Biomedical Model
HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. What is the field of health psychology? Identify and explain three reasons why this field emerged.
The field of health psychology is a new division of the American Psychological Association (1978) that stated that health and illness are influenced by biology and psychological and social factors
It is focused on promoting and maintaining health as well as prevention of illnesses and treatment
The three reasons why this field emerged are:
Shift in causes of death in 1900’s and 2000’s
Shortcomings of Biomedical model
Rising healthcare costs
2. How is the bio-psycho-social model different from the biomedical model? Imagine that you were experiencing headaches, explain how your problem might be explained and treated by someone adhering to each model?
The bio-psycho-social model …show more content…
includes studying the psychological, physical and behavioral causes of diseases
The biomedical model includes only the physical causes
If I was experiencing frequent headaches:
Biomedical model – may call the migraines and the treatment would most likely be medication
Bio-psycho-social model – would look into the psychological, physical and behavioral factors that cause the frequent headaches such as stress or genetic makeup – the approach may not so much be a treatment, but may look at areas of prevention
3. How can health care costs be reduced by psychological factors? Explain with examples.
Every one dollar spent on psychology services produces five dollars saved on medical costs – recent evidence has shown that psychological interventions can be more cost effective than drug treatments for conditions such as depression and panic disorders
The most costly conditions were cardiovascular diseases and musculoskeletal diseases, and there are psychological services, both therapeutic and preventative, that are known to be effective in treating such diseases
Although evidence on panic disorder indicates that cognitive-behavioral treatment and drug treatments have comparable effectiveness, the psychological intervention has been estimated to cost 10% to 50% less than drug treatments
4. Identify the steps involved in the Scientific Method. Provide an example at each step if you were interested in the relationship between mood and alcohol intake.
Step 1: State the problem - alcohol intake affects moods
Step 2: Operational definition – alcohol intake causes some people to change moods from one to another, such as from being happy to being angry
Step 3: Collect data – use surveys before and after alcohol intake (mood changes)
Step 4: Analyze data – compare the mood swings before and after alcohol intake
Step 5: Form a theory – excessive alcohol intake affects mood changes
5. What is the observational/naturalistic method? Identify and explain the limitations to this method?
Observational/naturalistic method refers to the collection of data without manipulation of the environment
The goal of this method in psychology is to describe and measure the behavior of an organism (including a human) in their natural setting
Some of the limitations to this method include participants who know that they are being observed – may alter their behavior so they can gain approval from the experimenters – experimenter bias; case study may be atypical
6. What is the survey method? What are the benefits of using this method? What are the limitations?
The survey method is defined as one asking questions about thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
There are three types of surveys, and they are face to face, written or online
The benefits of using this method are that it’s not expensive to do, large datasets, and as well as can be anonymous which reduces response bias
Some of the limitations for this method are: leading questions may be bias or unfair; response options that suggests typical behavior; inaccurate reporting, and correlation not casual
7. Why is it problematic to infer causation from correlational data? Use an example to explain.
There are two reasons why it is problematic to infer causation from correlation data:
The first reason is the directionality problem – before concluding that a correlation between variable 1 and 2 is due to changes in 1 causing changes in 2, it is very important to realize that the direction of causation may be the opposite, thus from 2 to 1
The second reason is the third-variable problem – the correlation in variables may occur both variables are related to a third variable
8. What is the experimental method? Distinguish between independent and dependent measures. Why is randomization important? What is a control variable? What does confound mean?
The experimental method involves manipulating one variable to determine if a change in one variable causes a change in another variable. This method relies on controlled methods, randomization, and the manipulation of variables to test a theory
Independent measures define what you manipulate
Dependent measures define as what you measure
Randomization refers to the use of chance procedures in experiments to ensure that each participant has equal chances to be assigned to any given group. Study participants are randomly assigned to different groups, such as the experimental group or the treatment group. Random assignment might involve such tactics as drawing out of hat, or assigning random numbers to participants.
A control variable is a variable that is kept consistent in between trails of doing an experiment
A confound refers to a variable which the experimenter cannot control or eliminate so that it does not damage the internal validity of an experiment
9. What are the limitations to the experimental method?
Ecological validity such as unnatural settings
Expectation and motivation in observer bias
Experimenter bias
Random assignments are not always possible, can refer to quasi-experiments (longitudinal study, prospective study, and retrospective study), and an example of this would be bottle versus breast feeding – and can also refer to correlation versus causation (possible of 3rd variable)
10. What is the clinical method? Identify and explain the limitations to this method.
The clinical method tests the effectiveness of drugs, treatments or therapy, and minimizes expectancy effects such as placebo versus real drug, participant expectancy – blind; and experimenter expectancy effect – double blind
It concentrates on the patient selection criteria and comorbidity and/or concomitant treatment. The limitations to this method are patient cooperation and ethical concerns, which refers to placebos, untested procedures and side effects
11. Should be able to think about study design using all the four methods that we introduced – when is each method used? What are the limitations in using that method?
Observational/naturalistic method: going over case reports and archives and observing students who are stressed.
Survey method: creating a survey, asking specific questions about how stress affects the students academically and drawing conclusions from the results
Clinical method: provide counseling for students to better cope with stress and see if their academics improve with stress relief. This may involve giving one group of students a therapy session and another group medication as opposed to another group that would receive placebos.
Experimental method:
12. What are the main predictors used in each of the Continuum models? What are the limitations of each model?
Health Belief Model: Predictors – good predictor of certain behaviors (condom use, eating healthy) and it is a better predictor of one-time behavior rather than habitual behaviors; Limitations – the model is dependent on self-efficacy (important predictor of behavior) and severity is not the best predictor of good behavior
Theory of Planned Action: Predictors – considers our intentions the central view of predicting behavior – the idea is that intention (knowing and recognizing them) and attitude are important predictors of behavior; Limitations – the theory fails to take into account the past and current behavior and typically past behavior is a good predictor of current and future behavior (past behavior predicts future behavior) – consider success when planning how, where, and when to perform a behavior
Learning Theories: Predictors – association refers to classical conditioning, reinforcement refers to operant conditioning, and modeling refers to observational learning; Limitations – obviousness of classical conditioning associations and essential changes in behavior through operant conditioning – we must consider behavior changes versus maintaining behavior
Social Cognitive Theory: Predictors – if you have a bad attitude and bad self-efficacy, it will lead to bad behavior, but if you had a good attitude and good self-efficacy, it will lead to positive behavior; Limitations – interventions depend on self-efficacy
13. Distinguish between continuum theories versus stage models of health behavior change.
Continuum theories – it identifies variables that influences behavior – uses them to predict the likelihood of behavior change (health belief model, theory of planned action, learning theories, and social cognitive behavior)
Stage models of health behavior change – behavioral change is steady – it’s a process that occurs in stages (transtheoretical model and precaution adoption process model)
14. Describe each stage within the transtheoretical model. In what way is this model non-linear?
Pre-Contemplation – no awareness of the health problem, not motivated to change their behavior
Contemplation – thinking about making a change and beginning to realize that they are personally susceptible to harmful effects associated with a certain behavior
Preparation – beginning to make a personal commitment to change their behavior by cutting back on their certain behavior, and taking small steps towards a goal – change beginning in small steps – in this stage, mechanisms of behavior change is important
Action – have successfully managed to change behavior, actually doing it – high risk of relapse – because of this, social support is absolutely critical – need someone to hold themselves accountable and help to keep on track
Maintenance – once successfully changed a behavior, want to maintain this change. Social support at this stage tends to cut back since they have a better handle on the change, however it’s still important – placing rewards for behaviors works well
Termination – the risk of relapse is gone, terminated the behavior… some say it’s impossible to get to this phase
15. Describe two different stage models of health behavior change. Which model do you think is more accurate? Explain. What are the limitations of these models?
Precaution Adoption Process Model (on paper)
Limitations: misunderstanding that the model is related to the risk perception rather than health action; difficult to apply to complicated health issues that have a variety of variables and interventions possible at each stage; measurement challenges
Transtheoretical Model (on paper)
Limitations: stopping a behavior may be different from starting a behavior; thinking about the costs and benefits may not predict behavior maintenance
16.
How does health psychologists define stress?
Health psychologists define stress as the experience of major life events – stress is defined as the perception of lack of resources to deal or cop with these like events
17. How is stress measured using self-reports?
By using self-reports, stress can be measured by asking participants to report life events in a given time frame, such as negative or positive change, discomfort, or threats. An example of this would be the SRRS (Social Readjustment Rating Scale)
18. Compare and Contrast the SRRS and the LEDS measures.
The SRRS gathers the stress of different life events
The LEDS measures the stressfulness of individual life events in detail
The SRRS does not account for subjective experiences, whereas the LEDS accounts the subjective experiences
The SRRS has very vague terms on the scale, and focuses on middle and upper class people without any attention to people in
poverty
The LEDS includes an interview and determines which participants are eligible for the experiment as well as those who are not sick regardless of class, whereas the SRRS is a survey with values that can rate of the most stressful to the least stressful events and rates on level of severity
19. Compare Life Events inventories to the Hassles and Uplifts Scales.
Hassle Scale – looks at measuring stress caused from these daily hassles such as misplacing notebook from class – the number of daily hassles that we report is correlated with our physical and emotional well-being – the greater the number of hassles reported, the lower physical and emotional well-being it gets (negative correlation)
Uplifts Scale – an association between uplifting events and health – taking a nap, spending time with friends are all pleasurable activities that are healthy – the studies show that more uplifts you report, the more positive your mood is, and the less stressed you are
Life Events inventories – things that happen in our lives, everyone is different, therefore everyone has different life event inventories
20. How does the perceived stress scale differ from life events inventories?
Perceived Stress Scale shows the frequency of stress or upset in a given timeframe (example: measures frequency of feeling nervous and stressed in the past month. Measures feelings of not being able to cope with everything one has to do) – predicts symptoms
Life Events Inventories is a number of events – a checklist measure – lists the major life events and assigns rating of severity – it runs from 100 to zero and whether it’s a negative or a positive event
21. Using breast cancer [or the common cold] as an example to describe the evidence that links to stress and health.
Stress has been known to increase blood pressure, cholesterol and bring your body into a thorough state if the stress is constant and chronic
This lowers your body’s immunity to things like the common cold, for your body becomes too busy fighting off the effects of the stress on your body to fight individual bugs that may cause the common cold
Your body become stressed and does not function, as it should. As far as cancer is concerned, stress has been known to cause the body to release stress hormones that increase blood pressure, rapidity of heart rate, and blood sugar levels rises
There is a lot of speculation but no real evidence to link cancer to stress. Some experiments linked breast cancer to stress while others have not. Stress causes the body to become stressed, so that breast cancer could be linked is not impossible, but has not yet been proven without a doubt.
22. Identify various psychological measures of stress. Explain how these measures make sense given what we know about the activation of sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system during periods of stress. What are the limitations to these measures of stress?
Some of the psychological measures of stress include heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, skin conductance, blood tests for hormone levels, etc.
The sympathetic system is one branch of the autonomic nervous system. When you are faced with a stressor (e.g. black bear), your sympathetic system kicks into response preparing you to fight the stressor or flee from it (Fight-or-Flight Response). The sympathetic system causes your heart to race, your lungs to relax to take in more air and oxygen, and your pupils dilate to let more light in and see more than before. The endocrine system releases stress hormones such as epinephrine and norepinephrine. These help to energize the body and to increase arousal and vigilance. These hormones can be measured through blood tests.
The fact that taking these measures can induce stress themselves - for example, taking a blood test to measure stress hormone levels can cause stress in the individual – the stress we are measuring is from the stress measure. If the body is stressed over a long period of time, your body will fall into a state of exhaustion, you deplete your resources, and it is at this point that the greatest impact occurs to your health (general adaptation syndrome). It’s a great concern when the stressor remains and you deplete your strength to fight that your health is affected.
23. Describe the Fight or Flight Response to stress. According to this theory, what happens at a physiological level in response to stress? How does this reaction prepare the body to fight or flee from the stressor?
The fight-or-flight response refers to a physiological reaction that occurs in the presence of something that is terrifying, either mentally or physically
A chain of rapidly occurring actions inside the body help mobilize the body’s resources to deal with threatening circumstances
In response to acute stress, the body’s sympathetic nervous system is activated due to the sudden release of hormones
The sympathetic nervous system stimulates the adrenal glands triggering the release of adrenaline and noradrenaline. This results in an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate. Epinephrine is adrenaline, which increases the energy level. Norepinephrine is noradrenaline, which increases the ability to stay attentive to something
24. How do we respond to stress according to the General Adaptation Syndrome? How does this theory explain the negative impact of stress on one’s health overtime?
There are three steps that explains the negative impact of stress in the body:
Step 1: Alarm Reaction – it’s the immediate reaction to a stressor – in the initial phase of stress, humans exhibit a ‘fight-or-flight’ response, which prepares the body for physical activity. However, this initial response can also decrease the effectiveness of the immune system, more susceptible to illness during this phase
Step 2: Stage of Resistance – during this phase, if the stress continues, the body adapts to the stressors it is exposed to. Changes at many levels take place in order to reduce the effect of the stressor
Step 3: Stage of Exhaustion – stress has continued for some time, the body’s resistance to the stress may gradually be reduced, or may collapse quickly. This means the immune system, and the body’s ability, to resist disease, may almost be totally eliminated. Patients who experience long-term stress may take heart attacks or get severe infection due to their reduced immunity.
25. Describe the physical and psychological consequences of stress.
Physical consequences of stress:
Activation of sympathetic nervous and endocrine systems
Cardiovascular changes under stress (such as heart rate and blood pressure under stress)
Immune system (necessary to fight off illness, bacteria, viruses) (such as external barriers, non-specific response and specific response)
You produce less antibodies when you’re under stress
Psychological Effects of stress
Stress affects memory and attention – can cause poor concentration and lead to unpleasant thoughts
Impairs decision making – narrows options and causes hasty decisions
Experience increased negative emotions (sadness, anxiety)
Behavioral problems (low sex drive, interpersonal issues, sleeplessness)
26. What is the relationship between stress and hierarchy? Compare how this relationship impacts animals versus humans. How might ‘lack of control’ explain this relationship?
The relationship between stress and hierarchy has an impact in those with jobs lower in the hierarchy. Humans with jobs lower in the hierarchy tend to take more sick days, have lower self-esteem and are at higher risk of obesity
Animals experience stress in a life of death situation, no in between humans experience sever stress and moderate stress the same way, constantly, and treat both moderate and severe stress the same way.
27. Identify and describe up to six strategies for managing stress. For each strategy, explain how it might work to reduce the damaging health effects of stress.
1. Coping – efforts to manage stress – coping styles should be selected based on matching the event – problem-focused coping: confront and change stressor, this approach is most useful when stressor can be changed; emotion-focused coping: avoidance versus approach, avoidance can result in health consequences from bottling up emotions – adaptive for short-terms stress, not long-term
2. Relaxation and Mindfulness – relaxation response: parasympathetic nervous system (can include progressive muscle relaxation, hypnosis, imagery); mindfulness: awareness of and focus on the present moment (breathing, mediation)
3. Humor – improves immune system functioning, decreased cortisol and the blood pressure decreases – could act as distractor
4. Exercise – improves mood and reduces anxiety/depression, decreases negative physiological effects of stress, and sick less often if exercise more often
5. Social support – providing more coping resources, less stress
6. Religion – those who practice religion or spirituality tend not to get sick as often
28. What arguments/evidence does Psychologist Kelly McGonigal present to suggest that there is a positive side of stress? What do you think are the limitations to this argument?
People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43% risk of dying (only true for those who believe that stress is harmful for their health)
People who experienced a lot of stress, but didn’t view it as harmful were less likely to die, and in fact, has the lowest risk of dying than anyone in the study
In a separate study, participants were taught to rethink their stress response as helpful (pounding heart rate prepares you for action, etc.)
As a result, participants were less stressed out and more confident, they were less anxious and their physical response changed (blood vessels stayed relaxed, similar to moments of joy and courage) – how you think about stress MATTERS
29. When designing persuasive interventions to encourage health behavior change, under what circumstances can information/knowledge best be used to promote change? Explain.
When designing persuasive interventions to encourage health behavior change, circumstances that allow information/knowledge to best be used to promote change includes knowledge, susceptibility, costs/barriers, intention, self-efficacy, attitudes, presenting a different picture to subjective norms, etc.
30. Why are fear-based appeals not always effective approaches to behavior change? Explain why/how this approach can backfire?]
Fear-based appeals are not always effective approaches to behavior because if the fear is too great, it’s ineffective. As a result, people get defensive and avoid the presented approach.
1. What is the field of health psychology? Identify and explain three reasons why this field emerged.
The field of health psychology is a new division of the American Psychological Association (1978) that stated that health and illness are influenced by biology and psychological and social factors
It is focused on promoting and maintaining health as well as prevention of illnesses and treatment
The three reasons why this field emerged are:
Shift in causes of death in 1900’s and 2000’s
Shortcomings of Biomedical model
Rising healthcare costs
2. How is the bio-psycho-social model different from the biomedical model? Imagine that you were experiencing headaches, explain how your problem might be explained and treated by someone adhering to each model?
The bio-psycho-social model …show more content…
includes studying the psychological, physical and behavioral causes of diseases
The biomedical model includes only the physical causes
If I was experiencing frequent headaches:
Biomedical model – may call the migraines and the treatment would most likely be medication
Bio-psycho-social model – would look into the psychological, physical and behavioral factors that cause the frequent headaches such as stress or genetic makeup – the approach may not so much be a treatment, but may look at areas of prevention
3. How can health care costs be reduced by psychological factors? Explain with examples.
Every one dollar spent on psychology services produces five dollars saved on medical costs – recent evidence has shown that psychological interventions can be more cost effective than drug treatments for conditions such as depression and panic disorders
The most costly conditions were cardiovascular diseases and musculoskeletal diseases, and there are psychological services, both therapeutic and preventative, that are known to be effective in treating such diseases
Although evidence on panic disorder indicates that cognitive-behavioral treatment and drug treatments have comparable effectiveness, the psychological intervention has been estimated to cost 10% to 50% less than drug treatments
4. Identify the steps involved in the Scientific Method. Provide an example at each step if you were interested in the relationship between mood and alcohol intake.
Step 1: State the problem - alcohol intake affects moods
Step 2: Operational definition – alcohol intake causes some people to change moods from one to another, such as from being happy to being angry
Step 3: Collect data – use surveys before and after alcohol intake (mood changes)
Step 4: Analyze data – compare the mood swings before and after alcohol intake
Step 5: Form a theory – excessive alcohol intake affects mood changes
5. What is the observational/naturalistic method? Identify and explain the limitations to this method?
Observational/naturalistic method refers to the collection of data without manipulation of the environment
The goal of this method in psychology is to describe and measure the behavior of an organism (including a human) in their natural setting
Some of the limitations to this method include participants who know that they are being observed – may alter their behavior so they can gain approval from the experimenters – experimenter bias; case study may be atypical
6. What is the survey method? What are the benefits of using this method? What are the limitations?
The survey method is defined as one asking questions about thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
There are three types of surveys, and they are face to face, written or online
The benefits of using this method are that it’s not expensive to do, large datasets, and as well as can be anonymous which reduces response bias
Some of the limitations for this method are: leading questions may be bias or unfair; response options that suggests typical behavior; inaccurate reporting, and correlation not casual
7. Why is it problematic to infer causation from correlational data? Use an example to explain.
There are two reasons why it is problematic to infer causation from correlation data:
The first reason is the directionality problem – before concluding that a correlation between variable 1 and 2 is due to changes in 1 causing changes in 2, it is very important to realize that the direction of causation may be the opposite, thus from 2 to 1
The second reason is the third-variable problem – the correlation in variables may occur both variables are related to a third variable
8. What is the experimental method? Distinguish between independent and dependent measures. Why is randomization important? What is a control variable? What does confound mean?
The experimental method involves manipulating one variable to determine if a change in one variable causes a change in another variable. This method relies on controlled methods, randomization, and the manipulation of variables to test a theory
Independent measures define what you manipulate
Dependent measures define as what you measure
Randomization refers to the use of chance procedures in experiments to ensure that each participant has equal chances to be assigned to any given group. Study participants are randomly assigned to different groups, such as the experimental group or the treatment group. Random assignment might involve such tactics as drawing out of hat, or assigning random numbers to participants.
A control variable is a variable that is kept consistent in between trails of doing an experiment
A confound refers to a variable which the experimenter cannot control or eliminate so that it does not damage the internal validity of an experiment
9. What are the limitations to the experimental method?
Ecological validity such as unnatural settings
Expectation and motivation in observer bias
Experimenter bias
Random assignments are not always possible, can refer to quasi-experiments (longitudinal study, prospective study, and retrospective study), and an example of this would be bottle versus breast feeding – and can also refer to correlation versus causation (possible of 3rd variable)
10. What is the clinical method? Identify and explain the limitations to this method.
The clinical method tests the effectiveness of drugs, treatments or therapy, and minimizes expectancy effects such as placebo versus real drug, participant expectancy – blind; and experimenter expectancy effect – double blind
It concentrates on the patient selection criteria and comorbidity and/or concomitant treatment. The limitations to this method are patient cooperation and ethical concerns, which refers to placebos, untested procedures and side effects
11. Should be able to think about study design using all the four methods that we introduced – when is each method used? What are the limitations in using that method?
Observational/naturalistic method: going over case reports and archives and observing students who are stressed.
Survey method: creating a survey, asking specific questions about how stress affects the students academically and drawing conclusions from the results
Clinical method: provide counseling for students to better cope with stress and see if their academics improve with stress relief. This may involve giving one group of students a therapy session and another group medication as opposed to another group that would receive placebos.
Experimental method:
12. What are the main predictors used in each of the Continuum models? What are the limitations of each model?
Health Belief Model: Predictors – good predictor of certain behaviors (condom use, eating healthy) and it is a better predictor of one-time behavior rather than habitual behaviors; Limitations – the model is dependent on self-efficacy (important predictor of behavior) and severity is not the best predictor of good behavior
Theory of Planned Action: Predictors – considers our intentions the central view of predicting behavior – the idea is that intention (knowing and recognizing them) and attitude are important predictors of behavior; Limitations – the theory fails to take into account the past and current behavior and typically past behavior is a good predictor of current and future behavior (past behavior predicts future behavior) – consider success when planning how, where, and when to perform a behavior
Learning Theories: Predictors – association refers to classical conditioning, reinforcement refers to operant conditioning, and modeling refers to observational learning; Limitations – obviousness of classical conditioning associations and essential changes in behavior through operant conditioning – we must consider behavior changes versus maintaining behavior
Social Cognitive Theory: Predictors – if you have a bad attitude and bad self-efficacy, it will lead to bad behavior, but if you had a good attitude and good self-efficacy, it will lead to positive behavior; Limitations – interventions depend on self-efficacy
13. Distinguish between continuum theories versus stage models of health behavior change.
Continuum theories – it identifies variables that influences behavior – uses them to predict the likelihood of behavior change (health belief model, theory of planned action, learning theories, and social cognitive behavior)
Stage models of health behavior change – behavioral change is steady – it’s a process that occurs in stages (transtheoretical model and precaution adoption process model)
14. Describe each stage within the transtheoretical model. In what way is this model non-linear?
Pre-Contemplation – no awareness of the health problem, not motivated to change their behavior
Contemplation – thinking about making a change and beginning to realize that they are personally susceptible to harmful effects associated with a certain behavior
Preparation – beginning to make a personal commitment to change their behavior by cutting back on their certain behavior, and taking small steps towards a goal – change beginning in small steps – in this stage, mechanisms of behavior change is important
Action – have successfully managed to change behavior, actually doing it – high risk of relapse – because of this, social support is absolutely critical – need someone to hold themselves accountable and help to keep on track
Maintenance – once successfully changed a behavior, want to maintain this change. Social support at this stage tends to cut back since they have a better handle on the change, however it’s still important – placing rewards for behaviors works well
Termination – the risk of relapse is gone, terminated the behavior… some say it’s impossible to get to this phase
15. Describe two different stage models of health behavior change. Which model do you think is more accurate? Explain. What are the limitations of these models?
Precaution Adoption Process Model (on paper)
Limitations: misunderstanding that the model is related to the risk perception rather than health action; difficult to apply to complicated health issues that have a variety of variables and interventions possible at each stage; measurement challenges
Transtheoretical Model (on paper)
Limitations: stopping a behavior may be different from starting a behavior; thinking about the costs and benefits may not predict behavior maintenance
16.
How does health psychologists define stress?
Health psychologists define stress as the experience of major life events – stress is defined as the perception of lack of resources to deal or cop with these like events
17. How is stress measured using self-reports?
By using self-reports, stress can be measured by asking participants to report life events in a given time frame, such as negative or positive change, discomfort, or threats. An example of this would be the SRRS (Social Readjustment Rating Scale)
18. Compare and Contrast the SRRS and the LEDS measures.
The SRRS gathers the stress of different life events
The LEDS measures the stressfulness of individual life events in detail
The SRRS does not account for subjective experiences, whereas the LEDS accounts the subjective experiences
The SRRS has very vague terms on the scale, and focuses on middle and upper class people without any attention to people in
poverty
The LEDS includes an interview and determines which participants are eligible for the experiment as well as those who are not sick regardless of class, whereas the SRRS is a survey with values that can rate of the most stressful to the least stressful events and rates on level of severity
19. Compare Life Events inventories to the Hassles and Uplifts Scales.
Hassle Scale – looks at measuring stress caused from these daily hassles such as misplacing notebook from class – the number of daily hassles that we report is correlated with our physical and emotional well-being – the greater the number of hassles reported, the lower physical and emotional well-being it gets (negative correlation)
Uplifts Scale – an association between uplifting events and health – taking a nap, spending time with friends are all pleasurable activities that are healthy – the studies show that more uplifts you report, the more positive your mood is, and the less stressed you are
Life Events inventories – things that happen in our lives, everyone is different, therefore everyone has different life event inventories
20. How does the perceived stress scale differ from life events inventories?
Perceived Stress Scale shows the frequency of stress or upset in a given timeframe (example: measures frequency of feeling nervous and stressed in the past month. Measures feelings of not being able to cope with everything one has to do) – predicts symptoms
Life Events Inventories is a number of events – a checklist measure – lists the major life events and assigns rating of severity – it runs from 100 to zero and whether it’s a negative or a positive event
21. Using breast cancer [or the common cold] as an example to describe the evidence that links to stress and health.
Stress has been known to increase blood pressure, cholesterol and bring your body into a thorough state if the stress is constant and chronic
This lowers your body’s immunity to things like the common cold, for your body becomes too busy fighting off the effects of the stress on your body to fight individual bugs that may cause the common cold
Your body become stressed and does not function, as it should. As far as cancer is concerned, stress has been known to cause the body to release stress hormones that increase blood pressure, rapidity of heart rate, and blood sugar levels rises
There is a lot of speculation but no real evidence to link cancer to stress. Some experiments linked breast cancer to stress while others have not. Stress causes the body to become stressed, so that breast cancer could be linked is not impossible, but has not yet been proven without a doubt.
22. Identify various psychological measures of stress. Explain how these measures make sense given what we know about the activation of sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system during periods of stress. What are the limitations to these measures of stress?
Some of the psychological measures of stress include heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, skin conductance, blood tests for hormone levels, etc.
The sympathetic system is one branch of the autonomic nervous system. When you are faced with a stressor (e.g. black bear), your sympathetic system kicks into response preparing you to fight the stressor or flee from it (Fight-or-Flight Response). The sympathetic system causes your heart to race, your lungs to relax to take in more air and oxygen, and your pupils dilate to let more light in and see more than before. The endocrine system releases stress hormones such as epinephrine and norepinephrine. These help to energize the body and to increase arousal and vigilance. These hormones can be measured through blood tests.
The fact that taking these measures can induce stress themselves - for example, taking a blood test to measure stress hormone levels can cause stress in the individual – the stress we are measuring is from the stress measure. If the body is stressed over a long period of time, your body will fall into a state of exhaustion, you deplete your resources, and it is at this point that the greatest impact occurs to your health (general adaptation syndrome). It’s a great concern when the stressor remains and you deplete your strength to fight that your health is affected.
23. Describe the Fight or Flight Response to stress. According to this theory, what happens at a physiological level in response to stress? How does this reaction prepare the body to fight or flee from the stressor?
The fight-or-flight response refers to a physiological reaction that occurs in the presence of something that is terrifying, either mentally or physically
A chain of rapidly occurring actions inside the body help mobilize the body’s resources to deal with threatening circumstances
In response to acute stress, the body’s sympathetic nervous system is activated due to the sudden release of hormones
The sympathetic nervous system stimulates the adrenal glands triggering the release of adrenaline and noradrenaline. This results in an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate. Epinephrine is adrenaline, which increases the energy level. Norepinephrine is noradrenaline, which increases the ability to stay attentive to something
24. How do we respond to stress according to the General Adaptation Syndrome? How does this theory explain the negative impact of stress on one’s health overtime?
There are three steps that explains the negative impact of stress in the body:
Step 1: Alarm Reaction – it’s the immediate reaction to a stressor – in the initial phase of stress, humans exhibit a ‘fight-or-flight’ response, which prepares the body for physical activity. However, this initial response can also decrease the effectiveness of the immune system, more susceptible to illness during this phase
Step 2: Stage of Resistance – during this phase, if the stress continues, the body adapts to the stressors it is exposed to. Changes at many levels take place in order to reduce the effect of the stressor
Step 3: Stage of Exhaustion – stress has continued for some time, the body’s resistance to the stress may gradually be reduced, or may collapse quickly. This means the immune system, and the body’s ability, to resist disease, may almost be totally eliminated. Patients who experience long-term stress may take heart attacks or get severe infection due to their reduced immunity.
25. Describe the physical and psychological consequences of stress.
Physical consequences of stress:
Activation of sympathetic nervous and endocrine systems
Cardiovascular changes under stress (such as heart rate and blood pressure under stress)
Immune system (necessary to fight off illness, bacteria, viruses) (such as external barriers, non-specific response and specific response)
You produce less antibodies when you’re under stress
Psychological Effects of stress
Stress affects memory and attention – can cause poor concentration and lead to unpleasant thoughts
Impairs decision making – narrows options and causes hasty decisions
Experience increased negative emotions (sadness, anxiety)
Behavioral problems (low sex drive, interpersonal issues, sleeplessness)
26. What is the relationship between stress and hierarchy? Compare how this relationship impacts animals versus humans. How might ‘lack of control’ explain this relationship?
The relationship between stress and hierarchy has an impact in those with jobs lower in the hierarchy. Humans with jobs lower in the hierarchy tend to take more sick days, have lower self-esteem and are at higher risk of obesity
Animals experience stress in a life of death situation, no in between humans experience sever stress and moderate stress the same way, constantly, and treat both moderate and severe stress the same way.
27. Identify and describe up to six strategies for managing stress. For each strategy, explain how it might work to reduce the damaging health effects of stress.
1. Coping – efforts to manage stress – coping styles should be selected based on matching the event – problem-focused coping: confront and change stressor, this approach is most useful when stressor can be changed; emotion-focused coping: avoidance versus approach, avoidance can result in health consequences from bottling up emotions – adaptive for short-terms stress, not long-term
2. Relaxation and Mindfulness – relaxation response: parasympathetic nervous system (can include progressive muscle relaxation, hypnosis, imagery); mindfulness: awareness of and focus on the present moment (breathing, mediation)
3. Humor – improves immune system functioning, decreased cortisol and the blood pressure decreases – could act as distractor
4. Exercise – improves mood and reduces anxiety/depression, decreases negative physiological effects of stress, and sick less often if exercise more often
5. Social support – providing more coping resources, less stress
6. Religion – those who practice religion or spirituality tend not to get sick as often
28. What arguments/evidence does Psychologist Kelly McGonigal present to suggest that there is a positive side of stress? What do you think are the limitations to this argument?
People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43% risk of dying (only true for those who believe that stress is harmful for their health)
People who experienced a lot of stress, but didn’t view it as harmful were less likely to die, and in fact, has the lowest risk of dying than anyone in the study
In a separate study, participants were taught to rethink their stress response as helpful (pounding heart rate prepares you for action, etc.)
As a result, participants were less stressed out and more confident, they were less anxious and their physical response changed (blood vessels stayed relaxed, similar to moments of joy and courage) – how you think about stress MATTERS
29. When designing persuasive interventions to encourage health behavior change, under what circumstances can information/knowledge best be used to promote change? Explain.
When designing persuasive interventions to encourage health behavior change, circumstances that allow information/knowledge to best be used to promote change includes knowledge, susceptibility, costs/barriers, intention, self-efficacy, attitudes, presenting a different picture to subjective norms, etc.
30. Why are fear-based appeals not always effective approaches to behavior change? Explain why/how this approach can backfire?]
Fear-based appeals are not always effective approaches to behavior because if the fear is too great, it’s ineffective. As a result, people get defensive and avoid the presented approach.