Chapter 10: Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing

This chapter’s big idea: Our experiences with stress and how we cope with that stress can affect both our physical and mental health.

1. Read this article

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. Identify the stressors experienced by refugees both before leaving their country of origin and the stressors experienced here in their new home. Explain how the general adaptation syndrome applies to those experiences.

2. Read this article

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. Referring to the sections in this chapter that cover coping with and managing the effects of stress, explain the many ways sports can help.

3.What is the relationship between feeling like you have control over your environment and stress? Thinking about this course, where do you feel like you have control and where do you feel like you lack it? Where you feel like you lack it, could the course be changed so that you would feel like you have more control?

4.Answer the questions on the Locus of Control Scale

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. Use the worksheet on the second page of that file to determine your score. No need to report your scores.

Explain the difference between internal locus of control and external locus of control. Now imagine that one of your friends has more of an internal locus of control and another friend has more of an external locus of control. What would each friend say after losing a job? After failing a test? And after starting a new relationship? (Each response should specifically reference the job, the test, or the relationship.)

5. What type of correlation is there between religiously active people and length of life? What explanations do your authors offer for why this correlation exists? What type of correlations exist between happiness in early adulthood and income in later later life? And the chances of being married in later life? Why might these correlations exist?

6.Your friend says, “Money buys happiness.” What evidence from psychological science would you share with your friend about the relationship between money and happiness? Your friend, dismissing everything you just said, replies, “Yeah, but I’d be really happy if I won the lottery and moved into a super-fancy neighborhood and got to hang out with super-famous people!” What evidence from psychological science should you share with your friend about adaptation-level phenomenon and relative deprivation?

Chapter 11: Social Psychology

This chapter’s big idea: Situations affect our behavior.

7. Describe the fundamental attribution error. Give an example from your own life. How does the fundamental attribution error differ across cultures?

8. Explain how actions can affect attitudes. Next, respond to sections a, b, and c.

a. Airlines use foot-in-the-door. Read this article

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and explain how airlines use foot-in-the-door to get passengers to pay more. [Hint: It’s described in the section marked in red.]

b. How can roles influence attitudes. Discuss how you see the college student role in contrast to the high school student role. How might playing that role influence you?

c. Explain what cognitive dissonance is. Now, guess the results of these experiments. Explain the cognitive dissonance behind your guess.

1.) In one study, participants were asked to do a task. It turned out that the task was really, really boring. When they were asked to tell the next person it was a really interesting task, and, in fact, they would get paid for doing so. All agreed to do it. One half of the participants got paid $1 to tell the next person it was interesting; the other half got paid $20 to tell the next person it was interesting. Afterwards they all were asked, “Ok, really, how interesting did you find the task?” One group said they found the task more interesting than the other. Which one? Why?

2.) Researchers looked at recently-graduated college students who had been members of fraternities, some of which did hazing of new members and others that didn’t. The former students were asked how committed they were to the fraternity. Did one group say they were more committed than the other? If so, which one? Explain.

10. Let’s say you are working on a group project where you need to present the final product in front of your classmates. As the leader of the group, how could you maximize social facilitation, minimize social loafing, and minimize groupthink among your group members? Explain what each is in your answer.