Author Question: Explain how self-focus may exacerbate the negative effects of stress, and how this may be avoided. ... (Read 70 times)

CharlieWard · **on:** Jun 22, 2018

Explain how self-focus may exacerbate the negative effects of stress, and how this may be avoided.

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Discuss how attributions may be related to health.

What will be an ideal response?

cdmart10 · **Reply #1 on:** Jun 22, 2018

Answer to Question 1

The self-focus model of depression suggests that people often become depressed
because they ruminate about how their behavior fails to measure up to their standards.
In a self-perpetuating feedback loop, this depressive mood and negative self-evaluation
is heightened by the self-focus that a stressful event brings. This leads to an increase in
depressive mood and negative self-evaluation, which then leads to the further
heightening of self-focus, and so on. A healthy alternative is to become engaged in
activities that remove attention from the self.

Answer to Question 2

Learned helplessness results from the tendency to make global, stable, internal
attributions for the negative events in one's life. This attribution pattern characterizes
the depressive explanatory style, and is associated with depression and decreased
physical health. For example, one study showed that people with depressive
explanatory styles exhibited a weaker immune response, though admittedly these data
are only correlation. In contrast, individuals who make specific, unstable, and external
attributions for negative life events tend to be healthier and recover from surgery more
quickly.