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Chapter 15 Notes: Health, Stress, and Coping
Health Psychology: study of ways to use behavioral principles to prevent illness and promote health
-unhealthy behavior leads to half of all deaths in North America
Behavioral medicine: study of behavioral factors I medicine, physical fitness, and medical treatment.
Lifestyle diseases: heart disease, stroke, cancer
Disease-prone personality: depressed, anxious, hostile and often ill
Depression: associated with decreased exercise, poor eating habits
Smoking:
-largest preventable cause of death
-single most lethal behavioral risk factor
-1 in 10 smokers have long-term success in quitting
-refusal skills learning: role-play refusal/resistance to peer pressure
Life Skills Training
-practice in stress reduction, self-protection, decision-making, social skills,
self-control
Stress
-problem if prolonged or severe
-how we perceive events and react to them
Stressor
-event that challenges or threatens a person
-unpredictable events increase stress
-pressure increases stress (meeting unreasonable external demands or
expectations); lack of control
Burnout: emotional exhaustion; fatigues, apathetic, cynical; detached from job,
reduced personal accomplishment
-helping professions
-the opposite of job engagement
-helped with support systems
Lazarus
-2 important steps in managing a threat
-primary appraisal: decide if situation is relevant or irrelevant, positive or
Threatening
-secondary appraisal: assess resources and choose a way to meet threat
If situation is threatening:
-problem-focused coping: managing or altering the distressing situation
Itself
-emotion-focused coping: people try to control emotions or reactions to
situation
-these can occur together
Frustration: negative emotional state when prevented from reaching desired goals
-external frustration: condition outside of individual
(delays, rejection, loss)
-personal frustration: based on personal characteristics
-too short for basketball
-poor grades for med school
Reactions to Frustration
-aggression: response made with intent to harm person or object
-displaced aggression: targets are safer, less likely to retaliate
-unemployment increases and so does
child abuse
-scapegoating: blaming person or groups for conditions not of their
making
-layoffs lead to increase in violence
-escape: examples: dropping out of school, using drugs
Conflict: must choose between contradictory needs, desires, motives, or demands
Approach-Approach Conflict
-easiest to resolve
-choose between 2 positive desirable alternatives (e.g., 2 desserts)
-Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict
-choose between 2 negative alternatives (e.g., bad job vs.
unemployment, burn in fire or jump)
-indecision, inaction
-Approach-Avoidance Conflict
-attracted to and repelled by same goal (e.g., marry someone your
parents don’t like
-ambivalence, partial approach
-Multiple Conflicts
-neither completely positive or negative
Defense Mechanisms
-Denial: refuse to accept (death, illness)
-Repression: unconsciously preventing painful or dangerous thoughts
from entering awareness
-Reaction Formation: exaggerate behavior opposite to what you feel
-e.g., parent overprotective toward unwanted child
-Regression: return to earlier, less demanding situations
-Projection: see own impulses, feelings in others
-exaggerating negative traits in others
-Rationalization: justify actions by giving false reasons for them
-Compensation: use against feeling of inferiority
-Sublimation: work off frustrated desires through socially acceptable
activities
-channel aggression by becoming boxer or lying by becoming a
novelist
Learned Helplessness: Seligman
-acquired inability to overcome obstacle and avoid aversive stimuli
-divided box: -dogs learn to jump to other side to escape shock
-with warning, learn to leap to avoid shock
-but, if trained before in box with harness, don’t try to escape
Depression and Learned Helplessness
-both involve despondency, hopelessness, powerlessness
-decreased activity, sex drive and appetite
16 to 30% of student population is depressed at any given time
-stress from school, pressure to choose a career, loneliness, poor grades,
relationship issues
Recognizing Depression
-consistent, negative opinion of self
-frequent self-criticism and blame
-negative interpretation of events that normally don’t bother you
-future looks bleak
-responsibilities feel overwhelming
Stress and Health
-scales often geared toward specific populations
Hassles, Microstressors
-worse if related to self-worth
Lazarus: frequent and severe hassles more predictive of day-to-day
health than major life events
-major life events predicted health problems 1 to 2 years later
Psychosomatic Disorders
-psychological factors contribute to actual bodily damage
Hypochondriacs: imagine they suffer from diseases
Biofeedback: information given about ongoing bodily functions
-leads to control of these functions
-treatment for migraines
Cardiac Personality
-at risk for cardiac disease
-Type A: twice as much heart disease as Type B
-Type A:
-ambitious, competitive, achievement-oriented, time urgency
-hostility strongly correlated with increased risk of heart attack,
especially if it is bottled up
-helped with decrease in mistrust, decreased anger, increased
consideration
Hardy Personality
-resistant to stress
-sense of personal commitment to self, work, family, and other stabilizing
values
-feel control over their lives and their work
-see life as challenges rather than threats or problems
General Adaptation Syndrome
-series of bodily reactions to prolonged stress
-alarm reaction: stress hormones
-stage of resistance: alarm reaction disappears
-better able to cope with initial stressor
-stage of exhaustion: stress hormones are depleted
Immune System
-mobilizes defenses (white blood cells) against disease agents
-stress can affect immune system and increase susceptibility to disease
Modifying Ineffective Behavior
-slow down
-organize
-strike balance between work, family, social life
-recognize an accept your limitations
-seek social support
-write about your feelings
-coping statements; affirmations