Chapter 14: Health and Well Being

Health Psychology

Health Psychology

Addresses factors that influence well-being and illness, as well as measures that can be taken to promote health and prevent illness.

Multimodal Treatments

Often combine biological measures (e.g., the use of nicotine patches to help smokers quit), with psychological measures

Transtheoretical Model

Identified six major stages in the change process

Abstinence VIolation Effect

In which the person becomes upset and self-blaming over the lapse and views it as proof that he or she will never be strong enough to resist temptation

Stress

A pattern of cognitive appraisals, physiological responses, and behavioral tendencies that occurs in response to a perceived imbalance between situational demands and the resources needed to cope with them

Problem-Focused Coping

Strategies attempt to confront and directly deal with the demands of the situation or to change the situation so that it is no longer stressful

Emotion-Focused Coping

Strategies attempt to manage the emotional responses that result from it

Placebo

Physiologically inert substances that have no medicinal value but are thought by the patient to be helpful

Downward Comparison

Seeing ourselves as better off than the standard for comparison

Upward Comparison

When we view ourselves as worse off than the standard for comparison