Health Psychology: Chapter 6

Identify the chief factors that can stress children and adolescents.

- Academic failure - Rejection by a peer

Identify the conditions that are associated with unemployment

- Compromised immune functioning - Elevated inflammation

What are the predisposing factors that make some people more biologically reactive than others?

- Genetic make up - Prenatal experiences

What are the positive effects of combining home and work responsibilities, especially for women?

- Improvement in self-esteem - Better sense of self-efficacy

Negative events produce ____ compared to positive events

more psychological distress

When a potential stressor is ambiguous, a person ____

must devote a lot of time and energy to understand the stressor

Role conflict

occurs when a person receives conflicting information about work tasks or standards from different individuals.

The tend-and-befriend theory has an underlying biological mechanism, in particular, the hormone ___

oxytocin

Pronounced HPA activation is common in ___

patients with depression

According to Lazarus, Folkman, and Launier, stress is determined by ____-____ ____ when a person perceives that his or her personal resources will probably not be sufficient to overcome the stressor

person-environment fit

The first set of pathways identified by researchers through which stress leads to poor health involves direct effects on ____

physiology

People who live with chronic stress have ____ than others

poorer health habits

Stress is a consequence of ____ ____, which occurs as a person is trying to understand what an event is and what it will mean

primary appraisal

Children who come from risky families face difficulty in developing ____

social relationships

The fight-or-flight response can be harmful because ____

stress disrupts emotional and physiological functioning

According to a research study, people who experience more stress are more likely to show a(n) ___ than people whose lives are less stressful.

stronger immune response

Cannon proposed that when an organism perceives a threat, the body is rapidly aroused and motivated via the ____

sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system

According to the ____-____-____ theory, in addition to fight or flight, people and animals respond to stress with social affiliation and nurturant behavior toward the offspring.

tend-and-befriend

Stress may impair the immune system's ability to

terminate inflammation

Stress may impair the immune system's ability to ____

terminate inflammation

A set of pathways by which stress adversely affects health involves ____

the reduced use of health services and adherence to treatment recommendations

What are the effects of sympathetic nervous system arousal?

- Increased blood pressure - Constriction of peripheral blood vessels

Identify the resultant effects of a chronic stressor.

- It can affect immune system recovery - It can impair cardiovascular recovery

Why is research relating chronic stress to health outcomes difficult to conduct?

- It is difficult to show that a particular chronic stressor is the factor that caused illness - Inventories that assess chronic strain may tap psychological distress and neuroticism

Identify the early risk factors of disease according to the allostatic load view of stress

- Low socioeconomic status - Exposure to violence

What are the main stressors reported by people in the United State?

- Money - Work - Family health problems

What are the resultant effects of excessive discharge of epinephrine and norepinephrine in the body?

- Neurochemical balances - Ventricular arrhythmias

Identify the true statements regarding cortisol levels after repeated activation of the HPA axis due to chronic stress

- People have exaggerated cortisol levels in response to a challenge - People have elevated cortisol levels long into the afternoon or evening

What are the chief factors that influence people's responses to stress?

- Personalities - Biological constitutions

Which of the following are tied to unemployment?

- Self-reported physical illness - High rates of depression

What are the aftereffects of a stressful event?

- Shortened attention span - Psychological distress

Identify the physiological responses of experimental rats after they were exposed to a variety of stressors in Hans Selye's study.

- Shrinking of the thymus - Enlarged adrenal cortex

According to S. Cohen and colleagues, people who reacted to laboratory stressors with high cortisol responses and who have had a high level of negative life events, were especially vulnerable to ____ when exposed to a virus.

upper respiratory infections

Which of the following is an important contributor to psychological distress and physical illness?

Chronic stress

___ vary with socioeconomic status and are tired to poor health outcomes.

Chronic stressors

___ is a major life event that has a mean value of 100 on the social readjustment rating scale.

Death of a spouse

Identify a true statement about the acute stress paradigm.

It is shown that experiencing stress in the presence of a supportive person helps reduce stress responses.

Identify a stressful event with a low mean value of 11 on the social readjustment scale.

Minor violation of the law

Which system may become dysregulated in response to stress?

Parasympathetic nervous sytsem

____ even when one is not aware that one is doing it, can keep heart rate and blood pressure at high levels.

Rumination

Who are the pioneers of stress research who created an inventory of stressful life events by developing ratings of these events based on the amount of change the events cause?

T. H. Holmes and R.H. Rahe

Which of the following has been helpful in identifying who is most vulnerable to stress?

The acute stress paradigm

Threat:

The assessment of possible future damage

Harm:

The assessment of the damage that has already been done

Which of the following systems is activated in response to stress?

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis

Alarm:

The person becomes mobilized to meet the threat

Exhaustion

The person fails to overcome the threat and depletes his or her physiological resources in the process of trying

Resistance

The person makes efforts to cope with the threat, through confrontation for example

Challenge:

The potential to overcome or profit from an event

Identify a drawback of life event inventories created by T.H. Holmes and R.H. Rahe.

They do not take into account the individual differences in how stressful events are experienced.

____ events are more stressful than predictable events.

Uncontrollable

Identify a true statement about the general adaptation syndrome developed by Hans Selye (1956)

When a person confronts a stressor, the general adaptation syndrome mobilizes itself for action

The damage due to chronic stress is made worse if people also begin to cope with stress through ___

a high-fat diet

The damage due to chronic stress is made worse if people also begin to cope with stress through ____

a high-fat diet

It is seen that even when ____ is short-term, it often compromises health habits.

acute stress

The ___ ___ ___ involves exposing people in a laboratory to short-term stressful events, and observing the impact of that stress on their physiological, neuroendocrine, and psychological responses.

acute stress paradigm

In context of stress, now the term fight refers more commonly to ____

aggressive responses to stress

Accumulating allostatic load may be thought of as accelerated ____ in response to stress.

aging

The concept of ___ ___ has been developed to refer to the physiological costs of chronic exposure to the physiological changes that result from repeated or chronic stress

allostatic load

Supportive social contacts

are protective of health, although stress can alter people's behavior in an unfavorable manner counteracting these health benefits

The anticipation of a stressor can be ___

as stressful as its actual occurence

Chronic neuroendocrine activation associated with overcommitment to work or work overload can contribute to ____

cardiovascular disease

When events are perceived as harmful or threatening, they are identified by the ____

cerebral cortex

Vulnerable populations such as ___, show little adaption to chronic stressors

children and the elderly

According to a research study, even daily commuting can affect daily ___ levels.

cortisol

In context of physiological recovery from a stressful event, researchers have paid special attention to prolonged ____ responses that occur under conditions of high stress.

cortisol

Repeated activation of the HPA axis in response to chronic or recurring stress can drastically alter daily ____ levels

cortisol

Minor stressful events are also called ___ ___

daily hassles

According to the ___-___-___ model, when high demands and low control are combined with little social support at work, the risk for coronary artery disease is greater

demand-control-support

Cognitive disruptions such as ___ are common after a stressful event.

difficulty in concentration

In response to stress, the medulla of the adrenal glands secrete catecholamines such as

epinephrine and norepinephrine

When a person perceives that his or her resources will probably be sufficient to deal with the vent but only with a lot of effort, he or she may ____

feel a moderate amount of stress

Research studies show that men are more distressed by ___

financial strain and work stress

During the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation, the adrenal cortex releases ___

glucocorticoids

According to Repetti and colleagues, "risky families" are families that have

high conflict or abuse and low warmth or nurturance

Working women who have children at home are known to have ____

higher cardiovascular reactivity

Information from the cortex is transmitted to the ___, which initiates one of the earliest responses to stress namely the sympathetic nervous system arousal.

hypothalamus

Corticosteroids are known to cause ____

immunosuppressive effects

A way of studying stress is to ____ and then assess whether they get ill and how ill they get.

intentionally expose people to viruses

Stress

is a negative emotional experience accompanied by predictable biochemical, physiological, cognitive, and behavioral changes that are directed either toward altering the stressful event or accommodating to its effects.

Reactivity

is the degree of change that occurs in autonomic, neuroendocrine, and/or immune responses as a result of stress

The fight-or-flight response is adaptive because ___

it enables the organism to respond quickly to threats

According to research, ____ are more distressed by adverse changes at home.

women