Part #6: Stress

Learning Activity

Because stress is such a large contributing factor to many chronic health concerns, it is an important topic with which
a Health Psychologist should be familiar. In order to give you practice assessing the factors that contribute to events being
stressful, and identifying resources available to cope with stressful events, you will reflect on your own personal appraisals of
stressful events and resources available to cope with those events.

Instructions:
Recall the 5 main features discussed in module 6 video 2 that contribute to events being assessed as stressful (i.e.,
negative, unpredictable, uncontrollable, ambiguous, overloaded). We learned that different people will place different
importance on each of those features (i.e., someone might finds events more stressful if they lack predictability, but someone
else might be ok with some lack of predictability and instead find events more stressful if they lack control).
 Determine in which order you place the most weight on each of the 5 features for determining whether events are
stressful (i.e., rank them from 1 to 5, with 1 being the feature you place the most weight on – or the one that makes
events seem most stressful to you).
 Give a reason for each of your rankings (e.g., related to your personality, your prior experience with stressful events,
your current life circumstances, etc. Your reasoning can be anything as this is a personal exercise.)
 Provide an example of a type of event that you find stressful that matches each feature. For example, if you rated lack of
control as #1, provide an example of a type of event that would seem stressful to you because you lack some kind of
control. Provide a different example for each of the 5 features (you should have 5 examples in total).
 Choose two of the stressful examples you listed and come up with three resources that you have available to you to
cope with each of those two stressful events (resources can be the same, different, or a combination of some similar
resources and some different resources across the two events). Remember that resources have a broad definition and
things like prior experience, confidence, and knowledge can be considered resources as well as things like finances,
social support, time, energy, etc.
 Describe how each resource can help to make that specific event seem less stressful.

Grading Rubric: 23 marks possible

Feature Ranking Score
Ranked the 5 features from 1 to 5.
Yes = 1, no = 0
Total of 1 point available.
Gave a rationale for ranking.
Clear and mentions each of the 5 features = 3, clear but doesn’t mention each of the 5 features = 2, vague = 1, absent = 0.
Total of 3 points available.

Example Events Score

Provided an example for each of the 5 features (1 point per event).
Total of 5 points available.
Brief explanation of how the example relates to the feature (1 point per feature if rationale makes sense; 0 if absent,
doesn’t make sense, or example is not related to feature).
Total of 5 points available.

Resources Score
Three resources listed for each event (3 resources listed = 1 point per event, 1 or 2 resources listed = 0.5 points per event,
absent = 0).
Total of 2 points available.
Description of how each resource can help make the specific event seem less stressful (description makes sense = 1 point
per resource; 0 if absent or description doesn’t make sense).
Total of 6 points available.
 Writing Yes = 1 No = 0
Writing is coherent and (nearly) free from errors