1. Understanding Psychology 6th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A
Understanding Psychology 6th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto
PowerPoint Presentation by
H. Lynn Bradman
Metropolitan Community College
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2. Stress and Health Psychology
Chapter 11
Stress and Health Psychology
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3. Sources of Stress
We experience stress when we are faced with a tense or threatening situation that requires us to change or adapt our behavior.
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4. Stress and Health Psychology
Any environmental demand that creates a state of tension or threat and requires change or adaptation.
Adjustment:
Any effort to cope with stress.
Health psychology:
Concerned with the relationship between psychological factors and physical health and illness.
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5. Sources of Stress Change Hassles Pressure Frustration Conflict
Self-imposed stress
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6. Change Most stressful events involve some kind of change.
Regardless of whether a change is positive or negative, it will still produce stress.
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7. Hassles Life’s petty annoyances, irritations, and frustrations.
Examples of hassles:
Being stuck in traffic, misplacing car keys, getting into trivial arguments with co-workers
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8. Pressure
A feeling that one must speed up, intensify, or change the direction of one’s behavior or live up to a higher standard of performance.
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9. Frustration
The feeling that occurs when a person is prevented from reaching a goal.
Frustration is different from hassles because hassles do not typically prevent one from reaching his/her goals.
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10. Five Sources of Frustration in American Life
Delays
Lack of resources
Losses
Failure
Discrimination
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11. Conflict
The simultaneous existence of incompatible demands, opportunities, needs, or goals.
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12. Types of Conflict Approach/approach conflict:
Simultaneous attraction to two appealing possibilities, neither of which has any negative qualities.
Avoidance/avoidance conflict:
Facing a choice between two undesirable possibilities, neither of which has any positive qualities.
Approach/avoidance conflict:
Simultaneous attraction and repulsion to the same goal.
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13. Self-Imposed Stress
Albert Ellis believes many people have irrational or self-defeating beliefs that create self-imposed stress.
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14. Stress and Individual Differences
Individual differences, such as hardiness, may predict reactions to stress.
Hardiness:
Feeling in control of your life and viewing difficult demands as challenges to be overcome.
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15. Dealing with Stress Direct coping: Defensive coping:
Action taken to change an uncomfortable situation.
Defensive coping:
Convincing yourself that you are not really threatened or do not really want something that is unattainable.
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16. Coping with Stress
People generally adjust to stress in one of two ways:
Direct coping describes any action people take to change an uncomfortable situation, whereas
Defensive coping denotes the various ways people convince themselves that they are not really threatened or do not really want something they cannot get.
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17. Types of Direct Coping Confrontation: Compromise: Withdrawal:
Acknowledging a stressful situation directly and attempting to find a solution to the problem
Compromise:
Choosing a more realistic goal when an ideal goal cannot be met
Withdrawal:
Avoiding a situation when other options are not practical
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18. Defense Mechanisms Denial: Repression: Projection:
Refusal to acknowledge a painful or threatening reality.
Repression:
Excluding uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and desires from consciousness.
Projection:
Attributing one’s own repressed motives, feelings, or wishes to others.
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19. Defense Mechanisms Identification: Regression: Intellectualization:
Taking on the characteristics of someone else to avoid feeling incompetent.
Regression:
Reverting to childlike behavior and defenses.
Intellectualization:
Thinking abstractly about stressful problems as a way of detaching oneself from them.
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20. Defense Mechanisms Reaction formation: Displacement:
Expression of exaggerated ideas and emotions that are the opposite of one’s repressed beliefs or feelings.
Displacement:
Shifting repressed motives and emotions from an original object to a substitute object.
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21. Defense Mechanisms Sublimation:
Redirecting repressed motives and feelings into more socially acceptable channels.
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22. How Stress Affects Health
Physiologist Hans Selye contends that people react to physical and psychological stress in three stages
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23. Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
We react to stress in three ways:
Alarm reaction (stage 1)
Resistance (stage 2)
Exhaustion (stage 3)
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24. Alarm Reaction
The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for fight or flight:
Adrenal gland releases hormones
We become more sensitive and alert
Respiration and heart rate quicken
Muscles become tense
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26. Resistance
An individual is still under stress, thus the body continues to produce large amounts of energy.
During prolonged existence in this stage the body is subject to considerable wear and tear.
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27. Exhaustion
Some people lose touch with reality and show signs of emotional disorder or mental illness.
Others show signs of “burnout”
The inability to concentrate, irritability, procrastination, and a belief that nothing is worthwhile.
Physical symptoms may also appear.
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28. Coronary Heart Disease
Mental stress predisposes one to CHD.
Personality also plays an important role.
Type A behavior pattern: respond to life events with impatience, hostility, competitiveness, urgency, and constant striving
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29. Stress and The Immune System
Stress can lead to:
Colds or flu
Depression
Greater susceptibility to upper respiratory infections
Increased vulnerability to cancer
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30. Sources of Extreme Stress
Stress derives from a number of sources
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31. Sources of Extreme Stress
Unemployment
Divorce and separation
Bereavement
Catastrophes
Combat and other personal attacks
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32. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Extreme traumas may result in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD):
A disabling emotional disorder whose symptoms include anxiety, sleeplessness, and nightmares.
Combat veterans and people with a history of emotional problems are especially vulnerable to PTSD.
Also occurs in rape victims and victims of disasters
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34. The Well-Adjusted Person
Psychologists are of several minds on what constitutes good adjustment.
Some believe that well-adjusted people live according to social norms.
They have learned to control socially forbidden impulses and to limit their goals to those that society allows.
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35. The Well-Adjusted Person
Other psychologists disagree, arguing that well-adjusted people enjoy overcoming challenging situations and that this ability leads to growth and self-fulfillment.
Finally, some psychologists use specific criteria to evaluate a person's ability to adjust:
How well the adjustment solves the problem and satisfies both personal needs and the needs of others.
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