PSY100H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14.3: Explanatory Style, Posttraumatic Growth, Pessimism

• School: UTSG
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY100H1
• Professor: Ashley Waggoner Denton

Document Summary

Coping refers to the processes used to manage stress. Positive psychology the area of psychology that studies human strengths and potential. Researchers find that one of the best methods for coping with stress is through forcing yourself to thing positive thoughts. Positive thoughts cause you to: broaden your perspective on things and think the big picture to help you solve a problem and make you more creative. Also, thinking positive thoughts after a stressful event allows your body to reduce its stress levels a lot faster than if you were to think neutral or sad thoughts after the stressful event. All these encompass the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Optimism the tendency to have a favourable, positive outcome view on different situations. Pessimism the tendency to have negative thoughts in different situations. Pessimistic explanatory style the tendency for a person to always blame negative events as their own fault (internally) rather than from an external factor.