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
