Invitation to Psychology

ChapTER 13 Emotion, Stress, and Health 467

People who are ill or under stress can reap

the benefits of both Western and Eastern forms

of control by avoiding either–or thinking: tak­

ing responsibility for future actions while not

blaming themselves unduly for past ones. Among

first­year college students who are doing poorly,

future success depends on maintaining enough

primary control to keep working hard and learn­

ing to study better, and on the ability to come to

terms with the fact that success is not going to

drop into their laps without effort (Hall et al.,

2006). Among women who are recovering from

sexual assault or illness, adjustment is related to a

woman’s belief that she is not to blame for being

raped or for getting sick but that she is in charge

of taking care of herself from now on (Frazier,

2003; Taylor, Lichtman, & Wood, 1984). This

way of thinking allows people to avoid guilt and

self­blame while retaining a belief that they can

take steps to get better.

Many problems require us to decide what we

can change and to accept what we cannot; perhaps

the secret of healthy control lies in knowing the

difference.

bad situation by changing their own aspirations
or desires: If you have a problem, you live with it
or act in spite of it (Cheng et al., 2012; Rothbaum,
Weisz, & Snyder, 1982).
A Japanese psychologist once offered some
examples of Japanese proverbs that teach the
benefits of yielding to the inevitable (Azuma,
1984): To lose is to win (giving in, to protect the
harmony of a relationship, demonstrates the
superior trait of generosity); willow trees do not
get broken by piled-up snow (no matter how many
problems pile up in your life, flexibility will help
you survive them); and the true tolerance is to
tolerate the intolerable (some “intolerable” situa­
tions are facts of life that no amount of protest
will change). You can imagine how long “To
lose is to win” would survive on an American
football field, or how long most Americans
would be prepared to tolerate the intolerable!
Yet an important part of coping, for any of us, is
learning to accept limited resources, irrevocable
losses, and circumstances over which we have
little or no direct influence—all aspects of sec­
ondary control.

Recite & Review

Recite: Reduce your stress before the next exam by saying out loud what you know about the

general adaptation syndrome, the HPA axis and its role in stress, psychoneuroimmunology and the

immune system, and the effects of optimism, conscientiousness, and locus of control.

Review: Next, be conscientious and read this section again.

Now Take this Quick Quiz:

1. Steve is unexpectedly called on in class to discuss a question. He hasn’t the faintest idea of
   the answer, and he feels his heart pound and his palms sweat. According to Selye, Steve is in
   the __ phase of his stress response.


2. Anika usually takes credit for doing well on her work assignments and blames her failures on
   lack of effort. Benecia attributes her successes to luck and blames her failures on the fact that
   she is an indecisive Gemini. Anika has an __ locus of control whereas Benecia has an
   __ locus.


3. Adapting to the reality that you have a chronic medical condition is an example of (primary/
   secondary) control; joining a protest to make a local company clean up its hazardous wastes is
   an example of (primary/secondary) control.


4. On television, a self-described health expert explains that “no one gets sick if they don’t want
   to be sick,” because we can all control our bodies. As a critical thinker, how should you assess
   this claim?
   Answers:

Study and Review at MyPsychLab

First, you would want to define your terms: What does “control” mean, 4. secondary; primary3. internal; external2. alarm1.

and what kind of control is the supposed expert referring to? People can control some things, such as how much they exercise

• and whether they smoke, and they can control some aspects of treatment once they become ill, but they cannot control every

thing that happens to them. Second, you would examine the assumption that control is always a good thing; the belief that we

have total control over our lives could lead to depression and unwarranted self-blame when illness strikes.