AP® Psychology review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/psych/units/5/5-1)
Unit 5 · Topic 5.1
5.1 Introduction to Health Psychology
Health psychology studies how your thoughts, feelings, habits and stress affect your physical health. Long-lasting stress can raise blood pressure, trigger headaches and weaken the immune system. You'll learn the kinds of stressors, how the body responds over time, and the main ways people cope.
Key terms
- eustress and distress
- general adaptation syndrome
- fight-flight-freeze response
- tend-and-befriend
- problem-focused coping
- emotion-focused coping
What health psychologists study
Health psychologists look at how behavior and mental processes affect physical health and wellness. They study things like why people start or quit smoking, how sleep and exercise affect mood, and how stress makes people more likely to get sick.
Stress is the process of noticing and responding to events (stressors) that you see as threatening or challenging. Research links ongoing stress to hypertension (high blood pressure), headaches and immune suppression, a weakened ability to fight off infections. For example, studies have found that people under heavy stress tend to heal more slowly and catch colds more easily.
Kinds of stressors
Not all stress is harmful. Eustress is stress you experience as motivating and positive, like the nerves before a big game that help you focus. Distress is stress that feels overwhelming and wears you down.
Stressors range in size. Traumatic events, like a serious accident or a natural disaster, are sudden and severe. Daily hassles, like traffic, lost keys or arguments with siblings, are small, but they add up over time and can affect health as much as or more than rare big events.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic events during childhood, such as abuse, neglect, or growing up with household violence or a parent with untreated substance use. Large studies have found that people who report more ACEs have higher rates of physical and mental health problems as adults. These findings are correlational, and supportive relationships can reduce the risk.
How the body reacts: the general adaptation syndrome
Hans Selye described the general adaptation syndrome (GAS), a three-phase pattern in how the body responds to prolonged stress.
| Phase | What happens | Example: weeks of finals plus a part-time job |
|---|---|---|
| Alarm reaction | The sympathetic nervous system activates a fight-flight-freeze response: heart rate, breathing and stress hormones jump | The first day you see your schedule, your heart races |
| Resistance | The body stays on high alert and works to cope; stress hormones like cortisol stay elevated | You push through, sleeping less but keeping up |
| Exhaustion | The body's resources run down; this is when you're most vulnerable to illness | After two weeks, you come down with a bad cold |
Other reactions and ways of coping
Not everyone responds to stress with fight or flight. Shelley Taylor's tend-and-befriend theory proposes that some people respond by caring for themselves and others (tending) and seeking connection and support (befriending). Research suggests this response shows up more in women than in men.
Coping is how you try to reduce stress. Problem-focused coping treats stress as a problem to solve: you make a study schedule, talk to a teacher about a grade, or drop an activity. Emotion-focused coping manages your emotional reaction instead: deep breathing, meditation, exercise, talking with a friend, or medication that reduces stressful emotions. Problem-focused coping tends to work best when you can change the situation; emotion-focused coping helps most when you can't, like while waiting for medical test results. Some emotion-focused strategies, like avoiding the problem entirely, can backfire over time.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Identifying the GAS phase
For three months, Rosa has cared for a sick parent while working full time. At first she felt panicky; then she settled into a routine and kept going. Now she feels drained, has trouble concentrating and has been sick twice in a month. Which phase of the general adaptation syndrome is she in, and why does it matter for her health?
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Map her experience to the three phases. The early panic was the alarm reaction. Settling into a routine while still under strain was resistance.
- Step 2: Her current state, worn out with repeated illness after long-lasting stress, matches exhaustion, when the body's resources are depleted.
- Step 3: Connect it to health: in the exhaustion phase, the body is least able to resist illness, which fits her getting sick twice.
Answer: Exhaustion. After prolonged stress her resources are depleted, and this is the phase of greatest vulnerability to illness.
- Example 2
Reading stress data
Seven students counted their daily hassles in one week: 3, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 20. Find the mean and median. Which better describes a typical student here, and why?
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Mean: add the values and divide by the count. 3 + 5 + 5 + 6 + 8 + 9 + 20 = 56, and 56 ÷ 7 = 8.
- Step 2: Median: put the values in order (they already are) and find the middle. With 7 values, the 4th value is the middle: 6.
- Step 3: Compare: the mean (8) is higher than four of the values (3, 5, 5 and 6) and lower than only two (9 and 20). The single outlier, 20, pulls the mean upward.
- Step 4: Because one extreme score inflates the mean, the median (6) better describes a typical student.
Answer: Mean = 8 hassles; median = 6 hassles. The median is the better typical value, because the outlier (20) pulls the mean upward.
- Example 3
The trap: classifying coping
Before his driving test, Ethan (a) practices parallel parking every evening and (b) listens to calming music in the car right before the test. A classmate says both are problem-focused coping. Is that right?
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Problem-focused coping changes the stressful situation itself. Practicing parking improves his skill and the likely outcome, so (a) is problem-focused.
- Step 2: Emotion-focused coping changes your emotional reaction without changing the situation. Calming music lowers his nerves but doesn't change the test or his skill, so (b) is emotion-focused.
- Step 3: Using both together is common and often helpful.
Answer: No. Practicing is problem-focused coping; listening to calming music is emotion-focused coping.
Common mistakes
- Thinking all stress is bad. Eustress can motivate and improve performance; distress is the harmful kind.
- Placing the highest illness risk in the alarm phase. Vulnerability is greatest in the exhaustion phase, after resources are spent.
- Calling any healthy coping 'problem-focused.' Exercise and meditation are emotion-focused because they change your feelings, not the stressor.
- Treating ACE research as proof that childhood adversity guarantees later problems. The studies show increased risk on average, not certainty.
On the exam
- Expect scenarios that ask you to name a GAS phase or a coping strategy; point to the specific detail that fits.
- This topic pairs with data skills: be ready to calculate or interpret a mean, median, range or percentile from a small stress data set.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
4 questions on 5.1 Introduction to Health Psychology. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Researchers asked 400 healthy adult volunteers to complete a questionnaire about the stress in their lives. With their informed consent, each volunteer was then exposed to a common cold virus and monitored in quarantine for several days.
Among volunteers who reported low stress, 28 percent developed a cold. Among those reporting moderate stress, 36 percent did, and among those reporting high stress, 45 percent did.
Hypothetical study
Which conclusion is best supported by the results?
Why can't the researchers conclude from this study alone that stress causes people to catch colds?
Because volunteers were deliberately exposed to a virus, which ethical requirement is most important?
Rosa has cared for her seriously ill father for eight months while working full-time. When he first got sick, she felt shocked and panicky. For the next several months she pushed through and kept up with everything, though she felt keyed up most of the time. Now her resources seem used up: she feels drained, has caught three colds in two months and can't concentrate. According to Selye's general adaptation syndrome, which phase is Rosa in now?
0 of 4 answered