PSYC 102 Chapter Notes -Controllability, Breast Cancer, Health Psychology
10 Dec 2012
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Chapter 15: stress & coping, personality, pain, healthy behaviour. Stress: pattern of cognitive appraisals, psychological response and behavioural tendencies that occur in response to a perceived imbalance between demands and resources available. Stressors: eliciting stimuli/events that place strong demands on us, physically or mentally. Stress response: cognitive(richard lazarus, appraisal of the demands of the situation (primary appraisal) How badly you want it: appraisal of the resources available to cope with it (secondary appraisal, knowledge and abilities, verbal skills, social resources. If you believe the demands exceed your resources, you will experience stress. Judgement of what the consequences of the situation could be. Distortion and mistake in appraisals can happen. People can overestimate seriousness of situation, underestimate own resources, exaggerate seriousness/likelihood of consequences, or irrational self-beliefs creating inappropriate stress responses. Body also responds, and even though appraisals being first, both appraisals and physiological responses mutually affect one another.
