PSY101 / Chapter 14 / Health Psychology

Health Psychology: Stress, Coping, and Well-Being

Chapter 14
DOES MONEY BUY HAPPINESS?
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• Stress and Coping
• stress - A person’s response to events that are threatening or challenging.
– stressors that produce threats to our well-being
– Stress is a personal thing
• A person’s interpretation of things plays an important role in
the determination of what is stressful
• CATEGORIZING STRESSORS
• cataclysmic events - Strong stressors that occur suddenly and typically
affect many people at once (e.g., natural disasters; terrorist attacks).
• personal stressors - Major life events, such as the death of a family
member, that have immediate negative consequences that generally fade
with time.
• posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - A phenomenon in which victims
of major catastrophes or strong personal stressors feel long-lasting effects
that may include re-experiencing the event in vivid flashbacks or dreams.
– Symptoms include emotional numbing, sleep difficulties,
interpersonal problems, alcohol and drug abuse etc
• background stressors (“daily hassles”) - Everyday annoyances, such as
being stuck in traffic, that cause minor irritations and may have long-term ill
effects if they continue or are compounded by other stressful events.
• The High Cost of Stress
• Can cause biological and psychological consequences
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• Psychophysiological disorders -Medical problems influenced by an

interaction of psychological, emotional, and physical difficulties.
– High blood pressure to headaches
Page | 2 • general adaptation syndrome(GAS)- A theory developed by Selye that
suggests that a person’s response to a stressor consists of three stages: alarm
and mobilization, resistance, and exhaustion
• The first stage— alarm and mobilization —occurs when people become
aware of the presence of a stressor
• The second stage-resistance -During this stage, the body is actively fighting
the stressor on a biological level.
• The last stage- exhaustion - During the exhaustion stage, a person’s ability to
fight the stressor declines to the point where negative consequences of stress
appear: physical illness and psychological symptoms in the form of an
inability to concentrate, heightened irritability, or, in severe cases,
disorientation and a loss of touch with reality.
• Coping with Stress
• Coping -The efforts to control, reduce, or learn to tolerate the threats that
lead to stress.
• Emotion-focused coping. -people try to manage their emotions in the face
of stress by seeking to change the way they feel about or perceive a problem.
Examples of emotion-focused coping include strategies such as accepting
sympathy from others and looking at the bright side of a situation.
• Problem-focused coping. -attempts to modify the stressful problem or
source of stress. Problem-focused strategies lead to changes in behavior or to
the development of a plan of action to deal with stress. Starting a study
group to improve poor classroom performance is an example of problem-
focused coping.
• avoidant coping - a person may use wishful thinking to reduce stress or use
more direct escape routes, such as drug use, alcohol use, and overeating.
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• Learned helplessness
• A state in which people conclude that unpleasant or aversive stimuli cannot
be controlled— a view of the world that becomes so ingrained that they
cease trying to remedy the aversive circumstances even if they actually can
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exert some influence on the situation.
• coping style- that represents our general tendency to deal with stress in a
specific way.
• hardiness -A personality characteristic that is associated with a lower rate of
stress-related illness and consists of three components: commitment,
challenge, and control.
– Commitment - A tendency to throw ourselves into whatever we are
doing with a sense that our activities are important and meaningful.
– Challenge . Hardy people believe that change rather than stability is
the standard condition of life. To them, the anticipation of change
serves as an incentive rather than a threat to their security.
– Control . Hardiness is marked by a sense of control—the perception
that people can influence the events in their lives.
• SOCIAL SUPPORT: TURNING TO OTHERS
• social support- A mutual network of caring, interested others.
• Psychological Aspects of Illness
and Well-Being
• Type A behavior pattern - A cluster of behaviors involving hostility,
competitiveness, time urgency, and feeling driven.
– Relates to coronary heart disease
– Hostility relates to heart disease
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• Type B behavior pattern- A cluster of behaviors characterized by a patient,

cooperative, noncompetitive, and nonaggressive manner.
• Psychological Aspects of Cancer
Page | 4 • positive emotional responses may help generate specialized “killer” cells
that help control the size and spread of cancerous tumors.
• negative emotions may suppress the ability of those cells to fight tumors
• Smoking
• Heredity
• Environmental factors
• Quit smoking anyone?
• Promoting Health and Wellness
• Seek medical advice
– reactance -A negative emotional and cognitive reaction that results
from the restriction of one’s freedom.
• Feel hostility and anger
• Not seek medical advice
• Communicating effectively with health care providers
• Increasing compliance with medical advice
• Well-Being and Happiness
• subjective well-being- People’s own evaluation of their lives in terms of
both their thoughts and their emotions.
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• Characteristics of happy people-

– Happy people have high self-esteem.
– Happy people have a firm sense of control
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– Happy individuals are optimistic.
– Men and women generally are made happy by the same sorts of
activities—but not always.
– Happy people like to be around other people.
• Essay question
• How can we deal with the stress in our lives?
• Turn a threat into a challenge. When a stressful situation might be
controllable, the best coping strategy is to treat the situation as a challenge
and focus on ways to control it. For instance, if you experience stress
because your car is always breaking down, you might take a course in auto
mechanics and learn to deal directly with the car’s problems.
• Make a threatening situation less threatening. When a stressful situation
seems to be uncontrollable, you need to take a different approach. It is
possible to change your appraisal of the situation, view it in a different light,
and modify your attitude toward it. Research supports the old truism, “Look
for the silver lining in every cloud”.
• Change your goals. If you are faced with an uncontrollable situation, a
reasonable strategy is to adopt new goals that are practical in view of the
particular situation. For example, a dancer who has been in an automobile
accident and has lost full use of her legs may no longer aspire to a career in
dance but might modify her goals and try to become a choreographer.
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• Take physical action. Changing your physiological reaction to stress can

help with coping. For example, biofeedback (in which a person learns to
control internal physiological processes through conscious thought) can alter
basic physiological processes and allow people to reduce blood pressure,
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effective in reducing stress.
• Prepare for stress before it happens. A final strategy for coping with stress
is proactive coping, anticipating and preparing for stress before it is
encountered. For example, if you’re expecting to go through a one-week
period in which you must take a number of major tests, you can try to
arrange your schedule so you have more time to study.