Untitled Flashcards Set

1. health psychology: a subfield of psychology that explores the impact of

psycho- logical, behavioral, and cultural factors on health and wellness.

2. psychoneuroimmunology: the study of how psychological, neural, and

endocrine processes together affect our immune system and resulting health.

3. stress: the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events,

called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.

4. approach and avoidance motives: the drive to move toward (approach) or

away from (avoid) a stimulus.

5. general adaptation syndrome (GAS): Selye’s concept of the body’s

adaptive response to stress in three phases — alarm, resistance, exhaustion.

6. tend-and-befriend response: under stress, people (especially women) may

nurture themselves and others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others

(befriend).

7. coronary heart disease: the clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart

muscle; a leading cause of death in many developed countries.

8. Type A: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving,

impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.

9. Type B: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.

10. catharsis: in psychology, the idea that “releasing” aggressive energy

(through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges.

11. coping: alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods.

12. problem-focused coping: attempting to alleviate stress directly — by

changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.

13. emotion-focused coping: attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or

ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to our stress

reaction.

14. personal control: our sense of controlling our environment rather than

feeling helpless.

15. learned helplessness: the hopelessness and passive resignation humans

and other animals learn when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

16. external locus of control: the perception that outside forces beyond our

personal control determine our fate.

17. internal locus of control: the perception that we control our own fate.

18. self-control: the ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification

for greater long-term rewards.

19. positive psychology: the scientific study of human flourishing, with the

goals of promoting strengths and virtues that foster well-being, resilience, and

positive emotions, and that help individuals and communities to thrive.

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20. subjective well-being: self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life.

Used along with measures of objective well-being (for example, physical and

economic indicators) to evaluate people’s quality of life.

21. feel-good, do-good phenomenon: people’s tendency to be helpful when in

a good mood.

22. adaptation-level phenomenon: our tendency to form judgments (of sounds,

of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience.

23. relative deprivation: the perception that we are worse off relative to those

with whom we compare ourselves.

24. broaden-and-build theory: proposes that positive emotions broaden our

awareness, which over time helps us build novel and meaningful skills and

resilience that improve well-being.

25. character strengths and virtues: a classification system to identify positive

traits; organized into categories of wisdom, courage, humanity, justice,

temperance, and transcendence.

26. resilience: the personal strength that helps people cope with stress and

recover from adversity and even trauma.

27. aerobic exercise: sustained exercise that increases heart and lung fitness;

also helps alleviate depression and anxiety.

28. mindfulness meditation: a reflective practice in which people attend to

current experiences in a nonjudgmental and accepting manner.

29. gratitude: an appreciative emotion people often experience when they

benefit from other’s actions or recognize their own good fortune.

30. psychological disorder: a disturbance in people’s thoughts, emotions, or

behaviors that causes distress or suffering and impairs their daily lives.

31. medical model: the concept that diseases — in this case, psychological

disorders — have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most

cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital.

32. diathesis-stress model: the concept that genetic predispositions (diathesis)

combine with environmental stressors (stress) to influence psychological

disorder.

33. epigenetics: “above” or “in addition to” (epi) genetics; the study of the

molecular mechanisms by which environments can influence genetic expression

(without a DNA change).

34. DSM-5-TR: the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical

Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision; a widely used system

for classifying psychological disorders.

35. anxiety disorders: a group of disorders characterized by excessive fear

and anxiety and related maladaptive behaviors.

36. social anxiety disorder: intense fear and avoidance of social situations.

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37. generalized anxiety disorder: an anxiety disorder in which a person is

continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system

arousal.

38. panic disorder: an anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes-long

episodes of intense dread in which a person may experience terror and

accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations; often followed

by worry over a possible next attack.

39. agoraphobia: fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open

places, where one may experience a loss of control and panic.

40. specific phobia: an anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and

avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation.

41. obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): a disorder characterized by unwanted

repetitive thoughts (obsessions), actions (compulsions), or both.

42. posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a disorder characterized by haunting

memories, nightmares, hypervigilance, avoidance of trauma-related stimuli, social

withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for 4

weeks or more after a traumatic experience.

43. trauma- and stressor-related disorders: a group of disorders in which expo-

sure to a traumatic or stressful event is followed by psychological distress.