 20

emotional inhibition

Answer 20

skill learned in childhood
allows us to regulate emotional expression

Question 21

Is repression of emotions always useful?

Answer 21

no, requires effort (physiological cost), which causes greater stress

Question 22

Why should we put our feelings into words?

Answer 22

talking to others or writing about feelings can be a healing process
improves understanding of the situation

Question 23

What’s one of the main goals of emergency psychologists and why?

Answer 23

get people to talk
-> narrate what they feel and to prevent withdrawal into themselves