The following are a list of practice exam questions for IB Psychology’s Health Option in Paper Two. This list contains past exam questions and some written with our best guess as to what the probable exam questions may look like. You could watch this as a video here. READ MORE IB Psychology Exam Question Banks Paper 1: Biological approach (Link) …
Key Study: Cognitive appraisals and the stress response (Lazarus, 1963)
The most influential cognitive explanation of stress is based on “cognitive appraisals” – how we assess the relevance and potential harm of a stressor. The following study is one of many that supports this explanation. Stress is a complex phenomenon that involves biological, psychological and environmental factors. Richard Lazarus was a pre-eminent psychologist in the field of stress research. Along …
IB Health Psychology | HOME PAGE
The following is a work in progress. Health Problems: Stress The following information focuses on the “health problem” of stress. Explanations of health problem(s) Biological explanations for stress COMT gene and the Warrior/Worrier Hypothesis (Blog / Video One/Two) Key study: Key study: The Hippocampus and Stress (Blog) The PFC and Stress (Blog) Cognitive explanations for stress Appraisals (Blog / Video) …
Stress and the Hippocampus
The following is adapted from our eBook for Health Psychology: “Stress and how to cope: A Health Psychology guide for IB Students” (Available here). Not all of this content could make the final cut. So read on if you’re interested in how your hippocampus could be causing you stress. IB Psych Health: This content is relevant for biological explanations of health problems …
Generalizability in Animal Studies: Cognition and Culture
Generalizability is the extent to which we can confidently predict the results of a study would apply to a different context, including different people, places, and procedures. When considering the extent to which we can generalize findings from animal studies, we are considering how confidently we could predict the same finding in humans. For example, animal studies like Sapolsky’s research …
Key Study: Social status and stress in Olive Baboons (Sapolsky, 1990)
An interesting finding in the field of stress and health psychology is that people with higher social status are generally in better health: they have lower rates of heart disease, are less obese and live longer. Why? One reason could be because they are less stressed. A lot of our knowledge about stress and health comes from animal studies, particularly those …
10 ways to stress a monkeyFindings from studies on primate stress and social rank
Why would you want to stress a monkey? Hopefully you don’t. But learning about stressed monkeys can help us explain stress problems in humans. Decades of animal research has shown that social status is connected with stress. Typically speaking, monkeys with a higher rank in their group are less stressed and have lower levels of stress hormones like cortisol. Low-ranking …
What Rebecca Black’s story can teach us about resilience
If you’re an old fogey like me the name Rebecca Black probably won’t mean much. And to be honest, to kids in high school today in 2020 it might not mean much either. But she was the most googled person in 2011 and she can teach all of us a lot about an important psychological concept – resilience. In 2011, …
Health Project Week 4Week 4 - Interviews
Week 4 is time to reflect and try something a little different. We’re going to conduct qualitative interviews on our classmates to learn about their experiences in this project. There are a few reasons I’ve chosen this activity. One reason is to have students keep in touch with other, another is that it can be done without screens (if you …
Health Project Week 3Week 3 - Analysis and Report
After two weeks of collecting data on health habits and their effects, it’s now time to write up the report. Read more: Health Project Week 4 Health Project Week 3 Health Project Week 2 Health Project Week 1 Health Self-Experimentation Project Intro The Importance of Routine Teachers: Feel free to adapt or amend any of this work in any way …