Deck 17: Stress and Disease Prevention

Question 1

Why is it not possible to show causal links between stress and illness on the basis of retrospective studies investigating whether people who have recently been ill have experienced stressful life events in the months preceding the illness?

A) After experiencing serious illness people may have a tendency to forget preceding stressful events.
B) It is difficult to be sure whether any particular life event was a stressor causing the illness.
C) Individuals differ in how stressful they find any particular life event.
D) People who have been ill are predisposed to remember recent stressful events to a greater extent than people who have not been ill.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which of the following physiological features are thought to react to stress in ways which may contribute to the development of illness?

A) The left parietal-temporal lobe
B) The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system
C) The parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system
D) The gastro-enteric system

Answer 2

B

Question 3

According to current estimates what proportion of individuals exposed to traumatic stress will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

A) 10-30%
B) 30-50%
C) 50-70%
D) 70-90%

Answer 3

A

Question 4

What is the main criticism of the scales which have been developed to assess individual differences in coping strategies?

A) They have poor test-retest reliability.
B) They have inadequate psychometric properties.
C) They lack a sound basis in stress theory.
D) They do not take account of the fact that people use different strategies to cope with different types of stress.

Question 5

From which traditional source did Jon Kabat-Zinn develop mindfulness-based stress reduction?

A) The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola
B) The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
C) The Theravada school of Buddhist meditation
D) The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu

Question 6

Which of the following Big Five personality traits is believed to be associated with resistance to the effects of stress?

A) Openness
B) Conscientiousness
C) Extraversion
D) Agreeableness

Question 7

In recent meta-analyses what is the increased likelihood of a heart attack for individuals reporting high job strain in comparison with those reporting no job strain?

A) 0-10%
B) 10-20%
C) 20-30%
D) 30-40%

Question 8

What are the conclusions of recent Danish research on the association between self-reported stress and the subsequent development of breast cancer?

A) There is no relationship.
B) Increased stress is associated with a small but significant increase in the proportion of diagnosed cases.
C) Increased stress is associated with a large and highly significant increase in the proportion of diagnosed cases.
D) Increased stress is associated with a small but significant decrease in the proportion of diagnosed cases.

Question 9

What is the term employed for studies investigating the effects of stress, the immune system and illness, in which volunteers are experimentally exposed to mild viruses?

A) Controlled virus exposure studies
B) Viral challenge studies
C) Experimental infectious disease investigations
D) Rhinovirus infection studies

Question 10

For which of the following potentially fatal diseases is the evidence most convincing for the role of long term stress as a predisposing factor?

A) Coronary heart disease
B) HIV/AIDS
C) Cancer
D) Motor neuron disease