The chapter discusses factors that influence health and well-being. It covers how biology, psychology, social factors and stress impact health. Stress can negatively affect the body and lead to health issues like heart disease depending on one's personality and coping abilities. Positive psychology research emphasizes the benefits of well-being, happiness, optimism, and social support for physical and mental health. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle and coping strategies can help enhance well-being.

1. Chapter 11: Health and Well-Being

2. Chapter 11 Overview: Big Questions
• What Affects Your Health?
• How Does Stress Affect Your Health?
• How Do Mediating Factors Affect Your Stress?
• Can a Positive Attitude Keep You Healthy?

3. Chapter 11 Overview: Study Units
• 11.1 Biology, Psychology, and Social Factors Influence Your
Health
• 11.6 Stress Has a Negative Impact on Your Health
• 11.7 You Can Have Several responses to Stress
• 11.8 Personality Influences the Impact of Stress on Heart
Diseases
• 11.9 Coping Mediates the Impact of Stress
• 11.10 Positive Psychology Emphasizes Well-Being
• 11.11 Social Support Is Associated with Good Health
• 11.12 Several Strategies Can Help You Stay Healthy

4. What Affects Your Health?
11.1 Biology, Psychology, and Social Factors Influence Your Health

5. 11.1 Biology, Psychology, and Social Factors Influence Your
Health (1)
The traditional Western medical model sees health as the
absence of disease.
• Patients are the passive recipients of disease.
• Focus is on medical treatments like drugs.
• The assumption is that health professionals know best
and should maintain control over what happens to
patients.
Psychologists and most health-care professionals take a
more integrated approach to health and well-being.
• The individual plays a more active role.
• Attitudes and behaviors are critical to stay healthy,
regain health, and flourish.

6. Health psychology
• A field that integrates
research on health and on
psychology; it involves the
application of psychological
principles in promoting
health and well-being.
Well-being
• A positive state that includes
striving for optimal health
and life satisfaction
11.1 Biology, Psychology, and Social Factors Influence Your
Health (2)

7. Biopsychosocial model
• A model of health that
integrates the effects
of biological, behavioral, and
social factors on health and
illness
o This model is central to
understanding the difference
between the traditional
medical model and the
approach taken by health
psychologists.
11.1 Biology, Psychology, and Social Factors Influence Your
Health (3)

8. How Does Stress Affect Your Health?
11.6 Stress Has a Negative Impact on Your Health
11.7 You Can Have Several Responses to Stress

9. 11.6 Stress Has a Negative Impact on Your Health (1)
The biological effects of stress result directly from the ways we
think about events in our lives and the way social factors influence
us.
• Stress: A group of behavioral, mental, and physical processes
occurring when events match or exceed the organism’s ability
to respond in a healthy way
• Stressor: An environmental event or stimulus that threatens
an organism
• Stress responses: Physical, behavioral, and
psychological responses to stressors
o Mediating factors can increase or decrease the likelihood
that a stressor will elicit a stress response.

10. 11.6 Stress Has a Negative Impact on Your Health (2)

11. 11.6 Stress Has a Negative Impact on Your Health (3)
Types of stressors
• Major life stressors: Large
disruptions, especially
unpredictable and
uncontrollable catastrophic
events, that affect central
areas of people’s lives.
• Daily hassles: Everyday
irritations that cause small
disruptions, the effects of which
can add up to a large impact on
health.

12. 11.6 Stress Has a Negative Impact on Your Health (4)

13. 11.7 You Can Have Several Responses to Stress (1)
General adaptation syndrome is a physical stress
response.
• Immune system: The body’s mechanism for dealing
with invading microorganisms, such as allergens,
bacteria, and viruses.
• General adaptation syndrome (GAS): A consistent
pattern of physical responses to stress that consists
of three stages:
o Alarm
o Resistance
o Exhaustion

14. 11.7 You Can Have Several Responses to Stress (2)

15. 11.7 You Can Have Several Responses to Stress (3)
Immune response
• More than 300 studies have demonstrated that
short-term stress boosts the immune system—such
as occurs during the end of the fight-or-flight
response—whereas chronic stress weakens it,
leaving the body less able to deal with infection.

16. 11.7 You Can Have Several Responses to Stress (4)
Fight-or-flight response
• The physiological
preparedness of animals
to deal with danger
o Within seconds or
minutes, the fight-or-
flight response enables
the organism to direct its
energy to dealing with
the threat.

17. 11.7 You Can Have Several Responses to Stress (5)
Tend-and-befriend response
• Females’ tendency to respond
to stressors by protecting and
caring for their offspring
and forming social alliances
Negative stress responses
• When people are stressed,
they also eat junk food,
smoke cigarettes, use drugs,
and drink.

18. How Do Mediating Factors Affect Your Stress?
11.8 Personality Influences the Impact of Stress on Heart Disease
11.9 Coping Mediates the Impact of Stress

19. 11.8 Personality Influences the Impact of Stress on Heart
Disease (1)
Genetics is one of the many factors that influence heart
disease.
• Another critical factor is how we respond
to stressors.

20. 11.8 Personality Influences the Impact of Stress on Heart
Disease (2)
Type A and B behavior patterns
• Type A behavior pattern: Personality
traits characterized by
competitiveness, achievement orientation,
aggressiveness, hostility, restlessness, impatience
with others, and an inability to relax.
o Men who exhibit these traits are much more likely
to develop heart disease.
• Type B behavior pattern: Personality
traits characterized by being
noncompetitive, relaxed, easygoing, and
accommodating.

21. 11.8 Personality Influences the Impact of Stress on Heart
Disease (3)
Hostile personalities and depression
• Hot-tempered, hostile people who are frequently
angry, cynical, and combative are much more likely
to die at an early age from heart disease.
o There is considerable evidence that
negative emotional states not viewed as part of a
type A or B personality—especially depression—
also predict heart disease.

22. 11.9 Coping Mediates the Impact of Stress (1)
Primary appraisals
• The part of coping that involves making
decisions about whether a stimulus is stressful or
not
Secondary appraisals
• The aspect of coping that involves deciding how to
manage and respond to a stressful stimulus

23. 11.9 Coping Mediates the Impact of Stress (2)
Types of coping
• Emotion-focused coping: A type of
coping in which people try to prevent an
emotional response to a stressor.
• Problem-focused coping: A type of
coping in which people take direct steps
to confront or minimize a stressor.
o Downward comparison: You would
focus on possible good things—the
proverbial silver lining—in the
current situation.
o Another strategy is to give positive
meaning to ordinary events.

24. 11.9 Coping Mediates the Impact of Stress (3)
Individual differences in coping
• Some people seem stress resistant
because they are so capable of
adapting to life changes by
viewing events constructively. This
trait is called hardiness. It has three
components.
oCommitment
oChallenge
oControl
• Some people have more resilience
than others and are better able to
cope in the face of adversity.

25. 11.9 Coping Mediates the Impact of Stress (4)
Involving the family
• Including family members in a treatment plan for a
chronically ill person may seem important.
o According to the research, however, such
inclusion is often ineffective (Martire & Schulz,
2007).
o Family interventions can be beneficial when
family members promote the person’s feeling of
being in control.

26. Can a Positive Attitude Keep You Healthy?
11.10 Positive Psychology Emphasizes Well-Being
11.11 Social Support Is Associated with Good Health
11.12 Several Strategies Can Help You Stay Healthy

27. 11.10 Positive Psychology Emphasizes Well-Being (1)
Positive psychology
• The study of the strengths and virtues that allow
people and communities to thrive
o According to positive psychologists, happiness
has three components:
 Positive emotion and pleasure
 Engagement in life
 A meaningful life

28. 11.10 Positive Psychology Emphasizes Well-Being (2)
A sense of well-being
• The Well-Being Index investigates people’s sense of
well-being across six areas:
o Life evaluation
o Emotional health
o Work environment
o Physical health
o Healthy behavior
o Basic access to housing, food, and water

29. 11.10 Positive Psychology Emphasizes Well-Being (3)

30. 11.10 Positive Psychology Emphasizes Well-Being (4)
Health benefits of positive and well-being
• Positive and negative emotions were studied in relation
to three broad types of diseases (Richman et al., 2005):
o Hypertension
o Diabetes
o Respiratory tract infections
• Higher levels of hope are associated with reduced risk
of these diseases.
• Higher levels of curiosity are associated with
reduced risk of hypertension and diabetes.

31. 11.11 Social Support Is Associated with Good Health (1)
Social support helps people cope and maintain good health in two basic
ways:
• People with social support experience less stress overall.
• Social support enables people to better cope with stressful events.
Marriage can be good for your health.
• Marriage is generally our most intimate and long-lasting supportive
relationship, and it has many health advantages.
o Men and women derive approximately equal benefits from
marriage.
o Being single leads to greater mortality for both women and men.
o Comparable data are not available for gays or lesbians who are
married or in long-term, marriage-like relationships.

32. 11.11 Social Support Is Associated with Good Health (2)

33. 11.11 Social Support Is Associated with Good Health (2)
Spirituality contributes to well-
being.
• Religion and spirituality
provide a sense of meaning or
purpose in life.
o On a daily basis, religious
beliefs can help
people achieve and
maintain well-being
through the social support
provided by faith
communities.

34. 11.12 Several Strategies Can Help You Stay Healthy
Ways to enhance your health and
well-being
• Eat natural foods.
• Watch portion size.
• Drink alcohol in moderation, if at
all.
• Keep active.
• Do not smoke.
• Practice safe sex.
• Learn to relax.
• Learn to cope.
• Build a strong support network.
• Consider your spiritual life.
• Try some happiness exercises.