Deck 16: Applying Social Psychology to Health

Question 1

The Student Stress Scale assesses a person's stress level by ____.

A) gauging basic lifestyle habits (e.g., hours of sleep received per night)
B) taking a read of various physical phenomena that are known to be stress-related (e.g., headaches, teeth-grinding)
C) asking questions about a person's mood and emotions
D) taking an inventory of recent life changes a person has experienced

Answer 1

D

Question 2

_____ applied the concept of homeostasis to the study of human interactions with the environment.

A) Richard Lazarus
B) Walter Cannon
C) Sigmund Freud
D) Carl Rogers

Answer 2

B

Question 3

The general adaptation syndrome, discussed in the text, is a model for understanding ____.

A) how people react to immediate dangers or threats
B) how people respond to stressors
C) how people respond to lifestyle changes
D) how people cope with long-term illness or disease

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Most researchers contend that the best way to know when a person is stressed is to ____.

A) see how their body responds to a given situation
B) take an inventory of recent life changes that they have experienced
C) simply ask them
D) measure their blood pressure

Question 5

According to the general adaptation syndrome, long-term stressors ____.

A) can cause physiological (but not psychological) damage
B) can cause psychological (but not physiological) damage
C) can cause both physiological and psychological damage
D) have temporary negative effects, but cannot cause either physiological damage or psychological damage

Question 6

When male rats are under stress, they react with the fight-or-flight response. Female rats, on the other hand, may react with ____.

A) the might-or-right syndrome
B) the tend-and-befriend response
C) flight only
D) a tendency to hide

Question 7

If everyone in North America stopped smoking today, the death rates due to cancer would drop by close to ____.

A) 10%
B) 20%
C) 30%
D) 40%

Question 8

The definition of health, as given in the text's Application Module on Health, includes ____.

A) physical health only
B) mental and physical health
C) mental health only
D) mental, physical, and social health

Question 9

The tend-and-befriend response is a more ____ stress response for females than the basic fight-or-flight response.

A) dangerous
B) threatening
C) rational
D) illogical

Question 10

Health psychology is an interdisciplinary subspecialty of psychology best described as dedicated to ____.

A) promoting health
B) promoting and maintaining health
C) preventing illness
D) promoting and maintaining health, and preventing and treating illness

Question 11

How does stress relate to homeostasis?

A) Stress is the upsetting of homeostasis.
B) Stress is the exacerbation, or worsening, of homeostasis.
C) Stress leads to homeostasis.
D) Stress is caused by homeostasis.

Question 12

The cognitive appraisal model of stress developed by Lazarus suggests that, when people encounter potentially stressful situations, they make both primary appraisals and secondary appraisals. Primary appraisals concern ____.

A) whether a situation is positive or negative
B) whether a situation is relevant to oneself
C) whether one has resources to effectively cope with a situation
D) whether a situation is temporary or long-term

Question 13

Suppose that you are nearly mugged while walking down a crowded city street. Your body quickly reacts. Your heart rate speeds up, your breathing becomes more intense, and you feel pumped up to either attack the mugger or flee the scene. It would be most accurate to say that your ____ was activated in this situation.

A) peripheral nervous system
B) sympathetic nervous system
C) autonomic nervous system
D) parasympathetic nervous system

Question 14

Which of the following statements best summarizes the cognitive appraisal model of stress developed by Lazarus?

A) Our experience of stress depends on past learning.
B) Our experience of stress depends on how we interpret situations.
C) Our experience of stress depends on cultural norms.
D) Our experience of stress depends on individual personality variables.

Question 15

When we believe the event will be extremely demanding and will put us at risk for damage, we make a(n) ____ appraisal.

A) caution
B) alert
C) danger
D) threat

Question 16

The three broad segments of health psychology are _____.

A) physical, psychological, and social health
B) stress and coping, health behaviors, and issues in health care
C) innate traits, current state, and modifiable behavior
D) infectious disease, chronic disease, and psychological disease

Question 17

Early definitions of stress tended to focus on ____ factors.

A) biological
B) personality
C) behavior
D) interpersonal

Question 18

Health is most accurately viewed as a(n) _____.

A) dichotomy
B) binary state
C) continuum
D) trait

Question 19

According to Lazarus, during ____ appraisal, we ascertain whether an event is positive, negative, or neutral, and if negative, whether it is harmful, threatening, or challenging.

A) fundamental
B) primary
C) identification
D) secondary

Question 20

The tend-and-befriend response is ____.

A) a female pattern of responding to general stress
B) a style of responding to aggressive threats that is often taught in anger-management therapies
C) a style of responding to aggressive threats that is characteristic of some (non-human) animals when confronted by dominant opponents
D) a general orientation toward others that many people take on when encountering new, ambiguous situations

Question 21

Research on the effects of movie watching on teens' smoking behavior (i.e., watching popular movies containing instances of smoking) found that ____.

A) there were only very weak effects
B) there were moderately strong effects-but these effects disappeared when one accounted for individual differences on personality variables
C) there were moderately strong effects-but these effects disappeared when one accounted for parental smoking and peer group smoking
D) there were progressively stronger effects as the exposure to instances of smoking in movies increased

Question 22

Maria opposes mandatory vaccination of children and often cites "evidence" of the harm caused by vaccines while apparently ignoring their safety and efficacy in the vast majority of instances. This is consistent with _____.

A) negativity bias
B) cognitive dissonance
C) confirmation bias
D) social learning

Question 23

Research has found that one of the strongest, most consistent psychological differences between males and females is with respect to ____.

A) identification of threatening situations
B) physiological responses to stress
C) production of cortisol in response to stress
D) seeking social support

Question 24

Your text describes a study in which researchers recruited single, sexually active student volunteers to take part in a campaign (actually the experimental manipulation) supposedly designed to get other students who were just becoming sexually active to practice safe sex. The volunteers were asked to develop a persuasive speech about acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and safer sex that was then videotaped. Researchers found that the students who made the taped speeches were more likely to use condoms, a finding that is consistent with ____.

A) social learning theory
B) the stages of change model
C) the health belief model
D) cognitive dissonance

Question 25

It is estimated that ____ of all deaths in the United States could have been postponed or avoided had people changed unhealthy behaviors.

A) 5%
B) 20%
C) 50%
D) 90%

Question 26

Research has shown that the more instances of smoking adolescents view in movies, the more likely they are to smoke. This is believed to be a result of ____.

A) social pressures to smoke cigarettes
B) a spurious relationship since the actual relationship is with being able to afford cigarettes
C) a spurious relationship, since students who perform poorly are both more likely to smoke and to watch movies
D) identification with movie characters

Question 27

The ____ model is a value-expectancy theory in which the values and expectations have been reformulated from abstract concepts into health-related behaviors and concepts.

A) planned behavior
B) health belief
C) cognitive appraisal
D) transtheoretical

Question 28

Which of the following is most directly concerned with the stages that people go through-and the themes present at each stage-when they are trying to change a specific behavior?

A) The theory of planned behavior
B) The general adaptation syndrome
C) The cognitive appraisal model
D) The transtheoretical model

Question 29

Edward has a really difficult co-worker. They are constantly in conflict over how to use the limited resources in the office. Edward offers to take the co-worker out to lunch and over lunch, they discuss how they can manage their respective needs for the office resources with less conflict. Edward has used ____ coping.

A) avoidant
B) emotion-focused
C) problem-focused
D) precontemplative

Question 30

The health belief model discussed in the text proposes that ____.

A) we form our health beliefs on the basis of observational information and our sense of self-efficacy
B) our beliefs about the effectiveness, ease, and consequences of doing (or not doing) a certain behavior determine whether we do (or do not do) that behavior
C) our beliefs about what others are doing vis-à-vis their health (whether accurate or not) guide our health-related behavior
D) we form our health beliefs by relying too much on what "feels good" either psychologically or physically

Question 31

People have attitudes and perceptions of social norms, which affect intentions, which affect behaviors. This, in a nutshell, is the ____.

A) theory of planned action
B) general adaptation syndrome
C) cognitive appraisal model
D) transtheoretical model

Question 32

A(n) ____ is defined as a person's subjective probability that he or she will perform the behavior in question.

A) plan
B) intention
C) appraisal
D) hypothesis

Question 33

People who experience ____ show a disease-prone personality.

A) low levels of anxiety
B) long-term negative feelings
C) high self-esteem
D) chronic positive affect

Question 34

In health psychology, a(n) ____ can be defined as any program or message providing information or structure to change a behavior.

A) intervention
B) treatment
C) therapy
D) manipulation

Question 35

Which theme of the text does not always apply in the intersection of health and social psychology?

A) Put people first.
B) Nature says go, culture says stop.
C) Inner processes serve interpersonal functions.
D) We are built to relate.

Question 36

Are there any differences in health between people who have solid social support and people who don't?

A) No-psychologists suspect that there are differences, but research has not consistently found any evidence that social support makes a real difference.
B) Yes-although social support does not appear to improve people's physical health, it does improve their mood and general psychological well-being.
C) Yes-social support appears to improve physical and psychological well-being, though it does not improve objective measures of health (e.g., recovery time from illness).
D) Yes-social support has been tied to better health, more rapid recovery from illness, and a lower risk for mortality.

Question 37

Amira notices a lump in her breast, but convinces herself that it was always there. As she continues to examine her breasts monthly, the lump remains and seems larger, but each time Amira finds a way to explain it away--the lump is just a result of the uncomfortable bra she was wearing, the lump is connected to her menstrual cycle, and so forth. In fact, she never has the lump investigated because she interprets the lump in terms of her belief that she is "healthy." Amira has succumbed to which social psychological error in thinking?

A) confirmation bias
B) attribution
C) self-fulfilling prophecy
D) chronic negative affect