Health psychology exam 2

Gross’ process model of emotion gives us several options for how we might intervene to manage stress. Discuss some stress management strategies that might be employed at the stages of situation selection, situation modification and response modulation.

Situation selection: management can precede exposure.

Situation modification: perceive stress, assess resources and cope.
Response modulation: damp down SNS arousal; recruit parasympathetic.

Basic principles behind stress management strategies that employ relaxation. What’s rationale behind specific attempts to induce relaxation response?

Targets: damp down SNS arousal; recruit parasympathetic. Relaxation and tension are incompatible states.

Basic ideas of what’s involved in abdominal breathing, visualization, and progressive muscle training.

Whole body, abdominal/diaphragmatic

Full sensory immersion with relaxation induction.

“Anxious mind can’t exist in relaxed body”

How attentional deployment reduces stress

Cognitive=synthesizes internal/external stimuli. Thinking: active process and composes “stream of consciousness.”
Mentally, we create meaning that arises from circumstance.

Goals and approach of cognitive therapy for stress management. Highlight how rationale behind cognitive therapy relates to transactional model of stress.

It is the expanded version of the transactional model. Schemas: organized set of cognitions about stimulus/concept. It leads us to “sum up” experiences in consistent ways; schemas are activated by situations.

Describe role and process of collaborative empiricism, as it relates to cognitive therapy.

Therapist and client join in evidence exam. Behavioral experiments: “test” truth of appraisals

Regulatory control

Emotional regulation

Stress management

Various psychological methods designed to reduce impact of potentially stressful experiences.

Process Model of Emotion

Situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change, and response modification.

Situation selection

Some situations will invoke more stress, management can precede exposure.

Situation modification

Transactional model - perceive stress, assess resources and cope

Attentional deployment

Shifting attentional focus within emotional scene in order to modulate emotional experience.

Cognitive change

Changes in knowledge of participants and relate to how people observe, think, problem solve, and remember.

Response modulation

Targets SNS arousal recruits parasympathetic.

Abdominal breathing

Way of breathing that helps induce more calm, relaxed state.

Progressive muscle relaxation

Transforms afferent impulses

Mindfulness based stress reduction

Meditation therapy originally designed for stress management.

Schemata

Influence primary and secondary appraisals.

Collaborative empiricism

Therapist and client join in evidence exam

Automatic thoughts

Instinctive, unconscious, highly efficient mental process that we have no control over or awareness of.

Core beliefs

“Nutrients” for surface-level appraisals

Behavioral experiments

“Test” truth of appraisals.

Cognitive restructuring

Requires elaborative processing: appraisal=hypothesis, not fact!

Emotional disclosure

Therapeutic activity in which people express their strong, often stress-related, emotions by writing or talking about the events triggered the emotions.

Articulate implications of pie graph that allocates proportions of premature mortality in US to different classes of determinants.

40% of behavioral patterns

30% genetic predisposition

15% social circumstances

Describe findings regarding Good Health Practices, and social integration and their relationships with mortality and morbidity.

His work in human population laboratory quantified health risk practice and lifestyle issues, such as exercise, diet, sleep, smoking and alcohol consumption and defined their relationship to mortality. 7 health habits and assessed over 9 years. Healthy body weight, moderate alcohol, good sleep, eating breakfast, exercise, no snacks, no smoking. Risk of death in those with 6-7 GHP cut in half relative to those with 0-3 GHPs. Disability: 6-7 GHPs = 2/3rds of that among those with 0-3 GHPs.

Main features of Theory of Reasoned action and Planned Behavior. Describe components of these models and how they combine to lead to intent regarding health behavior.

TRA: most proximal cause of behavior is 1s intention to adopt it. Intention: conscious plan to exercise effort: influenced by…. Attitudes toward behavior to function of belief of consequences. Will behavior lead to desirable outcome? Subjective norms: beliefs about others’ opinions regarding behavioral adoption. Injunctive: concern re: social appraisal. Descriptive: what other DO.

Describe what different elements of intervention to reduce undergraduates’ smoking, or any other health-relevant behavior.

Theory of planned behavior- Assumption: beliefs fundamental determinants of behavior. Belief change yields behavioral change. Adds perceived behavioral control to belief about behavioral performance. Is it hard of easy? We’re more likely to do things we perceive as controllable/easy. Determined by internal and external factors.

Describe link between intention and health behavior and make argument for why behavioral enactment model might improve behavioral prediction.

Intent doesn’t = behavior: 20-30% of behavioral variance accounted for by intention. Behavioral enactment model might improve because it fills gap; implementation intentions: after intent, there’s volitional phase, choosing to enact plans.

Contrast different views in continuum models of health behavior with stage model regarding determinants of health behavior.

Propose single prohibistic equation regarding behavioral likelihood. Propose same behavioral determinants no matter where we are in terms of action.

Provide example and outline of 5 stages of change proposed by Transtheoretical model and provide explanation for why health care providers see TTM as best model to describe health behavior and change.

1. Precontemplation: No intention to change: concern about behavior is absent (person with alcohol use disorder isn’t concerned).

2. Contemplation: Considering change in future; problem recognized (person voices concern: “maybe I could cut down, drink bit less”).

3. Preparation: Planning for change; requires problem awareness and decision (person researches AA and options to support sobriety)

4. Action: Change begins; efforts made to sustain (drinking stops, “1 day at a time”)

5. Maintenance: Ongoing attendance at AA; “once alcoholic, always alcoholic”

Major benefit of TTM involves implications for treatment.

Provide specific examples of strategies that represent each level of intervention.

Primary: Actions to reduce illness onset, avoid injury, promote health (choice to wear seatbelt).

Secondary: Actions to treat/manage illness early; prevention efforts in those at higher risk (self management tasks…treatments/activities to stave off complications, postpone morbidity).

Tertiary: Actions to reduce morbidity and speed rehabilitation among “patients” (most psychological treatments are tertiary…we generally wait for patients to come to us!).

Behavioral pathogens

Things we do that impact our health negatively.

Behavioral immunogens

Actions that facilitate improved health

Illness representations

Beliefs and expectations about illness

Identity

Name or label of threat

Cause

Threat’s causal mechanism

Curability/controllability

Whether something can be done to control threat

Health beliefs model

Health behavior engagement function of several beliefs

Susceptibility

Degree to which 1 sees self as vulnerable to illness

Severity

Seriousness of illness consequences

Barriers/costs

Difficulties and negative consequences of health behavior adoption

Benefits

Perceived benefits of adoption health behavior

Cues to action

Impact perceived threat; trigger behavior when suitable health beliefs are held…

Internal: eg., pain or other symptoms

External: eg., media accounts

Health threat

Composed by HBM beliefs

Behavioral effectiveness

Composed by HBM beliefs

Theory of Reasoned Action

Most proximal cause of behavior is 1s intention to adopt it. Attitudes toward behaviors to function of belief of consequences. Subjective norms to beliefs about others’ opinion regarding behavior adoption.

Attitudes

Function of belief of consequences

Subjective norms

Individual’s interpretation of views of other people regarding particular health-related behavior.

Theory of Planned Behavior

Theory that predicts health behavior on basis of 3 factors: personal attitude toward behavior, subjective norm regarding behavior, and perceived degree of control over behavior.

Perceived behavioral control

Beliefs about behavioral performance

Implementation intentions

After intent, we choose to put plans in action.

“I intend to do X and time and place Y.”

Specificity increases likelihood of goal achievement.

Meta analysis: implementation intentions=10% of behavioral variance.

Transtheoretical Model

5 stages of change regarding behavior, its effects, and intention for future.

Precontemplation

No intention to change; concern about behavior is absent.

Contemplation

Considering change in future; problem recognized

Preparation

Planning for imminent change; requires problem awareness and decision.

Alcoholic begins to research AA and other options to support sobriety.

Action

Change begins, efforts made to sustain.

Maintenance

Constant behavioral change in place

Prevention

Primary, secondary, tertiary

Primary prevention

Actions to avoid injury/illness

Secondary prevention

Actions to identify illness early with aim of stopping progression

Tertiary prevention

Actions to reduce morbidity and speed rehab when already sick.

Community health education

Planned communication for health promotion

Message framing

Loss or gain

Loss-framed

Present negative outcome

Gain-framed

Present positive outcome

Self-monitoring

People keeping track of their own target that is to be modified, including stimuli associated with it and consequences that follow it.

Physical activity

Bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that requires expenditure of energy.

Physical exercise

Physical activity that is planned, repetitive, and purposeful in sense that it is intended to improve/maintain 1+ aspects of physical fitness

Aerobic exercise

Light-to-moderate intensity exercise performed for extended period of time; examples include, swimming, cycling, and running.

Anaerobic exercise

High-intensity exercise performed for short periods of time; examples include weight training and sprinting.

Basal Metabolic Rate

Minimum number of calories body needs to maintain bodily functions while at rest.

Physical fitness

Set of attributes relating to ability to perform physical activity that includes muscular strength, endurance, flexibility, and health body composition.

Cardiorespiratory endurance

Ability of heart, blood vessels, and lungs to supply oxygen to working muscles during physical activity for prolonged periods of time.

Metabolic syndrome

Cluster of conditions that occur together - including elevated blood pressure and insulin levels, excess body fat, and unhealthy cholesterol ratios - that increase person’s risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

Circadian rhythm

Biological clock that operates on 24-hour cycle.

Insomnia

Persistent problem in falling or staying asleep.

Sleep debt

Total sleep lost

Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia

Identifying and eliminating habits that were developed in effort to improve sleep but have become ineffective.

Sleep hygiene

Habits and practices that are conducive to sleeping well on regular basis.

Stimulus control procedures

Change in operant behavior that occurs when particular type of stimulus is presented

Benefits of exercise and increased physical activity. Components of physical fitness. WHOs recommendations regarding physical activity.

Reduces risk of premature disability and many chronic illnesses, including those related to stress. Set of attributes/characteristics that people have/achieve that relates to ability to perform physical activity. Recommendation is that 18-64 year olds need moderate-intensity physical activities for at least 30 minutes, 5 days a week, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity throughout week.

Relationship between exercise and hormones related to appetite. What are short-term effects of “acute” exercise on these hormones, which are related to appetite?

Hormonal changes are accompanied by reduced feelings of hunger after both aerobic exercise and resistance exercise.

Hypothetical strategy to promote exercise. Attend to personal attitudes, efficacy beliefs, norms, environmental factors, etc. Use 1 of models of behavioral change to inform intervention.

You should really try to exercise more often and be more physically fit, as it has many benefits. You can prevent/slow down illnesses from happening, but you need to listen to others, take your age, gender, race, personality into account, think about the threat of the health problems and just take all of that into account.

Basic negative outcomes linked to poor sleep.

Sleep debt, poor physical health, more likely to have chronic condition, impaired brain function, driver fatigue, and higher risk of depression.

Role of classical conditioning in insomnia and why clinical conditioning principles and stimulus control techniques help improve insomniac sleep.

Targets underlying causes of insomnia instead of symptoms. Helps people identify thoughts/behaviors promoting poor sleep and replace them with behaviors related to good sleep. Can be more effective than medications.

Consider, ‘Ratulous’, a laboratory animal living under strict controlled conditions as the subject of research in an exercise physiology laboratory. As a result of a longstanding regular exercise regimen and carefully controlled diet, Ratulous burns roughly as many calories as she consumes each day. As a result, over time, we would expect her weight to _____________________:

Remain fairly stable

As a member of the men’s rugby team, Carl finds it hard to follow his doctor’s recommendation for a heart-healthy, low-fat diet because of his teammates’ teasing that the diet isn’t ‘manly enough’ for rugby. According to the Theory of Reasoned Action, Carl's difficulty and his failure to eat a healthier diet is likely influenced by which among the following?

Injunctive subjective norms

The basic model of cognitive approaches to stress management suggests that our momentary appraisals and thoughts contribute to our experience of stress. As we discussed in class, stress-related thoughts arise from deeper cognitive constructs. Which among the following represents these cognitive constructs, in order, from deepest to most superficial or surface-level?

Core beliefs, intermediate beliefs, automatic thoughts

Imagine you’re designing a public health messaging campaign to encourage sunscreen use behavior to reduce the likelihood of skin cancer. Your campaign, “Sunscreen! A way to keep youthful skin forever!” would be described as a(n) _______________ message.

Gain-framed

Consider Gross’ Process Model of Emotions, a conceptual model we discussed in class as a way to understand stress interventions. Which strategy among the following represents a way to manage stress in the latest stage of the model?

Response modulation

John and Alice are in couple’s counseling with Dr. Demento, an expert psychotherapist. John and Alice drink both drink alcohol at levels that health care professionals understand to be hazardous. While John appears to be fully unaware of the negative consequences of his drinking, Alice appears to be thinking that she may want to drink less. Dr. Demento schedules individual meetings with each partner to discuss their circumstances. In these meetings, Dr. Demento uses different strategies to help each partner understand and potentially change their alcohol use. Dr. Demento’s approach is best reflected in which of the following models of behavior change?

Stages of change

Consider John and Alice from the previous question. As a reminder, John is unaware of the negative consequences of his drinking, and Alice has begun to think she may want to drink less. Respectively, which among the following describes John in relation to drinking, and which describes Alice?

Precontemplative; contemplative

Which of the following describes Jacobson’s original rationale for the use of Progressive Muscle Relaxation to manage stress?

An “anxious” mind can not exist in a relaxed body