Psycholohgy – Flashcards
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What is a great stress reliever?
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Humor
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Psychoneuroimmunology
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Study of the effects of psychological factors such as stress, emotions, thoughts and behaviors on the immune system
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What does laughter increase?
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Beta-endorphins, a group of chemicals that help ease depression and a human growth hormone which helps with immunity to diseases
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What does laughter decrease?
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Damaging hormones: cortisol, a major stress hormone, epinephrine(adrenaline) and dopac, a brain chemical which helps produce epinephrine
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Stress
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The term used to describe psychical,emotional,cognitive and behavioral reponses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging
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Stressors
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Events that cause a stress reaction, and come from within a person or from an external source and range from mild to severe
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Phsycial problems with stress
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Unusual fatigue,Sleeping problems,frquent colds,chest pains and nausea
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Mental Symptoms of Stress
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Problems with concentration, memory, and decision making and people under stress often lose their sense of humor
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Emotional Symptoms of Stress
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People under stress experience anxiety,depression,fear, and irritability as well as anger and frustration
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Examples of Behvaioral symptoms of stress
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Paceing,eating to much,crying a lot,smoking and drinking, and violence
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Types of Stressors
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Distress Eustress Catastrophe
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Distress
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The effect of unpleasant and undesirable stressors
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Eustress
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Coined By Hans Selye, the effect of positive events, or the optimal amount of stress that people need to promote health and well-being
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Hans Selye
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(1907-1982) Psychologist who researched stress and came up with the General Adaptation Syndrome
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Catastrophe
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An unpredictable,large scale event that creates a tremendous need to adapt and adjust as well as an overwhelming feeling of threat
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Does stress only come from unpleasant events?
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no
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Examples of pleasant events which causes stress
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Marriage,Going to college or Christmas
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What is the core of stress?
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Adjustments and changes
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What did Thomas holmes and Richard Rahe believe?
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That any life event that required people to change,adapt or adjust their lifestyles would result in stress
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What types of events are associated with stress?
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Both positive and negative events
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What did Holmes and Rahe measure?
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The amount of stress in a persons life by having that person add up the total"Life change units" associated with each major events in their life using the Social Readjustment rating scale(SRRS)
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Social Readjustment rating scale(SRRS)
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Devised by Holmes and Rahe,assesment that measures the amount of stress in a persons life over a 1-year period resulting from major life changes
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How many life changes did marriage represent?
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50 "life change units"
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General Adaptation Syndrome
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Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress which occurs in three stages--alarm, resistance, exhaustion
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What did researchers find associated with High scores on the SRRS?
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Increased risk of illness or accidents
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Scores between 150 and 199 on the SRRS indicated?
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Mild Mid life crisis associated with a 30 precent change of illness or accidents
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Scores between 200 and 299 indicated?
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Moderate life crisis associated with a 50 precent chance of illness or accidents
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Scores over 300 indicated?
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Major life crisis associarted with an 80 perdecent chance of illness or accidents
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College Undergraduate stress scale
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Assesment that measures the amount of stress in a college students life over a 1-year period resulting from major life events
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What is the most stressful event on the CUSS?
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Being raped
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What is the most stressfull event on the SRRS?
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Death of a spouse
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What does the bulk of stress we experience daily come from?
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little frustrations, delays, irritations, minor diagreements, and similar small aggravations
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Hassles
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Daily annoyances of everyday life
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Psychological factors in stress
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Pressure Uncontrollability frustriation Aggression
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Pressure
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The psychological experience produced by urgent demands or expecations for a persons behavior that come from an outside source
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What is the most common form of pressure?
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Time pressure, which has a negative impact on creativity
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In uncontrollability as a factor what increases a persons experience of stress?
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The degree of control that the person has over a particular event or situation. The less control the greater the degree of stress
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Frustration
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Produced by the blocking of a desired goal or fulfillment of precieved need
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Examples of external sources of frustration
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Losses,rejections,faliures, and delays
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Internal frustration
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Also known as personal frustration, occurs when the goal or need cannot be attained because of internal or personal characteristics
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Examples of Internal Frustration
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An individual Might not be tall enough the play a basketball game
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External frustration
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based on conditions outside a person that impede progress toward a goal
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Responses toward frustriation
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Presistence Agression Escape or Withdrawl
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Presistence
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Continuation of efforts to get around whatever is causing the frustration, may involve making more intense efforts or changing the style of the response
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Agression
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Actions meant to harm or destroy
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Frustration aggression hypothesis
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the theory that frustration causes aggression
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Reformulation of the Frustration aggression hypothesis
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Berkowitz, stated that frustration creates an internal "readiness to agress" but that aggression will not follow unless certain external cues are also present
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Displaced Agression
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Taking out one's frustration on some less threating or more avalible target
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Scapegoats
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a person or thing who takes the blame for the mistakes or crimes of others
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Escape or WItharwal
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Leaving the presence of a stressor, either literarily or by a psychological withdrawl into fantasy,drug abuse, or apathy
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Apathy
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Ceasing to care about or act upon the situation
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Types of Conflict
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Multiple approach- avoidance conflicts Approach- Approach conflict Avoidance- avoidance conflict Approach- avoidance conflict Double approach avoidance conflict
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Multiple approach- avoidance conflicts
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Conflict in which the person must decide between more than two goals, with each goal possessing both positive and negative aspects
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Approach- Approach conflict
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Conflict occurring when a person must choose between two desirable goals
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Avoidance- avoidance conflict
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Conflict occurring when a person must choose between two undesirable goals
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Approach- avoidance conflict
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Conflict occurring when a person must choose or not choose a goal that has both positive and negative aspects
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Double approach avoidance conflict
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Conflict occurring when a person must choose between two goals with each goal possessing both positive and negative aspects
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Parasympathetic nervous system
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Rest and Digest,automatically returns us to a normal resting state when the reason for arousal has passed
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Sympathetic nervous system
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Fight or flight response,arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations
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Hans Selye
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Founder of the field of research concerning stress and its effects on the human body, studied the sequence of psychological reactions that the body undergoes when adapting to a stressor
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General Adaptation Theory(GAS) Stages
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Alarm Resistance Exhaustion
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Alarm Stage
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Adrenal glands relase hormones that increase heart rate blood pressure and the supply of blood sugar, resulting in a burst of energy, reactions such as fever, nausea and headache are common
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Resistance
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individual settles into the sympathetic divisions' activity, continuing to release stress hormones that help the bodyfight off, or resist the stressor continues until the stressor ends or until the organism dies,person might feel better
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Exhaustion stage
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characterized by depletion of bodily resources and a lowered resistance to stress-related disorders or conditions
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What experiance can the resistance stage create?
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Analgesia, the insensitivity to pain
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Immune system
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System of cells,organs and chemicals of the body that respond to attacks from disease,infections and injuries
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Health psychologist
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Psychologists who study the effects of behavior on health and the impact of illness on behavior and emotion.
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People who are aggressive or have a naturally high level of anxiety tend to?
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create more stress then the actual stressor
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What type of people do not live the average life expectancy?
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People who have negative personality traits, agressivness,stubborness,inflexibility
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Personality Types
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Type A Type B Type C Type H
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Type A
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Person who is ambitious, time conscious,extremely hardworking, and tends to have high levels of hostility and anger as well as being easily annoyed
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Type B
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Person who is relaxed and laid back,less driven and competitive than type A, and slow to anger
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Type C
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Pleasant but repressed person, who tends to internalize his or her anger and anxiety and who finds expressing emotions difficult
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Type H
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Hardy personality, a person who seems to thrive on stress but lacks the anger and hostility of type A personality
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What personality type if at risk for heart disease?
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Type A men, three times more likely then type B Type A women, four times more likely then type B
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What does hostility increase?
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Increase risk of coronanry heart disease, rise in blood pressure, obesity ,resistance to insulin
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What type of individuals are prone to cancer?
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Type C
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Type A personality fits the description of a major personality trait known as?
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Neuroticism, tendency to worry,moody and emotionally intense
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Hardy people differ from ordinary in three ways
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Deep sense of commitment Control of their lives Meet problems as challenges
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Optomists have elevated levels of ?
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T Cells
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Four ways in which optimism may affect how long a person lives
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1.less likely to develop learned helplessness 2.More likely to take care of health by preventative measures 3.Less likely to become depressed 4.Have a more effectively functioning immune system than pessmists
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Social Factors which influence stress reactions
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Poverty Job stress
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Poverty
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Lack of sufficient money to provide the basic necessities of life can lead to many stressors
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Job stress
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Work-related stress that includes burnout
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Common source of stress?
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Overcrowding
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Job stress stressors
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workload,a lack of variety or meaningfullness in work,lack of control over decisions,long hours,poor physical work conditions and lack of job security
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Poverty stressors
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overcrowding,lack of medical care,increased rates of disabilities due to poor prenatal care, noisy enviroments,increased rates of illness,violence and substance abuse
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Burnout
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Negative changes in thoughts,emotions, and behavior as a result of prolonged stress or frustration
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Symtoms of burnout
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Extreme dissaftication,pessimism, lowered job satisfaction, and a desire to quit
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Who can also get burnout?
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college stundents
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Acculturation
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The process of adapting to a new or different culture, often the dominant culture
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Acculturative stress
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Stress resulting from the need to change and adapt a persons ways to the majority culture
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Types of Acculturation
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Integration Assimilation Seperation Marginalized
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Social support system
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network of family, friends,neighbors,coworkers and others who can offer support,comfort or aid to a persons needs
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What has a Social support system shown to help?
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It has been shown to improve mental health and physical functioning in individuals with lupus or HIV, as well as the negative emotions of loneliness and depression
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Coping strategies
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Actions that people can take to master,tolerate,reduce or minimize the effects of stressors
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Problem focused coping
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Coping strategies that try to eliminate the source of stress or reduce its impact through direct actions
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Emotion focused coping
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Coping strategies that change the impact of the stressor by changing the emotional reaction to the stressor
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Meditation
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Mental series of exercises meant to refocus attention and achieve a trancelike state of consciousness
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Concentrative meditation
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Form of meditation In which a person focuses the mind on a repetitive or unchanging stimulus so that the mind can be cleared of disturbing thoughts and the body can experience relaxation
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Receptive meditiation
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Form of meditation in which a person attempts to become aware of everything in immediate conscious experience or an expansion of consciousness
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Types of Coping strategies
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Problem-focused coping Emotion-focused coping Meditation
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Forms of meditation
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Concentrative meditation Receptive meditation
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Meditation can produce?
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State of relaxation that can aid in coping with the physiological reactions to a stressful situation and can change the brain waves to include more theta and alpha waves but not delta
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Herbert Benson
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Found that relaxation produces a states of relaxation in which blood pressure is lowered, alpha waves are increased and the amounts of melatonin are secreted at night.
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Concentrative meditation can?
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Reduce levels of chronic pain, symptoms of anxiety, depression and hostility
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What can also help individuals cope with stress?
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Culture Religion
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What did eustress originally mean?
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Coined by Hans Selye to describe stress experienced when positive events require the body to adapt, however, now it means the effects of positive events or the optimal amount of stress that people need to promote health and well being.
