1. Happiness Two Psychological Phenomena: Adaptation and Comparison
Happiness and Prior Experience
Adaptation-level phenomenon
Happiness and others’ attainments
Relative deprivation

2. Adaptation level phenomenon
The tendency to judge various stimuli relative to those we have previously experienced
TV example

3. Relative deprivation
The perception that we are worse off relative to those with whom we compare ourselves

4. Happiness Predictors of Happiness

5. Brain storm ways to get past anger
Changing thoughts
Not taking things personally
Understanding the context
Others?

6. Introduction
Health psychology
Behavioral medicine

7. Stress and Illness
Stress
Stress appraisal

8. Stress Not just a stimulus or a response
The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging

9. Walter Cannon First discussed the stress response – fight or flight
Sympathetic nervous system releases ephinephrine and norepinephrine
Increase heartrate and respiration
Diverts blood from digestion to the skelatal muscles, dulls pain
Releases sugar and fat from the body’s stores

10. Stress and Illness The Stress Response System
Selye’s general adaptation syndrome (GAS)
Alarm
Resistance
exhaustion

11. Tip
Seyle’s three stages ARE a GAS

12. Stress and Illness General Adaptation Syndrome

13. Stress and Illness General Adaptation Syndrome

14. Stress and Illness General Adaptation Syndrome

15. Stress and Illness General Adaptation Syndrome

16. Other responses Freeze – paralyzed - withdraw, pull back, conserve
Tend and befriend – more women – may be because of oxytocin – a stress moderating hormone associated with pair bonding in animals

17. Telomeres
Shorter bits of DNA at the ends of their chromosomes. Cell can’t divide if these get too short – the cells die
Happens after prolonged stress

18. Stress and Illness Stressful Life Events
Catastrophes
Significant life changes
Daily hassles

19. Stress and the Heart Coronary heart disease Type A versus Type B

20. Other conditions that lead to heart problems
Anger
Pessimism
Depression

21. Psychosomatic Older term – people often thought “just in your head”
Today psychoneuroimmunology PNI
Psychophysiological illnesses (hypertension and some headaches)

22. Stress and Susceptibility to Disease
Psychophysiological illnesses
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)
Lymphocytes
B lymphocytes
T lymphocytes
Stress and AIDS
Stress and Cancer