Gen Psych - Exam 2

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 perceived as taxing or exceeding a person’s resources or ability to cope

Stress Appraisal

how you see or appraise (assess) the stress or present situation

Appraisal Model

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

Stressor

events we see as threatening or challenging

Traumatic Events

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

• Stressful for everyone

• Traumatic does not mean difficult or annoying

• Traumatic can be life-threatening

• If you overreact to small things you will not have the mental strength for big events

Tend and Befriend response

According to health psychologist Shelley Taylor, this response is a phenomenon when those around you quickly come to your aid, whether stranger or friend, during traumatic events

• Stressful events increase our ability and willingness to do things we normally would not do

stress

per Walter Cannon, the response to ___ is a mind/body experience and results in a chain of internal physical reactions

• observed that stressors trigger an outpouring of stress hormones and is part of the sympathetic nervous system’s response

• result is a change in physical symptoms and a release of energy from the body’s reserves

• stress hormones are released when the sympathetic nervous system activates the endocrine system

fight or flight

response to changes in physical symptoms, where levels of stress involve both the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

the body’s adaptive response to stress, comes in 3 stages (ARE) for Alarm, Resistance, Exhaustion

Alarm

sympathetic nervous system is activated, ready to fight challenge (heart rate zooms), initial reaction

Resistance

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

Exhaustion

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

disease-fighting lymphocytes, impair immune system functioning

stress hormones suppress the ______________ and end up __________

corticosteroids

chronic stress triggers the secretion of ________, which influence immune system functioning

psychoneuroimmunology

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

True

True/False: daily moods affect people’s immune system

• daily moods of stress affect healthy as much as traumatic events

Anger

_____ is an emotion that is closely linked to stress related illnesses especially heart attacks

• hostility levels positively correlated to heart disease

True

True/False: Research shows a link between the number of daily hassles one experiences and psychological distress and physical ailments

unimportant, cumulative

It is believed that individual stressors may be _____, but the effects of daily stressors can be _______

Problem-focused coping

attempting to alleviate the stress directly, by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor

Emotion-focused strategy

managing the emotional impact of the situation

Social Support

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

• Good support system = less stress = longer survive

Resilience

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

Personality

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

• no one theory can describe how personality develops

Psychoanalytic Theory

• Freud

• First theory of personality

• Includes ideas about an unconscious region of the mind, psychosexual stages, and defense mechanisms for holding anxiety at bay

• Issues unresolved pushed into unconscious, will affect you lifelong

• Resistance → resistant to answer means you are answering

Unconscious

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

• Freud believed humans repressed urges due to religion, laws, afterlife

• Freud believed humans were sexual (reproduction) and aggressive (survival), but people are instinctually bad

3 levels of awareness

Conscious, Preconscious, Unconscious

Psychoanalysis

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

• Freud believed our unconscious holds troublesome feelings and ideas which influence us many times in disguised forms so nothing was accidental

• No dream, statement, thought is accidental

Free Association

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

manifest content

Freud referred to the remembered content of dreams as their ________ _________ which he believed to be a censored expression of the dreamer’s unconscious wishes.

latent content

Freud referred to the disguised, symbolic meaning of dreams as the _____ _______.

id, ego, supergo

Freud proposed 3 interacting system that make up the personality:

Id

unconscious, pleasure-seeking, wants immediate gratification (want what you want)

Ego

executive part of personality, seeks to gratify Id’s impulses in realistic ways, reality principle (balances both)

Superego

voice of conscience, focuses on how one ought to behave, wants perfection, leads to pride and guilt

Oedipus Complex

Freud believed boys seek genital stimulation and develop both unconscious sexual desires for their mother and jealousy/hated for their father who they consider a rival, this is called the _____ _______

Psychosexual stages

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

Oral Stage

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

Anal Stage

18-36m, focus is on potty training and control

Phallic Stage

3-6 yrs, focus is on genitals

Latency Stage

6-puberty, sexual urges are repressed and child prefers same sex friends

Genital Stage

puberty on, sexual urges that remain for rest of one’s life

Ego Defense Mechanisms

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

• Freud believed they are unhealthy and require a great deal of psychological energy

True

True/False: Psychologically healthy people temporarily use ego defense mechanisms to deal with stressful events and buys time while seeking a realistic solution

• When used on a short-term basis, it does not require a great deal of psychological energy

Adler

Inferiority complex theorist, believed that much of our behavior is driven by efforts to conquer childhood feelings of inferiority and can be done in an unhealthy/healthy way

• Entire life to compensate for those feelings

• Napoleon complex

• Personality forms around insecurity

• Reaction to inferiority matters, no complex if you don’t care

• The healthy person uses inferiority as a motive for productivity and overcoming obstacles. The unhealthy way is to strive for overcoming inferiorities at others expense or one’s own.

Karen Horney

theorist that emphasized the importance of human relationships in personality development

• Rather than overcoming an inferiority issue, Horney focused on the need to overcome feelings of low self-worth

• Both Horney and Adler agreed that faulty parenting contributing significantly to faulty personality development

• Americans are driven by competition, adapt to level your own (adaptation-level phenomenon), relative deprivation (feel bad because of what others have/can do)

• Arguing is a battle of wills, a competition, therefore we don’t just say sorry

Carl Jung

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

Collective Unconscious

images derived from our species’ universal experiences (inherited experiences), reflects human evolutionary history and is common to all people

• Born with memories of other people, Not just our own ancestors

• Ultimately Jung believed 3 levels of consciousness exist: conscious, unconscious, and collective unconscious

Humanistic psychologists

saw people as being innately good and naturally strive to fulfill his or her unique potential

• say the world creates bad people, people just want a good life and want to fulfill their potential

• focuses on the way “healthy people” operate and strive for self determination and self-realization (goal of HUMANISM)

Self-Actualization

the desire of fulfilling our potential

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

physiological (biggest), safety, belonging love, esteem, self-actualization (smallest)

Carl Rogers

known for the Person-centered perspective, contended that the most basic human motive is the actualizing tendency: the innate drive to maintain and enhance the human organism

• per this theorist, all other human motives (biological or social) are secondary

• added to Maslow’s goal of self actualization with 3 conditions: be genuine, accepting, and empathetic

unconditional positive regard

regards to the sense of being unconditionally loved and valued, even if you don’t conform to the standards and expectations of others (Rogers believed this in parenting)

• children need unconditional love

• per Rogers, this makes people fully-functioning and psychologically healthy with healthy personality development

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

Social Cognitive Perspective

Alfred Bandura, proposed the social-cognitive perspective of personality development, emphasized the interaction between the person (personal traits), their situation, and the resulting behavior

Social cognitive theory of personality emphasizes

observational learning, conscious cognitive processes, social experiences, self-efficacy beliefs, reciprocal determinism

Self-Efficacy

the degree to which you are subjectively convinced of your own capabilities and effectiveness in meeting the demands of a particular situation (begins in childhood and continues all through life)

• If demeaned as a child, self-efficacy is negative throughout life

• Bandura believed our self-system guides how we perceive, evaluate, and control our behavior in different situations

reciprocal determinism

the interaction of behavioral, cognitive, and environmental factors, believed human behavior and personality are caused by this

Traits

relatively stable, enduring predisposition to behave in a certain way

• People’s characteristic behaviors and conscious motives (motivations)

True

True/False: Cross-cultural research on traits have found that people in varied cultures describe personality in terms of these same basic traits that are identified by the five factor model

Projective tests and self reports

two types of personality tests

qualitative (information that cannot be counted, measured, or easily expressed using numbers)

strength of projective tests that can be helpful in psychotherapy

TAT (Thematic Apperception Test)

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 view of the blots