Unit 5 Flashcards
(122 cards)
Health Psychology
A subfield of psychology that explores the impact of psychological, behavioral, and cultural factors on health and wellness.
Psychoneuroimmunology
The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect our immune system and resulting health.
Stress
The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.
Approach and Avoidance Motives
The drive to move toward (approach) or away from (avoid) a stimulus.
Kurt Lewin
He came up with the formula B = f(P, E), meaning behavior is a function of the person and their environment. He studied group dynamics, leadership styles, and how to create change, especially through his three-step model of change: unfreeze, change, refreeze.
Hans Selye
A scientist who studied how stress affects the body. He came up with the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), which explains the body’s response to stress in three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. His work helped show that long-term stress can harm your health.
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three phases — alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
Tend-and-Befriend Response
Under stress, people (especially women) may nurture themselves and others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend).
Coronary Heart Disease
The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; a leading cause of death in many developed countries.
Type A
Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.
Type B
Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.
Catharsis
In psychology, the idea that “releasing” aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges.
Coping
Alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods.
Problem-Focused Coping
Attempting to alleviate stress directly — by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.
Emotion-Focused Coping
Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to our stress reaction.
Personal Control
Our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless.
Learned Helplessness
The hopelessness and passive resignation humans and other animals learn when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
External Focus of Control
The perception that outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.
Internal Locus of Control
The perception that we control our own fate.
Self-Control
The ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long-term rewards.
Martin Seligman
A psychologist known for studying learned helplessness, which is when people stop trying after feeling powerless in bad situations. Later, he started the positive psychology movement, focusing on how to build happiness, strengths, and a meaningful life. His work shifted psychology from just fixing problems to also helping people thrive.
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.
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.
Feel-Good, Do-Good Phenomenon
People’s tendency to be helpful when in a good mood.