Coping + Guest Lecture Flashcards
How does social support affect stress?
Releases oxytocin (positive feelings and responses)
Reduces SAM and HPA axis responses
Promotes psychological well being (self esteem/control)
Promotes better health behaviors.
If you have someone with you on the Trier social stress test, you have less SAM and HPA activity and more oxytocin release.
Ppl with more supportive networks tend to take better care of their health.
Friends are likely to urge you to stick to your habits?
What is the matching hypothesis?
social support is most effective when it meets persons specific needs. Usually emotional is the best for health, but if you really just need some tangible support, a shoulder to cry on isn’t gonna help.
What is the relationship between marriage and social support?
Confidants are important sources (better than receiving from an aquaintence)
In satisfying marriages, men get more health benefits (probably because they have less confidants outside of the relationship)
Marital strain/bad relationships are bad for health !
When is support unhelpful?
What can counteract this?
1) Guilty feelings (taking up time and energy)
2) Inadequate feelings (can’t cope on your own, feeling like you ‘owe’ the other person
Perceived support might be more benefitial than actual support
Invisible support too!
i.e. Asians are more likely to feel indebted so they benefit most from percieved and invisible support.
Describe a study we talked about in class about Invisible support.
Couples where a partner is preparing for the bar exam. Daily surveys about who recives/gave support to the examinee. DV is daily depression scores
Found: best outcome (DV lowest) when examinee says no support was recieved but the partner says they gave support.
Couples have rlly different perspectives on what happened. Disagreed 39% of the time.
What are control beliefs?
Psychological control (mastery): belief that you have control over your life and outcomes (tied to self efficacy, but is less specific)
Perceived constraints: barriers, reduced contingency. whats holding you back from achieving your goals “no matter how much i x i will never get y”
Nursing home experiement: take care of a plant or told someone else would take care of it. Responsiblity made the ppl happier over time, and actually lived longer.
How does optimism lead to good health?
More motivated and persistent with sticking to good health habits
Self efficacy
Able to adjust goals: not always meeting them !!!
Better at handling stress
(all about future thinking NOT how you feel about the past)
Lower levels of biological risk markers (inflammation) and live longer!
What is the best possible self activity?
Make people write specifically and without dwelling on current state, what they want their life to be like in the future. optimistically.
ppl who did this had lower visits to student heath clinics over the next 5 months
What is coping?
THoughts and behaviors used to manage demands of a stressful situation. Occurs when u feel stressed/about to be stressed (proactive coping).
not always sucessful.
1) tackling problems head on
2) no solutions, just change the way you think about it
3) mental distraction
4) acceptance (for situations you can’t control/change)
How do appraisals and coping work together?
After you appraise a situation, you cope with it. Coping outcomes either make the situation better or worse, need to reappraise based on new info/actions
What are coping styles vs strategies?
Coping styles: general ways a person deals with stress.
- Avoidant coping style: minimize or avoid situation that causes stress. May help in short term but worse for long term.
- Approach coping style: put efforts into dealing with problem. Better stress related outcomes. Stressful in moment but better over time.
Strategies: specific to the stressor.
- Problem focused coping: aimed at handling problem or expanding resources to handle it. Deal with or get resources to deal with it.
a) changing situation (thinkin of options, making a plan, direct action)
b) expanding resources (seeking info, learning new skills) - Emotion focused coping: efforts to control emotions due to stressor. i.e. “denial, avoidance, emotional support seeking, positive reappraisal.
Denial is most popular
Which is better, problem or emotion focused coping?
Both!
Problem focused for situations that can changed
Emotion focused for situations that cannot be changed.
people employ both together
Depends on personality, demands etc.
flexible adjustment is important.
What are benefits of good sleep?
memory and attention, healthier heart, weight contorl. reduce inflammation, lower stress.
How does sleep effect us in daily life?
bidirectionally between sleep and emotions, poor sleep translates into bad mood, which gives you poor sleep.
Sleep is restart button for maintaining control over ur emotions. Poor sleep leads to more next day negative emotions, increased feelings of anxiety and less happy moods
Does sleep loss influence the way medical residents react to events at work?
Goal enhancing event (positive stuff)
Goal disruptive event (negative impairment of goal)
Design: medical students during residency. One shift may involve after 32 hours of work. Data collected every 6 months for 2 years (self reported sleep, stressful emotions)
Sleep loss amplified negative emotions to negative events and dampened positive emotions from positive events. (ppl wore a watch that told us about the sleep)
