Psychology · Ch 3 — Meeting Life Challenges
Key Terms
Key Terms
- Stress — The pattern of cognitive, physiological, and behavioural responses to any demand perceived as exceeding one’s resources.
- Eustress — Positive stress that motivates and enhances performance, arising from manageable challenges.
- Distress — Negative stress that causes anxiety, decreases performance, and harms health.
- Primary appraisal — Initial evaluation of a situation as irrelevant, benign-positive, or stressful (harm, threat, challenge).
- Secondary appraisal — Assessment of one’s coping resources and options to deal with the stressor.
- Problem-focused coping — Directly managing or altering the source of stress (e.g., planning, seeking information).
- Emotion-focused coping — Regulating the emotional distress caused by the stressor (e.g., meditation, venting, denial).
- General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) — Selye’s three-stage physiological response to stress: alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
- Life events — Major changes (positive or negative) that require adjustment and can trigger stress (e.g., marriage, death).
- Hassles — Minor daily irritants (e.g., traffic, deadlines) whose cumulative effect can be more stressful than major events.
- Hardiness — A personality trait (commitment, control, challenge) that buffers against stress.
- Resilience — The ability to bounce back from adversity and adapt positively despite risk.
- Social support — Emotional, informational, or tangible help from others that reduces stress impact. …