|
CHALLENGE ACTIVITIES |
| CHALLENGE QUESTIONS |
| After you have mastered the basic concepts from this chapter, you might want to try some of these challenge activities, designed to help you better understand and apply what you have learned to your daily life. |
IDENTIFICATION |
|
1. Outline the causes and consequences of stress. 2. List the important research studies on adjustment and identify the significance of each. |
APPLICATION |
|
3. Test your level of stress using the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Figure 12.1). Compare your rating of the items with the ones provided in the textbook. How important is stress in your life? What are you doing to control the level of stress you are experiencing? 4. Identify sources of frustration in your life and how you cope with them. Think back over the past several weeks and make a list of the situations that produced frustration. For each one, identify the emotion that accompanied the frustration (anger, depression, sadness, anxiety, apprehension, fear) and the method you used to adjust. Is there a pattern to your coping? What is your dominant response to frustration? 5. How often do people use defense mechanisms? Make a chart of the defense mechanisms described (repression, projection, fantasy, regression, rationalization, sublimation, and reaction formation). Keep track of each time you use one of the defense mechanisms over a week's period. What are the circumstances? Who else is involved? What is the outcome (short-term, long-term)? Were you satisfied (did it help)? What alternative might have been more successful? 6. Time management is very important in adjustment. Design a program to improve your use of time, and then implement it. Begin by analyzing your current use of time. Then set goals you want to accomplish during the next year. Prioritize these goals, and decide which behaviors will lead to successful achievement of these goals. Develop a daily "to do" list, and begin to keep track of your daily time management successes. Note the suggestions in Figure 12.3. |
EVALUATION |
|
7. What are the most common causes of stress? Are there individual differences in people? Why? 8. Anxiety, psychophysiological disorders, Type-A behavior, burnout, learned helplessness, and shyness are all potentially serious problems in today's society. Which is the most common and the most serious problem? What can be done to help those with the problems you consider most serious? 9. Why do people have so many problems with adjustment? How many people are really happy? 10. Why is the study of stress and adjustment so important in psychology? |
| Copyright ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the McGraw-Hill Higher Education is one of the many fine businesses of The McGraw-Hill Companies. Please visit our Technical support website at http://mhhe.com/support. |
 |