Mors 200 Arts Final - Chapter 12 Discovering Psychology Notes Part 4

Frequently experience bad moods and negative emotions like anger, irritability, worry, or sadness.

• linked to poor health

• experience more stress

• More likely to develop a chronic disease like arthritis or heart disease, higher death rates from heart disease-i.e., hostility, relationship tensions, boredom

• Associated with unhealthy cardiovascular and hormone responses

• In America: associated with stress

• In Japan: associated with power and a sense of control

Not just the absence of negative emotions.

• Increased resistance to infection

• Decreased illness

• fewer reports of illness symptoms

• less pain

• longevity - lower death rates from heart disease

• Higher levels of physical health

1. Bring calming and health protective efforts to the cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems

2. Associated with health promoting behaviors, such as regular exercise, eating a healthy diet, and not smoking.

3. Tend to have more friends and stronger social networks

These people are more likely to develop heart disease, even when other risk factors are taken into account.

• Prone to believe that the disagreeable behavior of others is intentionally directed against them

• suspicious, mistrustful, cynical, pessimistic

• react more intensely to a stressor

• greater increases in blood pressure and heart rate

• create more stress in their own lives

• more frequent, and more severe, negative life events and daily hassles

1. The social support of friends and relatives can modify our appraisal of a stressor's significance, including the degree to which we perceive it as threatening and harmful.

2. The presence of supportive others seems to decrease the intensity of physical reactions to a stressor.

3. Social support can influence our health by making us less likely to experience negative emotions.

Relationships can also be a source of stress

• Marital arguments

• Judgmental people

• offering unwanted or unappreciated social support

• Tend to rely heavily on a spouse or partner

• Smaller network of intimate others

• Particularly vulnerable to social isolation

• Tend to only be upset about things that happen to their immediate family

• Tend to reach out to one another for support and comfort

• More likely to serve as providers of support, which can be a very stressful role.

• Stress contagion effect

• Have a larger and more intimate social network

• Upset about negative events that happen to their relatives or friends.

• Are a good listener and show concern and interest

• Ask questions that encourage the person under stress to express his or her feelings and emotions.

• Express understanding about why the person is upset

• Express affection for the person, whether with a warm hug or simply a pat on the arm

• Are willing to invest time and attention in helping

• Can help the person with practical tasks, such as housework, transportation, or responsibilities at work or school.

• Giving advice that the person under stress has no requested

• Telling the person "I know exactly how you feel." It is a mistake to think that you have experienced distress identical to what the other person is experiencing.

• Talking about yourself or your own problems

• Minimizing the importance of the person's problem.

• Joking or acting overly cheerful

• Offering your philosophical or religious interpretation of the stressful event.

• Making a big deal out of the support and help that you do provide, which may make the recipient feel even more anxious or vulnerable.