Week 9 (Social models of health and illness)

Question 1

What is PID

Answer 1

Personality Inventory for DSM-5, measure designed to assess dysfunctional personality traits according to the conceptual framework proposed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).

Question 2

How might PID impact health and illness

Answer 2

1. Causal (1) - PID plays a role in causing illness
2. Correlational relationships - The same biological processes underpin traits and illnesses
3. Propensity relationships - PID may result in behaviours that increase risk of illness
4. Causal (2) - illness plays a role in causing change in PID

Question 3

Causal (personality –> illness)

Answer 3

PID –> Biological activities –> Illness
Key term: Psychometric
-A physical condition that is caused or aggravated by mental/ emotional factors
-e.g, anxiety, leading to anorexia/weight loss, leading to loss of bone mass

Question 4

Correlational relationships

Answer 4

Biological causes —> PID
—> Illness

e.g, being susceptible to heart disease has a high correlation with being a hostile person, but the relationship is not CAUSAL

Question 5

Propensity relationships

Answer 5

PID —> Behaviours —> Illness
-Personal traits may lead to risky behaviours that increase risk of illness.
-e.g, Freud –> fixation at oral stage of psychosexual development –> smoking –> lung disease
-e.g, autistic people fixated on routine –> may lead to eating a poor diet –> diabetes /blood pressure.

Question 6

Causal (illness –> personality)

Answer 6

Illness —> PID

e.g, Huntingdon’s disease
-Neurodegenerative disease
-Affects cognition and motor skills
-Can subsequently lead to frustration, stress, anxiety, irritability and mood changes.

Question 7

How to assess relationship between Pid and health/ illness

Answer 7

Longitudinal studies
-Enables you to measure personality before the onset of illness
-Illnesses can take a long time to develop
-By measuring before onset of illness, you can analyse what type of relationships exist between PID and illness and identify subsequent supports
-However, it requires a large population sample
-It is costly and attrition of data is common
-History and maturation effects

Question 8

Type A and Type B personalities

Answer 8

-Research on heart disease by Friedman and Rosenman (1958)
-Interested in predicting who would develop heart disease
-From physical factors alone they could not predict disease, but when adding psychological factors their prediction rates improve.

Type A personalities
-Coronary prone
-Driven to achieve
-Competitive
-Hostile to competitors
-Needs recognition
-Works hard
-Short temper

Type B personalities
-Non-coronary prone
-Relaxed
-Doesn’t plan ahead
-Unhurried in their approach
-No desire for competition

Question 9

Retrospective look at Type A and Type B personalities

Answer 9

Challenges of measurement
-There are many conflicting results from large-populations-based longitudinal studies
-OG study was 3,524 men, 8 years later Type A men were twice as likely to have cardiovascular disease as Type B men.
-Follow up study 22 years later showed no significant effects of Type A personality on mortality

Question 10

More current research on Type A and Type B personalities

Answer 10

-Toxic traits: hostility specifically produces higher levels of C-reactive protein in the immune system which can increase risk of cardiovascular disease
-Clustered risk factors: Type D (distressed) are people who manage stress by having negative affectivity.
-Social isolation: People who find it hard to express themselves have no outlet for stress.

Question 11

Locus of control calculation

Answer 11

Behavioural Potential = expectancy of the outcome X the perceived reinforcement value

Question 12

Internal and External locus of control general outlook on life

Answer 12

Internals
-Feel in control of lives
-Feel empowered
-Try to change things in their environment

Externals
-More likely to feel powerless

Individuals with internal LoC cope better than those with external LoC

Question 13

Self-efficacy

Answer 13

Will the behaviour performed lead to a desire outcome?
-Self-efficacy influences motivation and persistence
-Makes us resilient and better equipped to overcome adversity
-Associated with a range of health behaviours but dependent on confidence.

Question 14

Optimism

Answer 14

-Optimistic people are less susceptible to suffer anxiety and depression
-Cope better with stress
-Experience better physical and mental quality of life and tend to live longer
-BUT, do optimists under-report their symptoms
-Can you have too much optimism???

Question 15

Pessimism

Answer 15

-Pessimistic people are more likely to have detrimental effects (negative mood, low self-esteem)
-Can impact how people respond to negative health episodes long after they have recovered
-E.g. breast cancer survivors with a pessimistic explanatory style score lower on quality of life years after their illness compared to non-pessimistic women

Question 16

Fundamental attribution error

Answer 16

-The individual is more salient than the environment
-Behaviour seen as dispositionally-shaped rather than situationally-shaped
-E.g, assume that people who are overweight are lazy
-Could effect the way that subsequent support is provided to people

Question 17

Definition of disability

Answer 17

If person has a physical or mental impairment AND the impairment has substantial and long-term adverse effect on P’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

Question 18

Deconstructing attitudes toward disability

Answer 18

Time - disability is assumed to be permanent (e.g. it can’t come and go when applying for disability living allowance in the UK)
Adverse effect - But many people claim their disability is a part of their identity in a positive way
Day-to-day - it is relative to functioning , therefore situation and context matters
Future selves- if we live long, we will all experience disability - but often people think of disability as applying only to others