PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Stress (Biology), Autonomic Nervous System, Hans Selye

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Ingrid Johnsrude

Document Summary

Health psychology: health psychology of behavioural medicine is the study of how individual, biological, and health environmental factors affect physical health. Our reflexes provide instant survival reactions in some circumstances to aid in both physical and social survival. Once the threat is removed, our body goes back to a baseline state. Being under a constant or prolonged fight or flight state can trigger negative responses both physically and psychologically. Our bodies will react in much the same way whether we are stressed about an upcoming exam or we are facing a hungry tiger. Some perceived threats can go on for a long period of time; whereas physical danger is a short-term event, the stress of not belonging to a peer group is more long term. Prolonged stress responses are hard on our bodies. One of the most common measures of life stressors is a scale called the social. Readjustment rating scale (srrs) or the holmes and rahe stress scale.