Psychological Science, 3rd Edition

Michael Gazzaniga Todd Heatherton Diane Halpern

Health and WellBeing

10

Questions to Consider:
Can Psychosocial Factors Affect Health? How Do People Cope with Stress? What Behaviors Affect Mental and Physical Health? Can a Positive Attitude Keep Us Healthy?

Can Psychosocial Factors Affect Health?

The Biopsychosocial Model of Health Incorporates Multiple Perspectives for Understanding and Improving Health Behavior Contributes to the Leading Causes of Death Critical Thinking Skill: Identifying Regression to the Mean Placebos Can Be Powerful Medicine Critical Thinking Skill: Recognizing Placebo Effects When Evaluating Treatment Claims

Learning Objectives
Describe the biopsychosocial model of health. Provide examples of the ways behavior contributes to the leading causes of death. Explain how placebos can affect health.

The Biopsychosocial Model of Health Incorporates Multiple Perspectives

Health psychologists utilize the biopsychosocial model in their investigations into what leads to health and well-being

Biological factors

Genetic predispositions Lifestyle, stress, and health beliefs

Behavioral factors

Social conditions

Cultural influences, family relationships, and social support

This model illustrates how health and illness result from a combination of factors.

Behavior Contributes to the Leading Causes of Death

The leading cause of death in the United States is heart disease

Obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, and personality variables

Accidents another leading cause of death may be reduced by changing our behaviors, such as wearing seat belts

Critical Thinking Skill

Identifying Regression to the Mean

For any range of events, a more extreme event will tend to be followed by an event closer to the average (mean) If you are aware of this principle, you are less likely to believe an unrelated factor is responsible for the return to a normal state

Suppose you study as usual for an exam, but just by bad luck, the professor asks questions you cannot answer, so you get a very low grade. If you study as usual for the next exam, you are likely (but not guaranteed) to get a grade closer to your usual high grades. If you study as usual but also go to a hypnotist to help calm your anxiety for the next exam, what will most likely happen? You probably will score closer to the way you usually do. Other than the hypnosis (on the realities of which, see Chapter 4, The Mind and Consciousness), what factors would explain the improvement?

Placebos Can Be Powerful Medicine

The placebo effect

Believing that you will get better can lead to improved health even if the treatment is inert

Functional MRI results indicate that when patients have a positive expectation about a placebo, the neural processes involved are the same ones that are activated in response to a biologically active treatment

Critical Thinking Skill

Recognizing placebo effects when evaluating treatment claims

Placebo effects occur in many contexts People who fall for false treatments often avoid medical care It is difficult to know how much of what we feel is influenced by our beliefs

How Do People Cope with Stress?

Stress Has Physiological Components There Are Sex Differences in Responses to Stressors The General Adaptation Syndrome Is a Bodily Response to Stress Stress Affects Health Coping Is a Process

Learning Objectives
Describe differences and similarities between female and male responses to stress. Define and evaluate the general adaptation syndrome. Describe and evaluate different ways of coping.

How Do People Cope with Stress?

Stress, defined as a pattern of behavioral and physiological responses that match or exceed a persons abilities to respond in a healthy way

Stress can occur as a result of happy events such as getting married (eustress) or negative events such as getting fired (distress)

Stress Has Physiological Components

Stress activates the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis, leading to the secretion of cortisol

Activation of the HPA leads to increased energy

Stress sets off a complex chain of events in the body.

Stress Has Physiological Components

Excessive or long-term stress can:

Negatively impact internal organs Interfere with the neural processes needed to create long-lasting memories Cause damage to neurons in the hippocampus

There Are Sex Differences in Responses to Stressors

Fight-or-flight response

Including increased heart rate, redistribution of the blood supply from skin and digestive organs to muscles and brain, deeper breathing, dilation of the pupils, inhibition of gastric secretions, and an increase in glucose released from the liver Most of the early research on the fight-or-flight response was conducted on males

There Are Sex Differences in Responses to Stressors

For women, the tend-and-befriend response has been proposed as a response to stress

Women respond to stress by protecting and caring for their offspring, as well as by forming alliances with social groups to reduce individual risk

Oxytocin

The General Adaption Syndrome Is a Bodily Response to Stress

Hans Selye identified the three stages of the general adaptation syndrome:

alarm stage resistance stage exhaustion stage

Selye described the three stages of physiological response to stress.

Stress Affects Health

Overwhelming evidence indicates that chronic stress, especially psychosocial stress, is associated with the initiation and progression of a wide variety of diseases, from cancer to AIDS to cardiac disease Also, many people cope with stress by engaging in damaging behaviors

Stress Affects Health

Immune system:

The field of psychoneuroimmunology investigates how stress impacts the immune system

In research, more desirable events experienced by subjects lead to more antibodies being produced

Stress Affects Health

Heart disease:

Negative emotions especially hostility have been found to increase the risk of coronary heart disease Type A behavior pattern vs. Type B behavior pattern Allostatic load of illness

Coping Is a Process

People use:

Primary appraisals to determine if a stimulus will be stressful

Secondary appraisals to decide how to cope with the stressor

Coping Is a Process

Types of coping:

Emotion-focused coping

Person tries to prevent an emotional response Avoidance, minimizing the problem, eating, drinking, and so on Involve taking direct steps to solve the problem Generating solutions, weighing costs and benefits Tend to be used more when the stressor is perceived as controllable

Problem-focused strategies

Coping Is a Process

Additional strategies such as positive reappraisal, downward comparisons, and creation of positive events have also been found to be effective coping strategies

Coping varies from person to person with those described as higher in hardiness (commitment, challenge and control) showing greater ability to adapt successfully to stress

What Behaviors Affect Mental and Physical Health?

Obesity Results from a Genetic Predisposition and Overeating Smoking Is a Leading Cause of Death Exercise Has Physical, Emotional, and Cognitive Benefits There Are Ethnic Differences in Health Behaviors

Learning Objectives
Summarize the causes of obesity and reasons for smoking, and use this information to suggest methods for reducing obesity and smoking. List the physical, emotional, and cognitive benefits of exercise.

Obesity Results from a Genetic Predisposition and Overeating

Discriminating against those who are obese is one of the last acceptable forms of discrimination

NAAFA Two common measures are being 20% over ideal body weight or having a body mass index (BMI) over a specified number

There is no formal definition of obesity

Currently, estimates indicate that one third of Americans are obese

You can find your own BMI by finding the point at which your weight and height meet on the graph. Beyond or below the optimal normal range, you are at greater risk for health problems.

Obesity Results from a Genetic Predisposition and Overeating

Genetic influence

Obesity tends to run in families with heritability estimates between 60 and 80 percent Identical twins raised apart do not significantly differ in weight from identical twins raised together Genetics appears to determine a persons sensitivity to becoming obese

Certain studies suggest that simply overeating will not lead to obesity

Obesity Results from a Genetic Predisposition and Overeating

Stigma of obesity:

Being obese has been correlated with low selfesteem and many medical problems

Industrialized countries are more likely to stigmatize obesity

Exemplified by media images of extremely thin, perhaps anorexic, models

Obesity Results from a Genetic Predisposition and Overeating

Restrictive dieting:

Repeatedly shown to be ineffective due, in part, to our biological set-point The body responds to restrictive dieting by slowing the metabolism and using less energy Yo-yo dieting

Social transmission of obesity

Obesity Results from a Genetic Predisposition and Overeating

Restrained eating:

Chronic dieters engage in overeating (or binges) under certain conditions causing them to give up on their diets due to their perception of having blown it (failed) It is suggested that eating has now become controlled by cognitive rather than internal cues of hunger

Obesity Results from a Genetic Predisposition and Overeating

Disordered eating:

Anorexia

Is most likely to occur among adolescents Anorexia leads to death in 1520% of those diagnosed Pattern of binging and dieting, often accompanied by some type of purging Compulsive binge eating leads to more secretive behavior

Bulimia

Smoking Is a Leading Cause of Death

One Quarter of Americans smoke, with most beginning to smoke between 11 and 17 One third of those who smoke will die from smoking-related causes Smoking has increased in low-income countries Smoking has been linked to cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and several forms of cancer

Smoking Is a Leading Cause of Death

Starting smoking:

Social influences are the most powerful explanation for why people begin to smoke

The false consensus effect Smoking conveys a certain image of being cool or tough

Once smoking begins, the addictive properties of tobacco maintain the behavior Some individuals may be genetically susceptible to the addictive effects of nicotine

Smoking Is a Leading Cause of Death

Maintaining a healthy weight or quitting smoking

In order to lose weight, individuals must increase exercise and decrease consumption of food To quit smoking, the individual may need to deal with the withdrawal effects through a nicotine patch, avoid those who smoke and places where smoking is likely to occur, and substitute healthy behaviors for smoking

Exercise Has Physical, Emotional, and Cognitive Benefits

Health benefits of exercise:

Reduced depression Enhanced memory and cognition

Promotes neurogenesis

These results stand in stark contrast to the fact that approximately 60 percent of Americans do not engage in any regular exercise

Exercise Has Physical, Emotional, and Cognitive Benefits

The improved health benefits of exercise occur regardless of how old the person is when or she begins exercising Exercise also improves mental health, stress, and improves mood

There Are Ethnic Differences in Health Behaviors

In the United States, white males and females live, on average, about 5 years longer than their nonwhite counterparts

Multiple reasons explain these differences, including access to affordable health care, genetics, and cultural factors

Assimilation

Can a Positive Attitude Keep Us Healthy? Being Positive Has Health Benefits Social Support and Social Integration Are Associated with Good Health Trust and Health Are Related across Cultures Spirituality Contributes to Well-Being Action Plan for Health and Well-Being

Learning Objectives
Discuss research showing that optimism, social support, trust, and spirituality are good for our health.

Being Positive Has Health Benefits

Happiness can be operationalized as having three components:

Positive emotion and pleasure, engagement in life, and having a meaningful life

Being Positive Has Health Benefits

In a study of 1000 medical patients

Higher hope was associated with lower risk for disease Higher levels of curiosity were associated with lower levels of hypertension and diabetes More optimistic individuals have been found to have enhanced immune systems, lower levels of common diseases such as colds, and greater longevity

In several studies

Social Support and Social Integration Are Associated with Good Health

Social interaction predicts happiness, likelihood of developing a cold, and longevity

Social interaction predicts longevity even when other risk factors are held constant

The number of people in an individuals social network is not as important as the amount of social integration or quality of social relationships

Social Support and Social Integration Are Associated with Good Health

Social support helps people cope in two ways:

Reduces stress by providing assistance in carrying out difficult tasks Reduces stress by the emotional support provided (buffering hypothesis)

Social Support and Social Integration Are Associated with Good Health

Emotional disclosure has positive health effects Marriage can be good for your health:

Single women have a 50% greater mortality than married women and single men have a 250% greater mortality than married men But troubled relationships are associated with increased stress, decreased immune system functioning, and negative health outcomes

These data come from the National Health Interview Surveys in the United States from 1999 to 2002. The greatest benefit from marriage can be seen in the age range 4564 years.

Trust and Health Are Related across Cultures

Oxytocin is involved in trust relationships

When one person trusts another, oxytocin is released, suggesting that people who release more of this chemical may be more trusting

Trust and Health Are Related across Cultures

Alternatively, when men are in situations where they do not trust another person, they release larger amounts of the chemical testosterone

Women do not appear to release greater amounts of testosterone in similar situations of distrust

Trust and Health Are Related across Cultures

Correlational studies are already suggesting that trust is found to be associated with positive health outcomes

Spirituality Contributes to Well-Being

Numerous studies have found that religious individuals, regardless of their particular faith, report greater well-being than those who are not religious

This effect appears to be due to spiritualitys effect as a buffer against stressful events Faith may provide a sense of meaning in ones life, a supportive community, and restrictions on unhealthy lifestyle factors such as drinking alcohol

Action Plan for Health and Well-Being

Eat natural foods Watch portion sizes Drink alcohol in moderation, if at all Keep active Do not smoke Practice safe sex

Action Plan for Health and Well-Being

Learn to relax Learn to cope Build a strong support network Write about troubling events in your life Consider your spiritual life Try some of the happiness exercises

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