Personality and Health Models Flashcards

These flashcards cover the various models of personality and health, attributional styles, and specific research findings regarding the impact of traits on physiological outcomes.

Interactional model

A personality model suggesting that objective events happen to people, but personality determines the impact of those events by influencing the person's ability to cope.

Transactional model

A model stating that personality can influence coping, how a person appraises events, and the events themselves.

Appraisal

The interpretation of an event; this model suggests it is not the event itself that causes stress, but how it is interpreted by the person.

Health behaviour model

A model assuming that personality affects health indirectly through health-promoting or health-degrading behaviors rather than directly influencing the relationship between stress and illness.

Predisposition model

A theory suggesting that associations between personality and illness exist because of a third variable that causes both, giving the person a predisposition for a certain personality type and illness.

Illness behaviour model

A model stating that personality influences the degree to which a person perceives bodily sensations and labels them as signs of illness.

Attributional style

The typical way a person explains or attributes blame when events go wrong, categorized by internal vs. external, stable vs. unstable, and global vs. specific dimensions.

Optimists

Individuals who give unstable, specific, and external explanations for negative events.

Pessimists

Individuals who attribute negative events to stable, global, and internal explanations.

Emotional inhibition

The suppression of emotional expression, which may lead to costs to the nervous system and chronic sympathetic nervous system arousal.

Disclosure

The act of telling secrets or sharing painful thoughts and feelings, which research suggests can relieve stress and increase health.

Sheldon Cohen

A leading researcher in health psychology who found that people in the highest $25\,\%$ on stress measures were over two times more likely to get sick than those in the lowest $25\,\%$.

Cytokine

A protein measured in the nose that explains approximately $75\,\%$ of illness and can become dysregulated and abnormally elevated in highly stressed people.

Odds ratios

A statistical measure where a result above $1$ indicates an increased chance of a disease and a result below $1$ indicates a decreased chance.

Neuroticism

A personality trait associated with higher cortisol levels and an increased risk of high blood pressure, lung diseases, and heart conditions.

Conscientiousness

A personality trait generally associated with lower risk of almost all health concerns, including diabetes, stroke, and high blood pressure.