Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing

Stress

The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.  

approach and avoidance motives

The drive to move toward (approach) or away from (avoid) a stimulus.

Chronic Stress

Stress that is ongoing, often for a long period of time, such as consistent daily work or school pressures, financial stability, or long-term illness.

Fight or Flight Response

An emergency response, including activation of the sympathetic nervous system, that mobilizes energy and activity for attacking or escaping a threat.

general adaptation syndrome (GAS)

Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three stages—alarm, resistance, exhaustion.

tend-and-befriend response

Under stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others (tend)  and bond with and seek support from others (befriend).  

Psychoneuroimmunology

The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes combine to affect our immune system and health.

Coronary Heart Disease

The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; a leading cause of death in many countries.

Type A

Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.  

Type B

Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.  

Coping

Reducing stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods.

Resilience

The personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma.  

Problem-focused coping

Attempting to reduce stress by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.   

Emotion-focused coping

Attempting to reduce stress by attending to emotional needs related to our stress reaction.

Personal Control

Our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless.

Learned Helplessness

The hopelessness and passive resignation humans and other animals learn when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

External locus of control

The perception that outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.

Internal Locus of Control

The perception that we control our own fate.

Self-Control

The ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long-term rewards

Optimism

The anticipation of positive outcomes. Optimists are people who expect the best and expect their efforts to lead to good things.

Pessimism

The anticipation of negative outcomes. Pessimists are people who expect the worst and doubt that their goals will be achieved.

Emotion Regulation

How we manage our emotions, including which emotions we allow ourselves to feel, when we feel them, and how we express those emotions.

Aerobic Exercise

Sustained exercise that increases heart and lung fitness; also helps reduce depression and anxiety.

Mindful Meditation

A reflective practice in which people attend to current experiences in a nonjudgmental and accepting manner.

Happiness

An enduring prevalence of positive emotions, less frequent negative emotions, and overall satisfaction with life.

feel-good, do-good phenomenon

Our tendency to be helpful when in a good mood.

Subject Well Being

Self-perceived satisfaction with life. Used along with measures of objective well-being (for example, physical and economic indicators) to judge our quality of life.

adaptation-level phenomenon

Our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our past experiences.

relative deprivation

The perception that we are worse off relative to those with whom we compare ourselves.