Psychology Test - 5

The correct answer is Stress.

Key Points

Stress

• Stress can be described as the pattern of responses an organism makes to a stimulus event that disturbs the equilibrium and exceeds a person’s ability to cope.
• Stress: Faced with any challenge, we put in additional efforts and mobilize all our resources and the support system to meet the challenge. All the challenges, problems, and difficult circumstances put us to stress.   
• Conversely, too little stress may cause one to feel somewhat listless and low on motivation which may lead us to perform slowly and less efficiently.
• It is important to remember that not all stress is inherently bad or destructive.
• ‘Eustress’ is the term used to describe the level of stress that is good for you and is one of a person’s best assets for achieving peak performance and managing the minor crises.
• Eustress, however, has the potential of turning into ‘distress’. 
• It is this latter manifestation of stress that causes our body’s wear and tear. 

The correct answer is Hans Selye.

Key Points

• Hans Selye - János Hugo Bruno "Hans" Selye CC was a pioneering Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist who conducted important scientific work on the hypothetical non-specific response of an organism to stressors.
  • Hans Selye, the father of modern stress research, defined stress as “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand” that is, regardless of the cause of the threat, the individual will respond with the same physiological pattern of reactions.
• Jean William Fritz Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development.
  • Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Piaget placed great importance on the education of children.
• Albert Bandura OC was a Canadian-American psychologist. 
  • ​Albert Bandura's social learning theory suggests that observation and modeling play a primary role in how and why people learn.
  • Bandura's theory goes beyond the perception of learning being the result of direct experience with the environment.
• ​Richard S. Lazarus was an American psychologist who began rising to prominence in the 1960s.
  • When behaviorists like B. F. Skinner held sway over psychology and explanations for human behavior were often pared down to rudimentary motives like reward and punishment.

The correct answer is Strain. 

Key Points

Nature of Stress:

• The word stress has its origin in the Latin words ‘strictus’, meaning tight or narrow, and ‘stringere’, the verb meaning to tighten. These root words reflect the internal feelings of tightness and constriction of the muscles and breathing reported by many people under stress.
• Stress is often explained in terms of the characteristics of the environment that are disruptive to the individual.
• Stressors are events that cause our body to give the stress response. Such events include noise, crowding, a bad relationship, or the daily commuting to school or office.
• The reaction to external stressors is called ‘strain’.​

Hence, an Individual’s reaction to external stressors is called strain.

Additional Information

Types of stress:

• The three major types of stress, viz. physical and environmental, psychological, and social.
• Frustration, conflicts, internal and social pressures are sources of Psychological stress.
• Frustration:
  • ​It results from the blocking of needs and motives by something or someone that hinders us from achieving the desired goal.
  • There could be a number of causes of frustration such as social discrimination, interpersonal hurt, low grades in school, etc.
• Conflicts:
  • It may occur between two or more incompatible needs or motives, e.g. whether to study dance or psychology. You may want to continue studies or take up a job.
  • There may be a conflict of values when you are pressurised to take any action that may be against the values held by you.
• Internal pressures:
  • It stems from beliefs based upon expectations from inside us to ourselves such as, ‘I must do everything perfectly’. Such expectations can only lead to disappointment.
  • Many of us drive ourselves ruthlessly towards achieving unrealistically high standards in achieving our goals.
• Social pressures
  • It may be brought about by people who make excessive demands on us.
  • This can cause even greater pressure when we have to work with them. Also, there are people with whom we face interpersonal difficulties, ‘a personality clash’ of sorts.

The correct answer is Eustress. 

Key Points

• Stress: Faced with any challenge, we put in additional efforts and mobilize all our resources and the support system to meet the challenge. All the challenges, problems, and difficult circumstances put us to stress.   
• Conversely, too little stress may cause one to feel somewhat listless and low on motivation which may lead us to perform slowly and less efficiently.
• It is important to remember that not all stress is inherently bad or destructive.
• ‘Eustress’ is the term used to describe the level of stress that is good for you and is one of a person’s best assets for achieving peak performance and managing the minor crises.
• Eustress, however, has the potential of turning into ‘distress’. It is this latter manifestation of stress that causes our body’s wear and tear. 
• stress can be described as the pattern of responses an organism makes to a stimulus event that disturbs the equilibrium and exceeds a person’s ability to cope.

Additional Information

Nature of Stress:

• The word stress has its origin in the Latin words ‘strictus’, meaning tight or narrow, and ‘stringere’, the verb meaning to tighten. These root words reflect the internal feelings of tightness and constriction of the muscles and breathing reported by many people under stress.
• Stress is often explained in terms of the characteristics of the environment that are disruptive to the individual.
• Stressors are events that cause our body to give the stress response. Such events include noise, crowding, a bad relationship, or the daily commuting to school or office.
• The reaction to external stressors is called ‘strain’.

Hence, The term used to describe the level of stress that is good for human beings is Eustress.

The correct answer is Emotion oriented strategy.

Key Points

• Coping is a dynamic situation-specific reaction to stress. It is a set of concrete responses to stressful situations or events that are intended to resolve the problem and reduce stress.
• The way we cope with stress often depends on rigid deep-seated beliefs, based on experience, e.g. when caught in a traffic jam we feel angry because we believe that the traffic ‘should’ move faster.
• Individuals show consistent individual differences in the coping strategies they use to handle stressful situations. These can include both overt and covert activities.

The three coping strategies given by Endler and Parker are:

1) Task-oriented Strategy:

• This involves obtaining information about the stressful situation and about alternative courses of action and their probable outcome;
• it also involves deciding priorities and acting so as to deal directly with stressful situations.
• For example, schedule my time better, or think about how I have solved similar problems.

2) Emotion-oriented Strategy:

• This can involve efforts to maintain hope and to control one’s emotions;
• it can also involve venting feelings of anger and frustration, or deciding that nothing can be done to change things.
• For example, tell me that it is not really happening to me, or worry about what I am going to do.

3) Avoidance-oriented Strategy:

• This involves denying or minimizing the seriousness of the situation;
• it also involves conscious suppression of stressful thoughts and their replacement by self-protective thoughts.
• Examples of this are watching TV, phone up a friend, or try to be with other people.

Hence, Coping by making efforts to control one’s emotions is known as Emotion oriented strategy.

The correct answer is Richard S. Lazarus 

Key Points

• The perception of stress is dependent upon the individual’s cognitive appraisal of events and the resources available to deal with them.
• The stress process, based on the cognitive theory of stress propounded by Lazarus and his colleagues.
• An individual’s response to a stressful situation largely depends upon the perceived events and how they are interpreted or appraised.
• Lazarus has distinguished between two types of appraisal, i.e. primary and secondary.
  • Primary appraisal refers to the perception of a new or changing environment as positive, neutral or negative in its consequences.  
  • Secondary appraisal, which is the assessment of one’s coping abilities and resources and whether they will be sufficient to meet the harm, threat or challenge of the event. These resources may be mental, physical, personal or social.

The correct answer is Social. 

Key Points

• The stresses which people experience also vary in terms of
  • Intensity (low intensity vs. high intensity),
  • Duration (short-term vs. longterm),
  • Complexity ( less complex vs. more complex) and
  • Predictability (unexpected vs. predictable). 
• The outcome of stress depends on the position of a particular stressful experience along these dimensions.
• Usually more intense, prolonged or chronic, complex and unanticipated stresses have more negative consequences than have less intense, short-term, less complex and expected stresses.
• An individual’s experiences of stress depend on the physiological strength of that person.
• Thus, individuals with poor physical health and weak constitution would be more vulnerable than would be those who enjoy good health and strong constitution. 

The correct answer is Burnout.

The mental exhaustion appears in the form of irritability, anxiety, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. This state of physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion is known as burnout.

Key Points

Stress and Health

• Chronic daily stress can divert an individual’s attention from caring for herself or himself.
• When stress is prolonged, it affects physical health and impairs psychological functioning.
• People experience exhaustion and attitudinal problems when the stress due to demands from the environment and constraints are too high and little support is available from family and friends.
• The physical exhaustion is seen in the signs of chronic fatigue, weakness and low energy.

The correct answer is Entertainment.

Key Points

Stress Management Techniques

• Stress is a silent killer. It is estimated to play a significant role in physical illness and disease.  Hypertension, heart disease, ulcers, diabetes and even cancer are linked to stress.  Due to lifestyle changes stress is on the increase.
• Some of these techniques are:
  • Relaxation Techniques: It is an active skill that reduces symptoms of stress and decreases the incidence of illnesses such as high blood pressure and heart disease. Usually relaxation starts from the lower part of the body and progresses up to the facial muscles in such a way that the whole body is relaxed.
  • Meditation Procedures: The yogic method of meditation consists of a sequence of learned techniques for refocusing of attention that brings about an altered state of consciousness.
  • Biofeedback: It is a procedure to monitor and reduce the physiological aspects of stress by providing feedback about current physiological activity and is often accompanied by relaxation training.
  • Creative Visualisation: It is an effective technique for dealing with stress. Creative visualisation is a subjective experience that uses imagery and imagination. Before visualising one must set oneself a realistic goal, as it helps build confidence. 
  • Cognitive Behavioural Techniques: These techniques aim to inoculate people against stress. Stress inoculation training is one effective method developed by Meichenbaum. 
  • Exercise: Exercise can provide an active outlet for the physiological arousal experienced in response to stress

The correct answer is 

Key Points

Stress Resistant Personality :

• Recent studies by Kobasa have shown that people with high levels of stress but low levels of illness share three characteristics, which are referred to as the personality traits of hardiness.
• It consists of ‘the three Cs’, i.e. commitment, control, and challenge.
• Hardiness is a set of beliefs about oneself, the world, and how they interact.
• It takes shape as a sense of personal commitment to what you are doing, a sense of control over your life, and a feeling of challenge.
• Stress resistant personalities have control which is a sense of purpose and direction in life; commitment to work, family, hobbies and social life; and challenge, that is, they see changes in life as normal and positive rather than as a threat.
• Everyone does not have these characteristics, many of us have to relearn specific life skills in areas such as rational thinking, and assertiveness to equip ourselves better to cope with the demands of everyday life, etc.