11. Health Psychology

Question 1

____ ____ is devoted to understanding psychological influences on how people stay healthy, why they become ill and how they respond when they do get ill.

Answer 1

Health Psychology

Question 2

History of health psychology
Early theorists believe that disease arose when ____ ____ entered the body. To rid the body of these spirits, a crude type of what today is called neurosurgery was performed using Stone Age tools.

Answer 2

evil spirits

Question 2

This surgery, called ____, involved drilling holes in the skull of the diseased individual to allow the evil spirits to escape.

Answer 2

trepanation

Question 3

The Greeks later ascribed illness to poor bodily functioning. Hippocrates proposed the ____ ____ __ ____, which asserts that disease is caused by an imbalance in the four fluids or humours of the body – blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Fluid imbalance produced both psychological and physical changes.

Answer 3

humoural theory of illness

Question 4

The Middle Ages saw the return of conceptions of disease as a result of ____ forces, reflecting the dominance of religion at the time. Disease was considered to be God’s punishment for wrongdoing. Treatments, generally controlled by the church, focused on torturing the body to atone for wrongdoing.

Answer 4

mystical

Question 5

The Renaissance, beginning of the 15th century, witnessed great strides in medical knowledge and treatment. During this period of time, major contributions were made by Leeuwenhoek in ____ and buy Morgagni in the area of ____.

Answer 5

microscopy, autopsy

Question 6

Descartes (1596 to 1650) proposed his theory of ____ ____, which contends that the mind and the body a completely separate entities.

Answer 6

Cartesian dualism

Question 7

The role of the ____ in disease took precedence rather than the mind.

Answer 7

body

Question 8

The development of microscopy led to observations of individual cells within the human body, which laid the foundation for the ‘____ theory of illness’, the idea that illness and disease results from abnormalities within individual cells.

Answer 8

cellular

Question 9

The____ model takes a reductionist view of illness, reducing disease to biological causes at the level of individual cells.

Answer 9

biomedical

Question 10

____ and social factors that effect health are virtually ignored.

Answer 10

Psychological

Question 11

Freud realised that some illnesses could not be traced to an underlying ____ cause.

Answer 11

biological

Question 12

The idea that changes in physiology mediate the relationship between unconscious conflicts and illness.

Answer 12

Psychosomatic medicine

Question 13

The idea that health and illness stem from a combination of biological, psychological and social factors.

Answer 13

Biopsychological model of health

Question 14

The ____ ____ ____ suggests that health behaviours are predicted by four factors: the perceived susceptibility to the health threat, the perceived seriousness of the health threat, the benefits and barriers of undertaking particular health behaviours, and cues to action.

Answer 14

Health belief model

Question 15

(1) Refers to a persons perception that he is likely to contract a particular illness. Optimistic bias – people believe that they are far less likely than other people to contract particular illnesses.

Answer 15

Perceived susceptibility to a health threat

Question 16

(2) Refers to an individual’s perception of the impact of particular illness would have on her life.

Answer 16

Perceived seriousness or severity of the health threat

Question 17

(3) In deciding whether or not to adopt a health behaviour, people evaluate whether the ____ to be gained from stopping the behaviour outweigh the costs or ____ associated with the termination of the behaviour.

Answer 17

benefits and barriers of undertaking particular health behaviours

Question 18

(4) Refer to ancillary factors that influence whether or not a person is willing to begin a healthy behaviour or terminate an unhealthy one.

Answer 18

Cues to action

Question 19

In the 1980s the health belief model was modified to include the component of ‘self efficacy’, a persons belief in her ability to successfully undertake a particular action or behaviour. With the addition of self-efficacy the health belief model assumed a new name …

Answer 19

Protection motivation theory of health

Question 20

Like the health belief model takes the social cognitive view towards health behaviours, broadly stating that behaviours stem from behavioural intentions.

Answer 20

Theory of reasoned action

Question 21

____ to perform a particular behaviour are necessary first steps towards actually performing the behaviour.

Answer 21

Intentions

Question 22

Behavioural intentions are a function of two components: ____ towards the behaviour and the ____ ____ surrounding the behaviour.

Answer 22

attitudes, subjective norms

Question 23

____ represent the beliefs one has that a particular behaviour will produce a particular outcome and one’s evaluation of those outcomes.

Answer 23

Attitudes

Question 24

____ ____ reflects someone’s perception of how significant other individuals will view the behaviour and the motivation to comply with the desires of those others.

Answer 24

Subjective norms

Question 25

This includes all the components of the theory of reasoned action plus self-efficacy, sometimes referred to as perceived behavioural control.

Answer 25

Theory of planned behaviour