Transcript Stress, Health & Coping

Stress
• A negative emotional state occurring in
response to events that are perceived as
taxing or exceeding a person’s resources or
ability to cope
Health psychology
• The branch of psychology that studies how
biological, behavioral, and social factors
influence health, illness, medical treatment,
and health-related behaviors
Biopsychosocial model
• The belief that physical health and illness
are determined by the complex interaction
of biological, psychological , and social
factors
Stressors
• Events or situations that are perceived as
harmful, threatening, or challenging
Daily hassles
• Everyday minor events that annoy and upset
people
Conflict
• A situation in which a person feels pulled
between two or more opposing desires,
motives, or goals
Acculturative stress
• The stress that results from the pressure of
adapting to a new culture
Fight-or-flight response
• A rapidly occurring chain of internal
physical reactions that prepare people either
to fight or take flight from an immediate
threat
Catecholamines
• Hormones secreted by the adrenal medulla
that cause rapid physiological arousal;
include adrenaline and noradrenaline
General adaptation syndrome
• Selye’s term for the three-stage progression
of physical changes that occur when and
organism is exposed to intense and
prolonged stress. The three stages are alarm,
resistance, and exhaustion
Corticosteroids
• Hormones released by the adrenal cortex
that play a key role in the body’s response
to long-term stressors
Immune system
• Body system that produces specialized
white blood cells that protect the body from
viruses, bacteria, and tumor cells
Lymphocytes
• Specialized white blood cells that are
responsible for immune defenses
Psychoneuroimmunology
• An interdisciplinary field that studies the
interconnections among psychological
processes, nervous and endocrine system
functions, and the immune system
Optimistic explanatory style
• Accounting for negative events or situations
with external, unstable, and specific
explanations
Pessimistic explanatory style
• Accounting for negative events or situations
with internal, stable, and global
explanations.
Type A behavior pattern
• A behavioral and emotional style
characterized by a sense of time urgency,
hostility, and competitiveness
Social support
• The resources provided by other people in
times of need
Coping
• Behavioral and cognitive responses used to
deal with stressors; involves efforts to
change circumstances, or your interpretation
of circumstances, to make them more
favorable and less threatening
Problem focused coping
• Coping efforts primarily aimed at directly
changing or managing a threatening or
harmful stressor
Emotion-focused coping
• Coping efforts primarily aimed at relieving
or regulating the emotional impact of a
stressful situation
Robert Ader (b. 1932)
• American psychologist who, with
immunologist Nicholas Cohen, first
demonstrated that immune system
responses could be classically conditioned;
helped establish the new interdisciplinary
field of psychoneuroimmunology
Walter B. Cannon (1871-1945)
• American physiologist who made several
important contributions to psychology,
especially in the study of emotions.
Described the fight-or-flight response,
which involves the sympathetic nervous
system and the endocrine system
Janice Kiecolt-Glaser (b. 1951)
• American psychologist who, with
immunologist Ronald Glaser, has conducted
extensive research on the effects of stress on
the immune system
Richard Lazarus (b. 1922)
• American psychologist who helped promote
the cognitive perspective in the study of
emotion and stress; developed the cognitive
appraisal model of stress and coping with
co-researcher Susan Folkman
Martin Seligman (b. 1942)
• American psychologist who conducted
research on explanatory style and the role it
plays in stress, health, and illness
Hans Selye (1907-1982)
• Canadian endocrinologist who was a
pioneer in stress research; defined stress as
“the nonspecific response of the body to any
demand placed on it” and described a threestage response to prolonged stress that he
termed the general adaptation syndrome