Chapter 11 Health and Well-being: Stress and Positive Psychology

Chapter 11: health and well-being Health psychology - A biopsychosocial model of health Subjective well-being - Individuals' overall evaluation of life satisfaction and happiness - Positive psych is a movement within psychology that applies research to provide people with the knowledg...

Chapter 11: health and well-being Health psychology - A biopsychosocial model of health Subjective well-being - Individuals' overall evaluation of life satisfaction and happiness - Positive psych is a movement within psychology that applies research to provide people with the knowledge and skills that allow them to experience fulfilling lives - Three lines of inquiry in positive psych: - Positive subjective experiences: positive moods, positive emotions, flow, mindfulness - Positive individual traits: hope, resilience, grit, gratitude - Positive institutions: positive workplaces, positive schools The elements of positive psychology - Positive mood: a predominant emotion or state of mind that is positive, such as happiness, alertness, and joy - Gratitude: recognizing a positive event and that someone or something else was responsible for it; can promote happiness - Happiness: a wide range of positive inner feelings - Positive attitude: feelings of approval and acceptance towards yourself , someone else, or something else Growing up - Physiological - Safety - Love/belonging - Esteem - Self-actualization Stress and positive psychological change - Survivors of serious illnesses, accidents, natural disasters, and other traumatic events will report positive psychological growth (namely post-traumatic growth) if they: - Have successfully coped with the trauma - Frequently reflect on the traumatizing event and relate it to some positive outcomes Six domains of post-traumatic growth Domain Thought ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- New possibilities "I have new things that I like to do" Relating to others "I feel closer to other people than I did before" Personal strength "I learned I can count on myself" Appreciation of life "I learned that life is important" Spiritual change "I understand religious ideas (or the meanings of life) more" Life priority change "I know what really matters in life" Stress of living - Defining stress: - A lack of fit between perceived demands and perceived ability to cope with the demands - Stress is felt when: perceived resources \< perceived demands Stress is subjective - May depend on how we appraise events - Primary appraisal: initial evaluation of the relevance, level of threat, and degree of stress the event brings - Secondary appraisal: an evaluation of our ability to cope Primary and secondary appraisal of stress - Primary appraisal - Situation perceived as relevant and threatening secondary appraisal - Situation perceived as irrelevant or harmless no stress - Secondary appraisal - Coping resources appear inadequate or likely to be taxed stress - Coping resources appear adequate no stress Types of stress - Acute stressors: threatening events that have a relatively short duration and a clear endpoint (job interview) - Chronic stressors: threatening events that have a relatively long duration and no readily apparent time limit (relationship conflicts, financial problems, heavy workload, fighting chronic diseases) - Ambient stress - Daily hassles - Readjustment to life changes (or major life stressors) - Burnout Stress may be embedded in the environment - Ambient stress: chronic negative conditions embedded in the environment - Variety of types of environmental stress: - Excessive noise, traffic, pollution - Crowding - Poverty - Certain types (poverty) are associated with elevated stress hormones Readjustment to life changes - Life changes: ant noticeable alterations in one's living circumstances that require readjustment - Both positive and negative life changes can be stressful - Social readjustment rating scale (SRRS) measures stress caused by major life stressors Responding to stress - Human response to stress is complex and multidimensional - Stress responses occur at 3 levels: - Emotional responses - Physiological responses - Behavioural responses Intensity of stress - Chronic stress - Life change, acute stress - Traumatic stress Why are some people better at stress management - Social support, hardiness, optimism Social support and hardiness - Some people withstand stress better than others - Many moderating variables may reduce the impact of stress on physical and mental health: - Social support: aid provided by members of one's social networks - Hardiness: a disposition marked by commitment, challenge, and control that is purportedly associated with strong stress resistance Optimism - A general tendency to except good outcomes - Optimists engage is action-oriented, problem-focused, carefully planned coping; are more willing to seek social support - Pessimists deal with stress by avoiding it, giving up, or using denial - Optimism is associated with better mental and physical health around the world Coping - Refers to active efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate the demands created by stress - Coping responses may be: - Healthy - Unhealthy - Coping strategies help determine whether stress has any positive or negative effects on a person - Negative/destructive coping: - Giving up prematurely - Acting aggressively - Indulging oneself/blaming oneself - Procrastination - Positive/constructive coping: - Problem-focused (when situation is controllable) - Emotion focused (when situation is uncontrollable) Giving up - Learned helplessness: passive behaviour produced by exposure to unavoidable aversive events - Cognitive interpretation of aversive events determines whether learned helplessness develops - Sometimes transferred to situations in which the person is not really helpless - Creates a passive reaction to stressful events, rather than active problem-solving - Giving up could be adaptive in some instances, such as when goals are truly attainable Learned helplessness -- martin Seligman - Dogs in electrified cage at first not able to escape the impending shock - Later, all they had to do was cross the other side, but they didn't even try - The dogs had learned they were "helpless" to avoid the shock and just sat there and took it without trying to escape Acting aggressively - Aggression: behaviour intended to hurt someone, either physically or verbally - Frustration aggression hypothesis: aggression is always due to frustration - People often act out toward others who had nothing to do with their frustration - Freud: aggressive acts release emotional tension in a process called catharsis - Research finds that acting aggressively produces more, not less, anger and aggression Displacement - The transfer of negative emotion from one person or thing to an unrelated person or thing Indulging oneself or blaming others - Stress sometimes leads to poor impulse control, or self-indulgence - Ex. Excessive eating, drinking, shopping, gambling, drug use or internet addiction - Self-blame: a tendency to engage in negative self-talk in response to stress - Ellis: self-blame is associated with catastrophic thinking rooted in irrational assumptions - Increased distress and depression for those who have experienced trauma and natural disasters - Heightened PTSD symptoms and greater feelings of shame in those who experienced sexual abuse Procrastination - About 70-90% of college students off academic assignments - Many claim to benefit from this tactic - Why do students procrastinate? - Desire to minimize time on a task - Desire to optimize efficiency - Close proximity to reward - Students often get rewarded for procrastination - Procrastinators also tend to experience more anxiety and health problems The health costs of procrastination - A group of students, who had a paper due late in the semester, completed the General Procrastination Scale - The students reported, early and late in the semester, how many symptoms of physical illness they had experienced Results - On average, procrastinators turned their papers in later than did non-procrastinators - On average, procrastinators obtained lower grades on those papers - Early in the semester, procrastinators reported fewer stress-related symptoms; later in the semester, procrastinators were reporting more symptoms Constructive coping - Constructive coping: refers to efforts to deal with stressful events that are judged to be relatively healthful - Constructive coping involves: - Realistic appraisals of stress and coping resources (appraisal-focused) - Confronting problems directly (problem-focused) - Learning to recognize and manage disruptive emotional reactions to stress (emotion-focused) Ellis' Rational thinking - Ellis' rational-emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) and the (ABC) model: therapy that focuses on altering clients' patterns of irrational thinking to reduce maladaptive emotions and behaviour - Negative appraisals (or beliefs) are often associated with catastrophic thinking, which exaggerates the magnitude of our problems - Positive (realistic and/or optimistic) appraisals allow constructive coping Humor and positive reinterpretation - Humor reduces the negative impact of stress on mood for many reasons: - Creates a more positive appraisal - Increases positive emotions - Facilitates positive social interactions - Positive reinterpretation buffers stress in the following ways: - Recognizing that things could have been worse - Finding benefits in a bad situation - Searching for something good in a bad experience Problem-focused strategy: using systematic problem solving - Problem-solving skills can be increased through training and by using these steps: - Clarify the problem - Generate alternative courses of action - Evaluate your alternatives and select a course of action - Take action while maintaining flexibility Problem-focused strategy: social support and sense of personal control - Two psychosocial models of stress are: - Social support - Feeling that one is loved, cared for, esteemed, and valued - Feeling that one is part of a network of communication and mutual obligations from significant others - Sense of personal control - The feeling that one can make decisions and take effective action to produce desirable outcomes and avoid undesirable ones Types of social support - Emotional support - Expression of empathy, caring, and concern toward a person - Provides the person with a sense of comfort, reassurance, belongingness, and being loved in times of stress - Esteem support - Expressed through positive regard for the person - In the form of encouragement or agreement with the individual's ideas or feelings - Positive comparison of the person with others - Building the individual's self esteem - Be an ego booster; avoid being an ego-buster - Tangible or instrumental support - Involves direct assistance - Ex. Lending money, giving ride, helping out with chores in times of stress - Informal support - Includes giving advice, directions, suggestions, or feedback about how the person is doing - Examples: - Patients getting info from friends or physicians on how to treat the illness - Junior workers getting feedback from coworkers or supervisors on job performance - Network support - Provides a feeling of membership in a group of people who share interests and social activities - Examples: - Membership at church - AA Sense of personal control - Other than social support, another psychosocial factor that modifies the stress people experience is the degree of control people feel they have in their lives - People generally like the feeling of having some measure of control over the things that happen to them - People feel less distressed if they feel that they have control over the problem/situation Types of control - Behavioural control - Involves ability to take concrete action to reduce the impact of a stressor - Same as problem-focused coping - Cognitive control - Uses thought processes or strategies to modify the impact of a stressor - Same as appraisal focused coping - Decisional control - Opportunity to choose between alternative procedures or courses of action - Having the second choice or a "plan B" - Informal control - Involves the opportunity to get knowledge about a stressful event - Knowing ahead of time what will happen, why, and what the consequences are likely to be Defining happiness - Aristotle - Happiness was attained by living a virtuous life and being a good person - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The road to happiness lies in the satisfaction of one's desires and the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure - William James - Happiness was the ratio of one's accomplishments to one's aspirations Measuring happiness (operationally defining it) - Happiness is measured in terms of: - A judgement that life is satisfying - The predominance of positive compared with negative emotions -- the percent happy scale Positive illusion: a paradox - Positive illusion: an inflated view of one's own characteristics as a good, able, and desirable person - A paradox: having a positive illusion will make you happy - A positive illusion can be accomplished by - Lowering one's aspiration - Making downward comparisons (I am better than 50% of people. I am half full, not half empty. I am not too bad after all Happy people are... - Less abusive and hostile - Less self-focused - Report fewer instances of disease - More helpful and cooperative - More likely to spend money on others (giving) - Have more social skills - And more creative and energetic - Are more forgiving and trusting What good is happiness? - Happiness correlates with positive outcomes of life - Marriage - Longevity - Self-esteem - Job satisfaction - Note: these correlations might involve reciprocal causality Happiness: do sex and age matter - Sex - Empirical studies consistent find that men and women are equally happy - Age - In some studies, there seems to be some variations in happiness across different age groups. But the range of change is very small - In some other studies, level of happiness is constant across different age groups National wealth and happiness - The correlation between a nations well-being score and its gross national product is +.67 - However, national wealth is confounded with health care services, civil rights, care for the elderly, education - Need to hold these confounding variables at a constant level when we look at the relationship between income and happiness Income and happiness in the USA - There seems to be a threshold of income: there is positive correlation between income and happiness when this threshold is not met. When this threshold is met, happiness does not increase with income Conclusion - People's moods are usually maintained at a constant level - This overall constant level of happiness is not affected by a sudden fortune or misfortune - People will gradually return to their previous state of happiness - This overall constant level of happiness is affected by personality Personality and well-being - Gender, age, ethnicity, and income account for only 10 to 15 percent of the variation in happiness - Personality accounts for up to three times as much of the variance accounted for by age, income, gender, education, ethnicity, and religion put together - Two personality traits are closely related to well-being: - Extraversion - Neuroticism Extraversion - Characteristics of people who score high on extraversion - Loves variety and excitement - Positive outlook on life - The life of the party - Energetic and enthusiastic - Seeks novelty and external stimuli - Tendency to experience positive emotions - Friendly and talkative - Highly adaptable Neuroticism - Similar terms: emotional instability, anxiety-proneness, negative affectivity - People scoring high on neuroticism are: - Moody - Touchy - Irritable - Anxious - Unstable - Pessimistic - Complaining Why are some people happier than others? - Factors affecting people's subjective well-being: - Personality (happier people are emotionally stable and socially engaged) - Life satisfaction (ratio of one's accomplishments to one's aspirations) - Social support - Married people tend to be happier than people with few friends - People with many friends tend to be happier than people with few friends - Socioeconomic status - People who can support their basic needs are happier than people who can't Read 11.7, 11.8, 11.11 , happiness and life satisfaction