Psychology Notes – April 19, 2007

Psychological Factors and Physical Illness

Learned Helplessness
- A point when people conclude that unpleasant or aversive stimuli cannot be
controlled.
- A view of the world that becomes so ingrained that they cease trying to
remedy the aversive circumstances.

Hardiness
- Hardiness – Personality characteristic associated with a lower rate of stress-
related illness.
o Commitment
o Challenge
o Control
- Social Support
o A mutual network of caring, interested others
The A’s and B’s of Coronary Heart Disease
- Type A Behavior Pattern
o Competitive
o Show urgency about time
o Aggressive
o Driven quality at work
o Hostile, verbally, and nonverbally
- Type B Behavior Pattern
o Cooperative
o Less competitive
o Not especially time oriented
o Not usually aggressive, driven, or hostile
Sense of Control
- Locus of control – Your expectation of whether you can control the things
that happen to you
o Internal – those who believe they are responsible for what happens to
them
o External – those who believe they are victims of circumstances
- Benefits of control
o Difficult events are more tolerable if more predictable or controllable
- Limits of Control
o Trying to control the uncontrollable is a problem and a source of stress
- Combination works best

Coping with Stress

- Coping
o The efforts to control, reduce, or learn to tolerate the threats that lead
to stress.
- Defense Mechanisms
o Reactions that maintain a person’s sense of control and self-worth by
distorting or denying the actual nature of the situation.
o Emotional insulation
 Cessation of emotional experience
- Problem-focused coping
o Attempts to modify the stressful problem or source of the stress
o Examples?
- Emotion-focused coping
o Method of managing emotion in the face of stress by seeking to
change the way they feel or perceive a problem
o Examples?
- Example of coping (emotion-focused)
o Prayer and meditation
o Relaxation Training
 Learning to alternately tense and relax muscles, lie or sit
quietly, or mediate by clearing the mind;
 Has beneficial effects by lowering stress hormones and
enhancing immune function
o Massage Therapy
o Exercise
- Effective Cognitive Coping Methods (also emotion-focused):
o Reappraising the situation
o Learning from the experience
o Making social comparisons
o Cultivating a sense of humor
Psychological Disorders – Chapter 15
Module 48: Normal vs. Abnormal: Making the Distinction

Defining Abnormality
- Abnormality
o A deviation from the average
 Statistically-based approach
o A deviation from the ideal
 Majority standard
o A sense of personal discomfort
o The inability to function effectively
 Societal demands
o A legal concept
Perspective on Abnormality
- >>Review: Major Theoretical Perspectives in Psychology
- Medical perspective
o -> Physiological causes
- Psychoanalytic perspective
- -> Childhood conflicts over opposing wishes regarding sex and aggression.
- Behavioral Perspective
o -> learned response
- Cognitive perspective
o -> cognitions (people’s thoughts and beliefs) are central to a person’s
abnormal behavior
- Humanistic perspective
o -> emphasizes the responsibility that people have for their own
behavior
- Socialcultural perspective
o -> people’s behavior – both normal and abnormal – is shaped by the
kind of family group, society, and culture
Classifying Abnormal Behavior
- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (DSM-IV)
- Standard system used in the US to diagnose and classify abnormal behavior
devised.
o Descriptive; doesn’t suggest causes
- American Psychiatric Association
- Ultilizes 5 axes to describe condition
o Axis 1: Clinical Syndrome (e.g., schizophrenia; mood disorder)
o Axis 5: Global Assessment of Functioning
Anxiety Disorders: What does anxiety feel like?
- Anxiety occurs without external justification and begins to affect a person’s
daily functioning
- Phobic disorders
o Intense, irrational fears of specific objects or situations
o