Psychology Exam 2 Review

Health Psychology

the branch of psychology that studies how biological, behavioral, and social factors influence health, illness, medical treatment, and health-related behaviors.

Stress

a negative emotional state occurring in response to events that are perceived as taxing or exceeding a person’s resources or ability to cope.

Stress Appraisal

how you see or appraise the stress or present situation

Appraisal Model

experience of stress is determined in part by our subjective evaluation of phenomenon as well as resources for coping

Stressor

events we see as threatening or challenging

Traumatic Events

events or situations that are negative, severe and for beyond our normal expectations for everyday life or life events.

Walter Cannon

confirmed that the response to stress is a mind/body experience and results in a chain of internal physical reactions

General Adaptation Syndrome

the body’s adaptive response to stress

GAS comes in 3 stages

1. Alarm

2. Resistance

3. Exhaustion

Alarm Reaction

sympathetic nervous system is activated, heart rate zooms, etc. Now ready for the challenge

Resistance Reaction

blood pressure, temp and breathing remain high and hormones flow. If stress continues, it can deplete the body’s reserves during phase 3.

Exhaustion

the body’s energy reserves become depleted, leading to illness and possibly death

Psychophysiological Illness

“mind-body” illness any stress-related physical illness. (headaches, etc.)

Psychoneuroimmunology

the interdisciplinary field that studies the interconnections among psychological processes, nervous, and endocrine system functions, and the immune system.

Coping

alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive or behavioral methods

Problem-focused coping

attempting to alleviate stress directly by challenging the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.

Emotion-focused strategy

managing the emotional impact of the situation

Alleviating Stress

• feel a sense of control

• develop a more optimistic explanatory style

• build a base of social support

• find your strength

Perceived Control

perception of belief that control exists

Personal Control

whether we learn to see ourselves as controlling or controlled by our environment

External locus of control

the perception that chance or outside forces determine their fate

Internal locus of control

the perception that, to a great extent, one controls their own fate

Optimistic

external, unstable, specific

Pessimistic

internal, stable, global

Social Support

resources provided by other people in times of need including emotional, tangible, and informational support

Resilience

the ability to cope with stress and adversity to adapt to negative or unforeseen circumstances and to rebound after negative experiences.

Personality

an individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior

The psychoanalytic theory

Freud, first theory of personality. Includes ideas about an unconscious region of the mind, psychosexual stages of development and defense mechanisms for holding anxiety at bay.

unconscious

according to Freud is a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

Freud Believed there are 3 levels of awareness.

1. the conscious

2. the preconscious

3. the unconscious

Psychoanalysis

the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

Free Association

method of assessing the unconscious by asking patients to spontaneously report mental images, thoughts, and feeling as they come to mind.

Dreams

the “royal road to the unconscious”

Freud Proposed 3 interacting systems that make up the personality

• id: the unconscious constantly striving to satisfy basic drives and operates on the pleasure principle and demands immediate gratification

• ego: operates on the reality principle/seeks to gratify the id’s impulse is realistic ways. It’s the “executive” part of personality.

• superego: the voice of our conscience, focuses on how one ought to behave. It strives for perfection and produces feelings of pride or guilt.

Psychosexual stages

the childhood stages of development during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Oral

(0-18m) focus is on oral stimulation (mouth)

Anal

(18-36m) focus is on potty training stimulation

Phallic

(3-6yrs) focus on genitals

Latency

(6-pubery) sexual urges are repressed and child prefers same sex friends

Genital

(puberty -) sexual urges that remain for the rest of one’s life.

Identification

the process of incorporating their parent’s values into developing superegos

Fixation

lingering focus of pleasures-seeking energies. Ex: abrupt early weaning can result in an orally fixated adult

Ego Defense mechanisms

tactics to reduce, avoid, or redirect anxiety by distorting reality

Repression

banish anxiety - arousing thoughts and feelings from consciousness

Regression

when faced with anxiety, to retreat to a more infantile stage of development

Reaction Formation

the ego unconsciously makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposites

Projection

disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

Rationalization

offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions.

Displacement

shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.

Denial

refusal to acknowledge disturbing aspects of reality

Undoing

trying to take back or make up for a behavior or impulse that was hurtful to someone

Intellectualization

avoidance of feelings by overly focusing on the intellectual aspects of an issue to avoid the emotional reactions

Alfred Adler and Karen Horney

believed that social, not sexual tensions are crucial for personality formation

Carl Jung

less emphasis on social factors, agreed with Freud re: the unconscious, but believed it contains more than repressed thoughts and feelings

Collective Unconscious

images derived from our species’ universal experiences r

Humanistic perspective focuses …

on the way “healthy” people operate and strive for SELF-DETERMINATION and SELF-REALIZATION

Two Pioneers

Maslow and Rogers

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

1. self-actualization

2. esteem

3. belongingness and love

4. safety

5. physiological

Carl Rogers

known for the person-centered perspective, contended that the most basic human motive is the actualization, however, believed one needs 3 conditions to promote it.

• genuine

• accepting

• empathetic

genuine

be true to who you are

Acceptance

total acceptance toward others and ourselves

Empathy

to understand what someone is feeling without experinecing it first hand

unconditional positive regard

refers to the sense of being unconditionally loved and valued, even if you don’t conform to the standards and expect actions of others.

Conditional Positive Regard

the sense that you will be valued and loved only if you behave in a way that is acceptable to others, conditional love or acceptance

Maslow and Rogers

believed a central feature of personality is one’s self-concept

Albert Bandura

proposed the social-cognitive perspective of personality development

the social-cognitive theory of personality emphasizes

• observational learning

• conscious cognitive processes

• social experiences

• self efficiency beliefs

• reciprocal determinism

self-efficiency

the degree to which you are subjectively convinced of your own capabilities and effectiveness in meeting the demands of a particular situation

Bandura believed human behavior and personality are caused by reciprocal determinism

the interaction of behavioral, cognitive, and environmental factors.

Positive Psychology

Seligman: the scientific study of optimal human functioning

possible selves

includes your visions of the self you dream of becoming and the self you fear of becoming

personality

the trait perspective

Gordon Allport

describes personality in terms of fundamental traits

traits

relatively stable, enduring predisposition to behave in a certain way

The Big Five Traits

1. Conscientious: lazy/hardworking, aimless/ambitious, quitting/preserving

2. Agreeableness: antagonistic/acquiescent, ruthless/softhearted, suspicious/trusting

3. Neuroticism: calm/worrying, even-tempered/temperamental, unemotional/emotional, hardy/vulnerable

4. Openness: down to earth/imaginative, conventional/original, uncreative/creative, prefer routine/prefer variety

5. Extraversion: reserved/affectionate, loner/joiner, quiet/talkative

Psychological tests

a test that assesses a person’s abilities, aptitudes, interests, or personality on the basis of a systematically obtained sample of behavior.

Two Basic goals

1. Accurately and consistently reflects a person’s characteristics on some dimension

2. Predicts future psychological functioning or behavior

2 types of personality tests

1. projective tests

2. self-report tests

projective tests

personality test that involves a person’s interpreting on ambiguous image used to assess unconscious motives, conflicts, psychological defenses and personality traits.

Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT)

people view ambiguous pictures and then make up stories about them.

Rorschach inkblot test

most widely used and famous: set of 10 inkblots seeks to identify inner feelings by analyzing their views on the ink blots.

self-report inventory

psychological test in which a person’s response to standardized questions are compared to established norms.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

a self-report inventory that assesses personality characteristics and psychological disorders in both normal and disturbed populations

California Psychological Inventory (CPI)

self-report inventory that assesses personality characteristics in normal populations

Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)

developed by Raymond Cattell that generates a personality profile with ratings on 16 traits