Important Questions & Answers: Meeting Life Challenges- 1 | Psychology Class 12 - Humanities/Arts PDF Download

Very Short Answer Questions

Q.1. Discuss avoidance-oriented strategy of coping.

Avoidance-oriented strategy involves denying or minimizing the seriousness of the situation. It involves conscious suppression of stressful thoughts and their replacement by self-protective thoughts. Examples of this are watching TV, phone up a friend or try to be with other people.

Q.2. Explains the term ‘well-being’?

Well-being means to have positive health. Health is a state of complete physical, mental,social and spiritual well-being, and not merely the absence of disease.

Q.3. Explain the term ‘frustration’.

Frustration results from blocking of needs and motives while achieving a desired goal.Causes of frustration are social discrimination, interpersonal hurt or low grades in school.

Q.4. What is stress?

Stress is described as the pattern of responses an organism makes to stimulus event that disturbs the equilibrium and exceeds a person’s ability to cope. Stressors like noise, crowding, a bad relationship, daily commuting to school or office are events that cause our body to give the stress response.

Q.5. Explain biofeedback.

Biofeedback is a type of Stress Management Technique which involves three stages: developing an awareness of the particular physiological response, e.g. heart rate,learning ways of controlling that physiological response in quiet conditions; and transferring that control into the conditions of everyday life.

Q.6. Explain the term ‘conflict’.

Conflicts occur between two or more incompatible needs or motives, e.g. whether to learn dance or study psychology.

Q.7. Explain the functioning of the Immune system.

The white blood cells (leucocytes) within the immune system identify and destroy foreign bodies (antigens) such as viruses. It also leads to the production of antibodies. There are several kinds of white blood cells or leucocytes within the immune system, including T cells, B cells and natural killer cells. T cells destroy invaders, and T-helper cells increase immunological activity. It is these T-helper cells that are attacked by the Human Immuno Deficiency Virus (HIV), the virus causing Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). B cells produce antibodies. Natural killer cells are involved in the fight against both viruses and tumours.

Q.8. Explain briefly four factors which facilitate developments of positive health.
OR
What is positive health? Describe stress buffers that facilitate positive health.

Positive health includes good physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being. This includes a healthy body free from disease, effective personal relationships, a sense of purpose in life, self-regard, and resilience to stress. This requires maintain of the following:
(i) Diet: A balanced diet can lift one’s mood, give more energy, feed muscles, improve circulation, prevent illness, strengthen the immune system and make one feel better to cope with stresses of life. The key to healthy living is to eat three main meals a day,and eat a varied well-balanced diet.
(ii) Exercise: Regular exercise manages stress, reduces tension, anxiety and depression.It helps the individual to maintain good physical and mental health. Exercise requires changing one’s life-style. These produce a calming effect and may include yoga, aerobic exercises, jogging, swimming and cycling.
(iii) Positive Attitude: Some of the factors leading to a positive attitude are: having a fairly accurate perception of reality; a sense of purpose in life and responsibility; acceptance and tolerance for different viewpoints of others; and taking credit for success and accepting blame for failure. Finally, being open to new ideas and having a sense of humour with the ability to laugh at oneself help us to see things in a proper perspective.
(iv) Positive Thinking: This involves being an optimist and avoid having a pessimistic outlook towards life. Optimists use problem-focused strategies, seek help and advice from others.
(v) Social Support: Availing social support leads to less medical and psychological complications such as observed in pregnant women who by getting social support and protection against stress cope life more successfully. The types of social support are tangible support, information support and emotional support.
Tangible support involves assisting one with money, goods and services such as providing notes to a friend who has been absent.Information support is providing one with certain resources such as a student who has appeared in a board exam helps his friend in telling him how the board exams are conducted.
Emotional support helps to overcome anxiety, loss of self-esteem by the ones who love and care for you. Social support reduces psychological distress, depression or anxiety during times of stress. It helps in providing psychological well-being.

Q.9. Explain the strategies to cope with stress. Give examples from daily life.

The three coping strategies given by Endler and Parker are:
(i) Task-oriented Strategy: This involves using alternate courses of action for coping.For example, scheduling your time better or using better methods to solve problems.
(ii) Emotion-oriented Strategy: This involves venting feelings of anger and frustration or deciding that nothing can be done to change things. For example, to stop worrying.
(iii) Avoidance-oriented strategy: This involves denying or minimizing the seriousness of the situation. It involves conscious suppression of stressful thoughts and their replacement by self-protective thoughts. Examples of this are watching TV, phone up a friend or try to be with other people.

According to Lazarus and Folkman the coping responses are of two types:
(a) Problem-focused Strategies: These strategies attack the problem itself with behaviours designed to gain information, to alter the event and to alter belief and commitments. E.g., to make a plan of action.
(b) Emotion-focused Strategies: These call for psychological changes designed primarily to limit the degree of emotional disruption caused by an event, with minimal effort to alter the event itself. E.g., to do things to let it out of your system.

Q.10. What are the effects of stress on the psychological functioning of an individual?

 The effects of stress are described as follows:
(i) Emotional Effects: Those suffering from stress experience mood swings, show decreasing confidence, suffer from feelings of anxiety, depression or increased physical and psychological tension.
(ii) Physiological Effects: Under stress there is an increased production of hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones produce marked changes in heart rate, blood pressure levels, metabolism and physical activity. Changes such as release of epinephrine or nor-epinephrine, slowing down of the digestive system,expansion of air passages in the lungs and constriction of blood vessels also occur.
(iii) Cognitive Effects: Cognitive effects of stress are poor concentration and reduced short-term memory capacity.
(iv) Behavioural Effects: These include disrupted sleep patterns, increased absenteeism and reduced work performance.

Q.11. Describe the life skills which help in meeting the challenges of school life.
OR
How life skills enable individuals to deal effectively with stressful experiences of life?

Life skills are the abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. They are described below:
(i) Assertiveness: Assertiveness is a behaviour or skill that helps to communicate our feelings, needs, wants and thoughts, clearly and confidently. It is the ability to say no to a request, to state an opinion without being self-conscious, or to express emotions such as love, anger openly. An assertive person feels confident, has high self-esteem and a solid sense of his identity.
(ii) Time Management: Managing time helps to relieve pressure, organizing our life and thus leading a balanced life. Learning to plan and delegate responsibilities helps to relieve pressure. It requires one to be realistic, deciding on the task to be done and organizing your life.
(iii) Rational Thinking: This involves challenging your distorted thinking and irrational beliefs, driving out potentially intrusive negative anxiety-provoking thoughts and making positive statements.
(iv) Improving Relationships: This involves listening to what the other person is saying,expressing how you feel and what you think and accepting the other person’s opinions and feelings even if they are different from your own.
(v) Self-care: This involves keeping ourselves healthy and relaxed which prepares us physically and emotionally to tackle the stresses of everyday life.
(vi) Overcoming Unhelpful Habits: This involves overcoming unhelpful habits such as perfectionism, avoidance or procrastination. Perfectionists are persons who want everything to be just right, find it difficult to relax, are critical of self and others.
Avoidance is to put the issue under the carpet and refuse to accept or face it.Procrastination means putting off what we need to do and to be done at a later hour. It involves deliberately avoiding and confronting fears of failure or rejection.

Q.12. Enumerate the different ways of coping with stress.

The three coping strategies given by Endler and Parker are:
(i) Task-oriented Strategy: This involves using alternate courses of action for coping.
For example, scheduling your time better or using better methods to solve problems.
(ii) Emotion-oriented Strategy: This involves venting feelings of anger and frustration or deciding that nothing can be done to change things. For example, to stop worrying.
(iii) Avoidance-oriented strategy: This involves denying or minimizing the seriousness of the situation. It involves conscious suppression of stressful thoughts and their replacement by self-protective thoughts. Examples of this are watching TV, phone up a friend or try to be with other people.

According to Lazarus and Folkman the coping responses are of two types:
(i) Problem-focused strategies: These strategies attack the problem itself with behaviours designed to gain information, to alter the event and to alter belief and commitments.

For example, to make a plan of action.
(ii) Emotion-focused strategies: These call for psychological changes designed primarily to limit the degree of emotional disruption caused by an event, with minimal effort to alter the event itself. For example, to do things to let it out of your system.

Q.13. Explain the effect of stress on psychological functioning.

The effects of stress are described as follows:
(i) Emotional Effects: Those suffering from stress experience mood swings, show decreasing confidence, suffer from feelings of anxiety, depression or increased physical and psychological tension.
(ii) Physiological Effects: Under stress there is an increased production of hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones produce marked changes in heart rate, blood pressure levels, metabolism and physical activity. Changes such as release of epinephrine or nor-epinephrine, slowing down of the digestive system, expansion of air passages in the lungs and constriction of blood vessels also occur.
(iii) Cognitive Effects: Cognitive effects of stress are poor concentration and reduced short-term memory capacity.
(iv) Behavioural Effects: These include disrupted sleep patterns, increased absenteeism and reduced work performance.

Q.14. Given what you know about coping strategies, what suggestions would you give to your friends to avoid stress in their everyday lives.

Stress can be avoided in everyday lives by using one or the other of the following strategies:
(i) Using alternate courses of action for coping. For example, scheduling your time better or using better methods to solve problems.
(ii) Venting feelings of anger and frustration or deciding that nothing can be done to change things. For example, to stop worrying.
(iii) Denying or minimizing the seriousness of the situation. It involves conscious suppression of stressful thoughts and their replacement by self-protective thoughts.Examples of this are watching TV, phone up a friend or try to be with other people.
(iv) Attacking the problem itself with behaviours designed to gain information, to alter the event and to alter belief and commitments. For example, to make a plan of action.
(v) Limiting the degree of emotional disruption caused by an event, with minimal effort to alter the event itself. For example, to do things to let it out of your system.

Q.15. Reflect on the environmental factors that have

(i) a positive impact on the being,
(a) Perceived support, i.e. the quality of social support is positively related to health and well being. Studies have revealed that women exposed to life event stresses, who have a close friend, were less likely to be depressed and had lesser medical complications during pregnancy. Social support can help to provide protection against stress. People with high levels of social support from family and friends may experience less stress when they confront a stressful experience, and they may cope with it more successfully.
(b) Social support may be in the form of tangible support or assistance involving material aid, such as money, goods, services, etc. For example, a child gives notes to her/his friend, since s/he was absent from school due to sickness. Family and friends also provide informational support about stressful events. For example, a student facing a stressful event such as a difficult board examination, if provided information by a friend who has faced a similar one, would not only be able to identify the exact procedures involved, but also it would facilitate in determining what resources and coping strategies could be useful to successfully pass the examination. During times of stress, one may experience sadness, anxiety, and loss of self-esteem. Supportive friends and family provide emotional support by reassuring the individual that she/ he is loved, valued, and cared for. Research has demonstrated that social support effectively reduces psychological distress such as depression or anxiety, during times of stress. There is growing evidence that social support is positively related to psychological well-being. Generally, social support leads to mental health benefits for both the giver and the receiver.

(ii) a negative effect.
(a) Environmental stresses are aspects of our surroundings that are often unavoidable such as air pollution, crowding, noise, heat of the summer, winter cold, etc. Another group of environmental stresses are catastrophic events or disasters such as fire, earthquake, floods, etc.