PSY-362

the biopsychosocial model

- Biological basis of disease and illness - Psychological basis of disease and illness. - Social basis of disease and illness

Actor-observer bias

A person attributes the cause of negative events to be related to the situation and discount dispositional factors.

Attitudes

Is an evaluation of an object along a positive-negative dimension. Nearly every object triggers some degree of positive or negative emotion.

Collectivistic attribution

Non-Westerners think about themselves more in terms of the social roles they occupy and their obligation to other people and institutions.

Behavior

Attitudes are associated with specific behaviors. Most generally the effective evaluation of good versus bad is connected to a behavioral tendency to either approach or avoid. Attitudes alert us to rewarding objects we should approach and to costly or punishing objects we should avoid. People are more likely to act in ways consistent with the attitude.

Attitudes and behavior

Behaviors are a stronger predictors of attitudes; attitudes may change in order to be consistent with behaviors.

maladaptive

Behaviors are actions or tendencies that don't allow an individual to adjust well to certain situations. They are typically disruptive and dysfunctional behaviors can range from mild to severe. Maladaptive behaviors are typically used as a means of reducing mental discomfort and anxiety but are not effective in this regard and sometimes even make it worse. (ex. substance or drug abuse).

Attribution

Deals with how the social perceiver uses information to arrive at casual explanations for events. It examines what information is gather and how it is combined to form a causal judgement. Concerned with how and why ordinary people explain events as they do. An umbrella term used to describe the set of theoretical accounts of how people assign causes to the events around them, and the effects of their causal assessments.

Internal vs. external

Degree that cause is linked to the self or the external situation

Stable vs. unstable

Degree that cause is seen as fixed or as something that is temporary

Global vs. specific

Degree that the cause is seen as affecting other domains in life or is restricted to affecting one specific domain.

positive moods affect compliance

In psychology, a mood is an emotional state. In contrast to emotions, feelings, or affects, moods are less specific, less intense and less likely to be provoked or instantiated by a particular stimulus or event. Moods are typically described as having either a positive or negative valence.

Optimistic

Internal, stable, and global attributions made for positive events.

Pessimistic explanatory style

Internal, stable, global attributions habitually made for negative events. (ex. "It's my fault". "I'm never going to be able to").

False consensus effect

Occurs when we overestimate the number of other people (or extent to which other people) share our opinions, beliefs, and behaviors. Sometimes individuals tend to believe that others are more similar to them than is actually the case. Especially when considering these views that are important to us.

Biological Component

Physiological components of health include factors such as your genetics or family history, your age, sex, race, if you are pre or post menopausal, and existing medical conditions. All these physiological components obviously have an impact on your health.

reactance theory

Reactance is a motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away his or her choices or limiting the range of alternatives.

Consistency

Refers to what an individual does in a given situation on different occasions. Is the behavior the same now as in the past, or does it vary? Does your friend have favorable things to say about today's statistics class only, or has she raved about the course all semester? The more an individual's reaction varies across occasions (when consistency is low), the harder it is to make a definite attribution either to the person or to the situation.

Distinctiveness

Refers to what an individual does in different situations. Is a particular behavior unique to a specific situation, or does It occur in many situations? Does your friend seem to like all math classes, or even all classes in general, or does she just like her statistics class? The more someone's reaction is confined to a particular situation (when distinctiveness is high), the less it says about an individual and the more it says about the specific situation.

Covariation

Refers to what most people would do in a given situation. Does everyone behave the same way in that situation, or do few other people behave that way? Is your friend one of the precious few who likes her statistics class? The more an individual's reaction is shared by others (when consensus is high), the less it says about that individual and the more it says about the situation.

Self-defensive

Strategy done by the unconscious mind to manipulate, deny or distort reality in order to defend against feelings or anxiety and unacceptable impulses and to maintain one's self-schema or other schemas. These processes consist of repression (ex. burying feelings or painful thoughts), rationalization (ex, justification of one's behavior and motivations by substituting "good" acceptable reasons) and identification (ex. incorporating an object or thought into oneself).

Just-world hypothesis

The belief that people get what they deserve in life and deserve what they get. "Good things happen to good people, bad things to bad people".

fundamental attribution error

The failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, and the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions on behavior.

Augmentation principle

The idea that people should assign greater weight to a particular cause of behavior if other causes are present that normally would produce a different outcome.

Discounting principle

The idea that people should assign related weight to a particular cause of behavior if other plausible causes might have produced it.

Self-serving attribution bias

The tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances, and to attribute success and other good events to oneself. (ex. athletes may attribute losses to bad referees but victories to talent and hard work).

• Effort justification

The tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing. Greater effort expanded leads to more dissonance and more attempts to rationalize behavior. Ex. people will believe a goal is worth while if they worked hard to get there.

Psychological Component

There are psychological variables that have an impact on your medical well-being. These can include certain forms of depression or anxiety disorders, stress, and hostility. One example of psychological factors impacting health includes heart disease. Hostility has become more common place in our culture. Some people even joke about it as they describe their anger while driving or other activities. However, studies show that being angry, or even recalling an incident in the past that made you angry can cause a cascade of events. It can increase inflammation, puts stress on the heart muscle, increases calcium buildup in arteries and stirs up stress hormones. Stress can contribute to high blood pressure, chest pain, irregular heart rhythm, higher cholesterol levels, damage arteries, contribute to blood clots can contribute to the progression of coronary artery disease. Managing your mental health can have a positive impact on your medical health.

Environmental Component

These factors also play a role in your overall health. Examples of these include social support, workplace, quality of marriage, and finances. For example we know social support is key to health. It can have a protective effect in that it is associated with good mental and medical health, helps with speedier recovery from illness, and helps individuals remain healthier in the face of stress. Another environmental factor is work stress. Sixty-nine percent of employees report that work is a significant source of stress and 41% say they typically feel tense or stressed out during the workday (American Psychological Association, 2009). Stress in turn can impact our mental and medical well-being.

Behavioral Component

These include behaviors people engage in that contribute to health such as smoking, fatty diet, sedentary lifestyle, adherence to medications and going to see health care professionals regularly. Your everyday behaviors have a direct impact on your health and well-being. Many major chronic diseases stem from or are exacerbated by choices we make every single day.

Counterfactual thinking

Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened "if only something had occurred differently.

Cogniton

Thoughts that are typically reinforcing a person's feelings. These include knowledge and beliefs about the object, as well as associated memories and images. Ex. Your attitude about a favorite city, includes knowledge about its history and its most appealing neighborhoods and landmarks, as well as special times you've spent there.

covariation principle and attribution

We try to determine what causes (internal or external) symptomatic of the person in question or applicable to nearly everyone "covary" with the observation or effect were trying to explain.

Individualistic attribution

Westerners generally define themselves in terms of their relationships with others less often than do other people throughout the world. Westerners think about themselves more in the context of personal goals, attributes, and preferences.

that's not all technique

a two-step process for bettering adherence which includes showing an initial, significant request and then, prior to the individual having a chance to respond, immediately lessening it to a smaller target request. The target request is , at times, made more appealing by offering some extra advantage.

door-in-the-face technique

compliance method commonly studied in social psychology. The persuader attempts to convince the respondent to comply by making a large request that the respondent will most likely turn down, much like a metaphorical slamming of a door in the persuader's face.

foot-in-the-door technique

compliance tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first setting them up by having that person agree to a modest request.

negative state relief hypothesis

theory that attempts to describe how one situational factor— sadness—relates to the willingness to help others. Specifically, this theory predicts that at least under certain circumstances, a temporary feeling of sadness is likely to result in an increased willingness to help others.

facial expression

• A smile directly produces the feelings that the expressions represent and how emotions are produced. These results suggest that our physical movements while evaluating stimuli (tv) can affect how we evaluate those stimuli.

self-affirmation

• Boosting our self-esteem and identity by focusing on important aspects of the self. If dissonance results from challenges or threats to people's sense of themselves as rational, competent, and moral, it follows that they can seward off dissonance not only by dealing directly with the specific threat itself, but also indirectly by taking stock of their other qualities and core values. Self-affirmation is a common way for people to cope with threats to their self-esteem. Example - "Sure, I might have violated a friend's confidence, but I am very empathetic when other people are having difficulty.