Week 2 Behavior & Stress Management
Overview
Sure, we’ve all heard the term “Drama Queen”. But the relationship between personality, behavior, and stress can be quite complex! This week in your readings, we will examine how personality and temperament can influence how we perceive stress and how we respond to stress. In addition, we will consider a concept called “locus of control” and how this can influence our behaviors and the impacts of stress.
Let’s start by reviewing something surprising from last week: your physiological stress response to the daily hassles of traffic jams, email, and worrying about taxes looks the same as your stress response from a huge traumatic incident like a traffic accident, natural disaster, or the loss of a loved one. That is… unless we learn how to cope with our daily hassles using stress reduction techniques such as those in this class.
How the physiological stress response is connected to long-term health is a product of a complicated interplay between each person’s temperament, personality, and locus of control, and our ability to cope, as well as the nature of the stressor itself. If we gain an understanding of ourselves and how we function from a behavioral perspective, we can mitigate negative stress responses and learn how to respond rather than react. It is also important to acknowledge that change is a process, not an event. Understanding and changing our stress responses does not happen overnight. Rather, once we are aware of something that has a negative impact, we can begin to address the stressor slowly over a period of time. Changes that result from a process are likely to be successful.
Outcomes
Upon completion of this learning topic, you will be able to:
· Identify personal preferences regarding locus of control.
· Distinguish between personality and temperament.
· Explain why responding produces better results than reacting when it comes to stress.
Readings and Research
· Chen, Ch. 3, 4, 5
· This week’s online course content
· JAUK article
· Personality and Loneliness
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Explore your own Locus of Control (see Chen content) with this survey. Next consider the screening tool on resilience. Resilience screen. Compare these two screening results. Again these are just for personal screening purposes and not diagnostic.
Write a two-page essay (in APA style) that defines “internal” and “external” locus of control, describes the results of your survey, and describes a time in your life when you used an external locus of control and a time when you used an internal locus of control. Connect those two past experiences with what you now know from your book and other course materials about “locus of control” and building resilience. https://positivepsychology.com/resilience-in-positive-psychology/
Make clear, explicit and direct connections to your textbook and class materials. Cite your sources.
