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A Change of Mood

Summary

 

Most of us regard our moods as being rather like the weather - it is something that colours the whole day, comes from somewhere else and over which we have little control. Not that there isn't a range of folk remedies for dealing with a bad one: "Just snap out of it. Have a good cry. Talk to a friend - a problem shared is a problem halved. Pamper yourself."

The problem is, as the latest American research reveals, all these favourite mood-changing ploys are very ineffective. In new book, Robert Thayer, professor of psychology at California State University, puts forward a new theory about what to do to change them and why. There are a few surprises. For instance, men, contrary to popular opinion, are actually better at dealing with their moods than women. Not only that, but the time-honoured female techniques of pouring it all out to a friend or having a good cry are often a waste of time.

His approach makes it possible to forecast moods and be much more precise about controlling them. For instance, we all have a daily energy rhythm - on average, we start low, build up to a peak around midday, dip down, pick up a bit in the later afternoon and then tail off towards the evening. So, because of the link between energy levels and mood, we can predict that an increase in tension will produce a more gloomy outlook at those times of day when our energy regularly takes a dip. Knowing that, you can take it into account.

References:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/a-change-of-mood-1279418.html 

Definitions of Psychological disorders

1.      Abnormal behavior: behavior that causes people to experience distress and prevents them from functioning in their daily lives.

2.      Medical perspective: the perspective that suggests that when an individual displays symptoms of abnormal behavior, the root cause will be found in a physical examination of the individual, which may reveal a hormonal imbalance, a chemical deficiency or a brain injury.

3.      Psychoanalytic perspective: the perspective that suggests that abnormal behavior stems from childhood conflicts over opposing wishes regarding sex and aggression.

4.      Behavioral perspective: the perspective that looks at the behavior itself as the problem.

5.      Cognitive perspective: the perspective that suggests that people’s thoughts and beliefs are a central component of abnormal behavior.

6.      Humanistic perspective: the perspective that emphasizes the responsibility people have for their own behavior, even when such behavior is abnormal.

7.      Sociocultural perspective: the perspective that assumes that people’s behavior-both normal and abnormal-is shaped by the kind of family group, society and culture in which they live.

8.      DSM-IV-TR: a system, devised by American Psychiatric Association, used by most professionals to diagnose and classify abnormal behavior.

9.      Anxiety disorder: the occurrence of anxiety an obvious external cause, affecting daily functioning.

10.  Phobias: intense, irrational fears of specific objects or situations.

11.  Panic disorder: anxiety disorder that takes the form of panic attacks lasting from a few seconds to as long as several hours.

12.  Generalized anxiety disorder: the experience of long-term, persistent anxiety and worry.

13.  Obsessive-compulsive disorder: a disorder characterized by obsessions or compulsions.

14.  Obsession: a persistent, unwanted thought or idea that keeps recurring.

15.  Compulsion: an irresistible urge to repeatedly carry out some act that seems strange and unreasonable.

16.  Somatoform disorders: psychological difficulties that take on a physical form, but for which there is no medical cause.

17.  Hypochondriasis: a disorder in which people have a constant fear of illness and a preoccupation with their health.

18.  Conversion disorder: a  major somatoform disorder that involves an actual physical disturbance, such as the inability to use a sensory organ or the complete, or partial inability to move an arm or leg.

19.  Dissociative disorders: psychological dysfunctions characterized by the separation of different facets of a person’s personality that are normally integrated.

20.  DID: a disorder in which a person displays characteristics of two or more distinct personalities.

21.  Dissociative amnesia: a disorder in which a significant, selective memory loss occurs.

22.  Dissociative fugue: a form of amnesia in which the individual leaves home and sometimes assumes a new identity.

23.  Mood disorder: a disturbance in emotional experience that is strong enough to intrude on everyday living.

24.  Major depression: a severe form of depression that interferes with concentration, decision making and sociability.

25.  Mania: an extended state of intense, wild elation.

26.  Bipolar disorder: a disorder in which a person alternates between periods of euphoric feelings of mania and periods of depression.

27.  Schizophrenia: a class of disorders in which severe distortion of reality occurs.

28.  Personality disorder: a disorder characterized by a set of inflexible, maladaptive behavior patterns that keep a person from functioning appropriately in society.

29.  Antisocial personality disorder: a disorder in which individuals show no regard for the moral and ethical rules of society or rights of others.

30.  Borderline personality disorder: a disorder in which individuals have difficulty developing a secure sense of who they are.

31.  Narcissistic personality disorder: a personality disturbance characterized by an exaggerated sense of self-importance.

32.  Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): a disorder marked by inattention, impulsiveness, a low tolerance for frustration, and a great deal of inappropriate activity.

33.  Autism: a severe developmental disability that impairs children’s ability to communicate and relate to others.

Definitions of Health Psychology: Stress, Coping, and Well-Being

1.      Health psychology investigates the psychological factors related to wellness and illness, including the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of medical problems.

2.      Stress is people's response to events that threaten or challenge them, whereas stressors

are circumstances or events that produce threats to our well-being.

3.      Cataclysmic events are strong stressors that occur suddenly and typically affect many people simultaneously. Personal stressors include major life events such as the death of a parent or spouse, the loss of one's job, a major personal failure, or even something positive such as getting married. Finally, background stressors a.k.a. daily hassles are the minor irritations in life that we all face time and time again. 4.      Uplifts are the minor positive events that make us feel good—even if only temporarily. 5.      Selye's GAS theory suggests that a person's to a stressor consists of three stages: alarm and mobilization, resistance and exhaustion.

6.      In emotion-focused coping people try to manage their emotions in the face of the stress, seeking to change the way they feel about or perceive a problem.

7.      Defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by concealing the source from themselves and others.

8.      The number of daily hasless (a form of background stressor) that people face is associated with psychological symptoms and health problems such as flu, sore throat, and backaches.

9.      People of all ages report more physical symptoms and depression when they perceive that they have little or no control (a condition known as learned, helplessness) than when they feel a sense of control over a situation.

10.  Hardiness consists of three components: commintment, challenge, control.

11.  Type A people put in longer hours at work than Type B people, and are impatient with other people's performance, which they typically perceive as too slow.

12.  Type D behavior is linked to coronary heart disease caused by insecurity, anxiety, and negative outlook which put individuals at risk for repeated heart attacks.

13.  Although the processes involved in the spread of cancer are basically physiological in nature, accumulating evidence suggests that the emotional responses of cancer patients to their disease may have a critical effect on its course.

14.  In the case of cancer, it is possible that positive emotional responses may help generate specialized "killer" cells that help to control the size and spread of cancerous tumors. Conversely, negative emotions may suppress the ability of the same kinds of cells to fight tumors.

15.  Smoking is the greatest preventable cause of death in the United States; one in five U.S. deaths is caused by it.

16.  Patients may practise creative nonadherence in which they adjust a treatment prescribed by a physician, relying on their own medical judgment and experience.

17.  Reactance is a disagreeable and cognitive reaction that results from the restriction of one's freedom and that can be associated with medical regimens.

18.  Cultural values and expectations also contribute to communication barriers between patients and their physicians.

19.  Positively framed messages suggest that a change in behavior will lead to a gain, emphasizing the benefits of carrying out a health-related behavior.

20.  Negatively framed messages (bad things can happen if you do not …) are best for motivating preventive behavior.

21.  Subjective well-being is people's evaluations of their lives in terms of both their thoughts and their emotions, that is, the measure of how happy people are.

22.  An explanation for why the level of subjective well-being is so stable is that people have a general set point for happiness, a marker that establishes the tone for one's life.

Definitions of Personality

1.      Personality: the pattern of enduring characteristics that produce consistency and individuality in a given person.

2.      Psychodynamic approaches to personality: approaches that assume that personality is motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness and over which they have no control.

3.      Psychoanalytic theory: Freud‘s theory that unconscious forces act as determinants of personality.

4.      Unconscious: a part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives and instincts of which the individual is not aware.

5.      Id: the  raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality whose sole purpose is to reduce tension created by primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression and irrational impulses.

6.      Ego: the part of the personality that provides a buffer between the id and the outside world.

7.      Superego: according to Freud, the final personality structure to develop. It represents the rights and wrongs of society as handed down by a person’s parents, teachers and other important figures.

8.      Psychosexual stages: developmental periods that children pass through during which they encounter conflicts between demands of society and their own sexual urges.

9.      Fixations: conflicts or concerns that persist beyond the developmental period in which they first occur.

10.  Oral stage: according to Freud, a stage from birth to age 12 to 18 months, in which an infant’s center of pleasure is the mouth.

11.  Anal stage: according to Freud, a stage from 12-18 months to 3 years of age, in which a child’s pleasure is centered on the anus.

12.  Phallic stage: according to Freud, a period beginning around age 3 during which a child’s pleasure focuses on the genitals.

13.  Oedipal conflict: a child’s sexual interest in his or her opposite-sex parent, typically resolved through identification with the same-sex parent.

14.  Identification: the process of wanting to be like another person as much as possible, imitating that person’s behavior and adopting similar beliefs and values.

15.  Latency period: according to Freud, the period between the phallic stage and puberty during which children’s sexual concerns are temporarily put aside.

16.  Genital stage: according to Freud, the period from puberty until death, marked by mature sexual behavior.

17.  Defense mechanisms: in Freudian theory, unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by concealing the source of the anxiety from themselves and others.

18.  Repression: the primary defense mechanism in which unacceptable or unpleasant id impulses are pushed back into the unconscious.

19.  Neo-Freudian psychoanalysis: psychoanalysis who were trained in traditional Freudian theory, but who later rejected some of  its major points.

20.  Collective unconscious: according to Jung, a common set of ideas, feelings, images and symbols that we inherit from our ancestors, the whole human race, and even animal ancestors from distant past.

21.  Archetypes: according to Jung, universal symbolic representations of a particular person, object or experience.

22.  Inferiority complex: according to Adler, a problem affecting adults who haven’t been able to overcome the feelings of inferiority that they developed as children, when they were small and limited in their knowledge about the world.

23.  Trait theory: a model of personality that seeks to identity the basic traits necessary to describe personality.

24.  Traits: consistent personality characteristics and behaviours displayed in different situations.

25.  Social cognitive approaches to personality: theories that emphasize the influence of a person’s cognitions-thoughts, feelings, expectations, and values-as well as observation of others’ behavior, in determining personality.

26.  Self-efficacy: belief in one’s personal capabilities. Self-efficacy underlies people’s faith in their ability to carry out particular a behavior or produce a desired outcome.

27.  Self-esteem: the component of personality that encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluations.

28.  Biological and evolutionary approaches to personality: theories that suggest that important components of personality are inherited.

29.  Temperament: the innate disposition that emerges early in life.

30.  Humanistic approaches to personality: theories that emphasize people’s innate goodness and desire to achieve higher levels of functioning.

31.  Self-actualization: a state of self-fulfillment in which people realize their highest potential, each in his or her unique way.

32.  Unconditional positive regard: an attitude of acceptance and respect on the part of an observer, no matter what a person says or does.

33.  Psychological tests: standard measures devised to asses behavior objectively. Used by psychologists to help people make decisions about their lives and understand more about themselves.

34.  Self-report measures: a method of gathering data about people by asking them questions about sample of their behavior.

35.  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2): a widely used self-report test that identifies people with psychological difficulties and is employed to predict some everyday behaviors.

36.  Test standardization: a technique used to validate questions in personality test by studying the responses of people with known diagnoses.

37.  Projective personality test: a test in which a person is shown an ambiguous stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story about it.

38.  Rorschach test: a test that involves showing a series of symmetrical visual stimuli to people who then are asked what the figures represent to them.

39.  Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): a test consisting of a series of pictures about which a person is asked to write a story.

40.  Behavioral assessment: direct measures of an individual’s behavior used to describe personality characteristics.

Definitions of Development

 1.      Developmental psychology: the branch of psychology that studies the patterns of growth and change that occur throughout life.

2.      Nature–nurture issue: the issue of the degree to which environment and heredity behaviour.

3.      Identical twins: twins who are genetically identical.

4.      Cross-sectional research: a research method that compares people of different ages at the same point at time.

5.      Longitudinal research: a research method that investigates behaviour as participant age.

6.      Sequential research: a research method that combines cross-sectional and longitudinal research by considering a number of different age groups and examining them at several points in time.

7.      Chromosomes: rod-shaped structures that contain all basic heredity information.

8.      Genes: the parts of the chromosomes through which genetic information is transmitted.

9.      Zygote: the new cell formed by the union of an egg and sperm.

10.  Embryo: a developed zygote that has a heart, a brain and other organs.

11.  Fetus: a developing individual, from 8 weeks after conception until birth.

12.  Age of viability: the point at which a fetus can survive if born prematurely.

13.  Teratogens: environmental agents such as a drug, chemical, virus or other factor that produce a birth defect.

14.  Neonate: a newborn child.

15.  Reflexes: unlearned, involuntary responses that occur automatically in the presence of certain stimuli.

16.  Habituation: the decrease in the response to a stimulus that occurs after repeated presentations of the same stimulus.

17.  Attachment: the positive emotional bond that develops between a child and a particular individual.

18.  Authoritarian parents: parents who are rigid and punitive and value unquestioning obedience from their children.

19.  Permissive parents: parents who give their children relaxed or inconsistent direction and, although they are warm, require little of them.

20.  Authoritative parents: parents who are firm, set clear limits, reason with their children and explain things to them.

21.  Uninvolved parents: parents who show little interest in their children and are emotionally detached.

22.  Temperament: basic, innate disposition.

23.  Psychological development: development of individual‘s interactions and understanding of each other, and understanding of themselves as members of society.

24.  Trust-versus-mistrust stage: according to Erikson, the first stage of psyhological development, occurring from birth to age 1,5 years, during which time infants develop feelings of trust or lack of trust.

25.  Autonomy-versus-shame-and doubt stage: the period during which, according to Erikson, toddlers develop independence and autonomy if exploration and freedom are encouraged, or shame and self-doubt if they are restricted and overprotected.

26.  Initiative-versus-guilt stage: according to Erikson, the period during which children ages 3 to 6 years experience conflict between independence of action and the sometimes negative results of that action.

27.  Industry-versus inferiority stage: according to Erikson, the last stage of childhood, during which children age 6 to 12 years may develop positive social interactions with others or may feel inadequate and becomes less sociable.

28.  Cognitive development: the process by which a child‘s understanding of the world changes as a function of age and experience.

29.  Sensorimotor stage: according to Piaget, the stage from birth to 2 years, during which a child has little competence in representing the environment by using images, language or other symbols.

30.  Object permanence: the awareness that objects and people continue to exist even if they are out of sight.

31.  Preoperational stage: according to Piaget, the period from 2 to 7 years of age that is characterized by language development.

32.  Egocentric thought: a way of thinking in which a child views the world entirely from his or her own perspective.

33.  Principle of conversation: the knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects.

34.  Concrete operational stage: according to Piaget, the period from 7 to 12 years of age that is characterized by logical thought and a loss of egocentrism.

35.  Formal operational stage: according to Piaget, the period from 12 to adulthood that is characterized by abstract thought.

36.  Information processing: the way in which people take in, use and store information.

37.  Metacognition: an awareness and understanding of one‘s own cognitive processes.

38.  Zone of proximal development (ZPD): according to Vygotsky, the level at which a child can almost, but not fully, comprehend or perform a task on his or her own.

39.  Adolescence: the developmental stage between childhood and adulthood.

40.  Puberty: the period at which maturation of the sexual organs occurs, beginning at about age 11-12 for girls and 13-14 for boys.

41.  Identity-versus-role-confusion stage: according to Erikson, a time in adolescence of major testing to determine one‘s unique qualities.

42.  Identity: the distinguishing character of the individual: who each of us is, what our roles are, and what we are capable of.

43.  Intimacy-versus-isolation stage: according to Erikson, a period during early adulthood that focuses on developing close relationships.

44.  Generativity-versus-stagnation stage: according to Erikson, a period in middle adulthood during which we take stock of our contributions to family and society.

45.  Ego-integrity-versus-despair stage: according to Erikson, a period from late a adulthood until death during which we review life‘s accomplishments and failures.

46.  Menopause: the period during which women stop menstruating and are no longer fertile.

47.  Genetic preprogramming theories of aging: theories that suggest that human cells have a built-in time limit to their reproduction, and that after a certain time they are no longer able to divide.

48.  Wear and tear theories of aging: theories that suggest that the mechanical functions of the body simply stop working efficiently.

49.  Alzheimer’s disease: a progressive brain disorder that leads to a gradual and irreversible decline cognitive abilities.

50.  Disengagement theory of aging: a theory that suggests that aging produces a gradual withdrawal from the world on physical, psychological and social levels.

51.  Activity theory of aging: a theory that suggests that the elderly who are most successful while aging are those who maintain the interests and activities they had during middle age.

52.  Life review: the process by which people examine and evaluate their lives.

Definitions of Motivation and Emotion

1.      Motivation: the factors that direct and energize the behaviour of humans and other organisms.  

2.      Instincts: inborn patterns of behaviour that are biologically determined rather than learned. 

3.      Drive-reduction approaches to motivation:  theories suggesting that a lack of a basic biological requirement such as water produces a drive to obtain the requirement.

4.      Drive: motivational tension or arousal that energizes behaviour to fulfill a need.

5.      Homeostasis: the body’s tendency to maintain a steady internal state. 

6.      Arousal approaches to motivation: the belief that we try to maintain certain levels of stimulation and activity, increasing or reducing them as necessary. 

7.      Self-actualization: a state of self-fulfilment in which people realize their highest potential, each in his or her own unique way. 

8.      Obesity: body weight that is more than 20 percent above the average weight for a person of a particular weight.

9.      Weight set point: the particular level of weight that the body strives to maintain. 

10.  Metabolism: the rate at which food is converted to energy and expended by the body.

11.  Anorexia nervosa: a severe eating disorder in which people may refuse to eat while denying that their behaviour and appearance – who can become skeleton-like – are unusual.

12.  Bulimia: a disorder in which a person binges on large quantities of food, followed by efforts to purge the food through vomiting or other means. 

13.  Need for achievement: a stable, learned characteristic in which a person obtains satisfaction by striving for and attaining a level of excellence.  

14.  Need for affiliation: an interest in establishing and maintaining relationships with other people. 

15.  Need for power: a tendency to seek impact, control or influence over others, and to be seen as a powerful individual. 

16.  Emotions: feelings that generally have both physiological and cognitive element and that influence behaviour. 

17.  James-Lange theory of emotion: the belief that emotional experience is a reaction to bodily events occurring as a result of an external situation.

18.  Canon-Bard theory of emotion: the belief that both physiological arousal and emotional experience are produced simultaneously by the same nerve stimulus. 

19.  Schachter-Singer theory of emotion: the belief that emotions are determined jointly by a nonspecific kind of physiological arousal and its interpretation, based on environmental cues. 

20.  Facial-affect program: activation of a set of nerve impulses that make the face display the appropriate expression.

21.  Facial-feedback hypothesis: the hypothesis that facial expressions not only reflect emotional experience, but also help determine how people experienced and label emotions.