Health psychology exam 1 questions and
answers 2025
Three Views of Stress - ANSWER 1. Focus on the environment: stress as a stimulus (stressors)
2. Reaction to stress: stress as a response (distress)
3. Relationship between person and the environment: stress as an interaction (coping)
Significant Life Events - ANSWER - Holmes and Rahe (1967)
• Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) identified
major stressful life events.
• Found for relationship between stress and illness.
- Criticisms
• 'change' versus 'negativity'
• stress is being measured partly in terms of health
• list of life events is incomplete
• Changes may only be stressful if they are unexpected
- As many as 20 checklists have emerged to address SRRS weaknesses
(Scully, Tosi, & Banning, 2000)
- Life Stressor Checklist-Revised (LSC-R) (Norris & Hamblin, 2004)
- Life Events Checklist for DSM-5 (LEC-5) (Weathers, et al., 2013)
,- The magnitude of the relationships with health outcomes
remains constant regardless of the checklist used (Turner & Wheaton, 1995)
Daily Hassles - ANSWER - include losing things, traffic jams, bad weather,
arguments, and financial and family concerns
• Depend on frequency
• Related to proximal health outcomes. • Hassles and Uplifts Scale (Kanner et al. 1981)
Micro-aggressions - ANSWER represent "biased thoughts, attitudes, and feelings" that exist at
an unconscious level
Do they predict distal outcomes like death?
• Jeong, Aldwin, Igarashi, and Spiro (2015)
Exposure to hassles and uplifts decreased in later life, intensity scores increased. Group-based
modeling showed individual differences in patterns of hassles and uplifts intensity and
exposure, with relative stability in uplifts intensity, normative nonlinear changes in hassles
intensity, and complex patterns of individual differences in exposure for both hassles and uplifts.
Analyses with the summary scores showed that emotion regulation in later life is a function of
both developmental change and contextual exposure, with different patterns emerging for
hassles and uplifts. Thus, support was found for both hedonic treadmill and developmental
change theories, reflecting different aspects of emotion regulation in late life.
One interpretation might be that the number of hassles declines, but their appraised
stressfulness increases (which is what one might expect as individuals face the challenges of loss
and decline in late life). However, the increase in intensity might also reflect problems in self-
regulation in late life, given possible declines in coping resources such as cognition, social
support, and so on. This is countered by the fact that although exposure to uplifts goes down,
their intensity goes up.
,Job Stress - ANSWER - Physical environment
- Poor interpersonal relationships
- Perceived inadequate recognition or advancement
- Unemployment (even anticipated)
- Role conflict
- High responsibility for others
Demand-Control Model - ANSWER model suggesting two factors for job stress: job demands
and individual control
According to Karasek (1979, 1989; Karasek & Theorell, 1990), the demand-control model argues
that any job environment can be characterized in terms of the combination of two dimensions:
psychological work demands and the amount of control workers have to meet these demands.
Acute vs. Chronic Stress - ANSWER • Acute stress
- Sudden, typically short-lived, threatening event
(e.g., robbery, giving a speech)
• Chronic stress - Ongoing environmental demand (e.g., marital
conflict, work stress, personality)
Acute Stress - Rozanski 1988 - ANSWER • Participants - 39 individuals with coronary artery
disease (CAD)
• Stress Tasks (0-5 minutes each):
- Mental arithmetic
- Stroop-color word conflict task
, - Stress speech (talk about personal fault)
- Graded exercise on bicycle (until chest pain or
exhaustion)
• Outcome
- stress response - Myocardial ischemia determined by radionuclide ventriculography (measures
wall motion abnormalities in the heart)
• Results
- Cardiac wall motion abnormalities were significantly greater with stress speech than other
mental stress tasks (p < .05)
• Same order of magnitude as that with graded exercise
- Wall motion abnormalities occurred with lower heart rate during stress than during exercise
(64 vs. 94 beats/min, p < .001)
Social Evaluation Threat - ANSWER • when the self could be negatively judged by others
• can cause pronounced responses in the different stress systems, including cognitive and
physiological
systems.
• Stereotype threat - belief others hold a negative stereotype or prejudice against one's group
Chronic Stress - Frankenhauser, 1989 - ANSWER • Participants - 30 managerial and 30 clerical
workers - Equal number of men and women
• Outcomes - blood pressure - heart rate - Catecholamine levels (i.e. adrenaline/noradrenaline)
answers 2025
Three Views of Stress - ANSWER 1. Focus on the environment: stress as a stimulus (stressors)
2. Reaction to stress: stress as a response (distress)
3. Relationship between person and the environment: stress as an interaction (coping)
Significant Life Events - ANSWER - Holmes and Rahe (1967)
• Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) identified
major stressful life events.
• Found for relationship between stress and illness.
- Criticisms
• 'change' versus 'negativity'
• stress is being measured partly in terms of health
• list of life events is incomplete
• Changes may only be stressful if they are unexpected
- As many as 20 checklists have emerged to address SRRS weaknesses
(Scully, Tosi, & Banning, 2000)
- Life Stressor Checklist-Revised (LSC-R) (Norris & Hamblin, 2004)
- Life Events Checklist for DSM-5 (LEC-5) (Weathers, et al., 2013)
,- The magnitude of the relationships with health outcomes
remains constant regardless of the checklist used (Turner & Wheaton, 1995)
Daily Hassles - ANSWER - include losing things, traffic jams, bad weather,
arguments, and financial and family concerns
• Depend on frequency
• Related to proximal health outcomes. • Hassles and Uplifts Scale (Kanner et al. 1981)
Micro-aggressions - ANSWER represent "biased thoughts, attitudes, and feelings" that exist at
an unconscious level
Do they predict distal outcomes like death?
• Jeong, Aldwin, Igarashi, and Spiro (2015)
Exposure to hassles and uplifts decreased in later life, intensity scores increased. Group-based
modeling showed individual differences in patterns of hassles and uplifts intensity and
exposure, with relative stability in uplifts intensity, normative nonlinear changes in hassles
intensity, and complex patterns of individual differences in exposure for both hassles and uplifts.
Analyses with the summary scores showed that emotion regulation in later life is a function of
both developmental change and contextual exposure, with different patterns emerging for
hassles and uplifts. Thus, support was found for both hedonic treadmill and developmental
change theories, reflecting different aspects of emotion regulation in late life.
One interpretation might be that the number of hassles declines, but their appraised
stressfulness increases (which is what one might expect as individuals face the challenges of loss
and decline in late life). However, the increase in intensity might also reflect problems in self-
regulation in late life, given possible declines in coping resources such as cognition, social
support, and so on. This is countered by the fact that although exposure to uplifts goes down,
their intensity goes up.
,Job Stress - ANSWER - Physical environment
- Poor interpersonal relationships
- Perceived inadequate recognition or advancement
- Unemployment (even anticipated)
- Role conflict
- High responsibility for others
Demand-Control Model - ANSWER model suggesting two factors for job stress: job demands
and individual control
According to Karasek (1979, 1989; Karasek & Theorell, 1990), the demand-control model argues
that any job environment can be characterized in terms of the combination of two dimensions:
psychological work demands and the amount of control workers have to meet these demands.
Acute vs. Chronic Stress - ANSWER • Acute stress
- Sudden, typically short-lived, threatening event
(e.g., robbery, giving a speech)
• Chronic stress - Ongoing environmental demand (e.g., marital
conflict, work stress, personality)
Acute Stress - Rozanski 1988 - ANSWER • Participants - 39 individuals with coronary artery
disease (CAD)
• Stress Tasks (0-5 minutes each):
- Mental arithmetic
- Stroop-color word conflict task
, - Stress speech (talk about personal fault)
- Graded exercise on bicycle (until chest pain or
exhaustion)
• Outcome
- stress response - Myocardial ischemia determined by radionuclide ventriculography (measures
wall motion abnormalities in the heart)
• Results
- Cardiac wall motion abnormalities were significantly greater with stress speech than other
mental stress tasks (p < .05)
• Same order of magnitude as that with graded exercise
- Wall motion abnormalities occurred with lower heart rate during stress than during exercise
(64 vs. 94 beats/min, p < .001)
Social Evaluation Threat - ANSWER • when the self could be negatively judged by others
• can cause pronounced responses in the different stress systems, including cognitive and
physiological
systems.
• Stereotype threat - belief others hold a negative stereotype or prejudice against one's group
Chronic Stress - Frankenhauser, 1989 - ANSWER • Participants - 30 managerial and 30 clerical
workers - Equal number of men and women
• Outcomes - blood pressure - heart rate - Catecholamine levels (i.e. adrenaline/noradrenaline)
