Week 14 — Quiz (auto-graded) · Stress, Health & Coping

Course: Introduction to Psychology (PSYC 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Bennett
Objective tested: Objective 8 — stress and the stress response; the mind–body link; coping.
Points: 10 (1 each) · Assignment group: Quizzes (15% of grade) · Due: end of Module 14.

This is the human-readable quiz with its vetted answer key and feedback. The import-ready Classic QTI is in F-quiz-week-14-qti.xml; the reusable item-bank entries and the Canvas placement block are at the bottom of this file.

Blueprint

No trick questions; distractors target the Week 14 misconceptions named in the lecture outline.

Questions, key, and feedback

Q1 (MC). Maria just moved across the country to start college, leaving her family and friends behind. Even though it's an exciting step, the transition is stressful. This stressor is best classified as a —
- A. catastrophe
- B. significant life change ✅
- C. daily hassle
- D. eustress-free event
Feedback: A significant life change is a major personal transition — even a positive one like starting college or moving. A catastrophe is a large, unpredictable event affecting many people (a disaster); a daily hassle is a small, recurring irritation.

Q2 (MC). For two solid weeks during midterms, Jordan has been powering through — long study nights, running on caffeine, coping but clearly burning fuel, with stress hormones staying elevated. Which stage of the General Adaptation Syndrome is this?
- A. Alarm
- B. Resistance ✅
- C. Exhaustion
- D. Appraisal
Feedback: This is the resistance stage — the body settles into a sustained, high-output "powering through" state after the initial alarm. If the stress never lets up, exhaustion (depletion, burnout) follows. (Appraisal is not a GAS stage.)

Q3 (Multiple answer — select all that apply). Which of the following are healthy, evidence-based ways to manage stress?
- A. Regular exercise ✅
- B. Seeking social support from friends or family ✅
- C. Problem-focused planning for a stressor you can control ✅
- D. Chronically avoiding the problem and hoping it goes away
- E. Suppressing all your emotions and never expressing them
Feedback: Exercise, social support, and problem-focused planning (for controllable stressors) are well-supported strategies. Chronic avoidance usually makes a fixable problem worse, and suppressing all emotions over time is linked to poorer health — neither is healthy coping.

Q4 (MC). During the fight-or-flight response, the body mobilizes to act fast. Which pairing correctly describes part of this response?
- A. The parasympathetic nervous system releases insulin to calm the body
- B. The sympathetic nervous system triggers adrenaline, and prolonged stress raises cortisol ✅
- C. The immune system speeds up to fight the stressor directly
- D. Cortisol is released first, in seconds, before any nervous-system activity
Feedback: Fight-or-flight is driven by the sympathetic nervous system, with adrenaline producing the fast surge (racing heart, quick breathing); under prolonged stress the HPA axis raises cortisol, the sustained stress hormone. (The parasympathetic system calms you down afterward; chronic cortisol suppresses — not boosts — immunity.)

Q5 (MC). Looking at an upcoming exam, Dev first asks "Is this a threat to me?" and then asks "Do I have what I need to handle it?" In Lazarus's model, these two judgments are called —
- A. alarm and resistance
- B. eustress and distress
- C. primary and secondary appraisal ✅
- D. fight and flight
Feedback: Primary appraisal asks "is this a threat?" and secondary appraisal asks "can I cope — do I have the resources?" Together they explain why the same event stresses one person and not another. (Alarm/resistance are GAS stages; eustress/distress are kinds of stress.)

Q6 (Matching). Match each term to its correct description.
| Term | Correct description |
|---|---|
| Alarm | The initial fight-or-flight surge when a stressor first hits |
| Resistance | The body's sustained "powering through" state of continued coping |
| Exhaustion | Reserves are depleted after prolonged, unrelenting stress |
| Problem-focused coping | Acting to change or remove the stressor itself |
Feedback: The GAS runs alarm → resistance → exhaustion (exhaustion is last). Problem-focused coping targets the stressor itself (vs. emotion-focused coping, which manages the feelings). Watch the order — exhaustion only comes after a long resistance phase.

Q7 (MC). Sam's flight home was just canceled and nothing can be done about it tonight; he's furious and anxious. He calls a friend to vent, then goes for a run to clear his head. This coping is best described as —
- A. problem-focused coping, because he is solving the cancellation
- B. emotion-focused coping, because he is managing his feelings about a stressor he can't control ✅
- C. the alarm stage of the general adaptation syndrome
- D. a daily hassle
Feedback: Venting to a friend and exercising manage the emotions a stressor causes — emotion-focused coping, the right tool when the stressor (a canceled flight) is outside his control. Problem-focused coping would mean changing the stressor itself, which isn't possible here tonight.

Q8 (True / False). "All stress is harmful and should be eliminated from a healthy life."
- True
- False ✅
Feedback: False. Some stress — eustress — is motivating and adaptive, and the body's stress response is a useful survival system. The real problem is chronic, unmanaged stress with no recovery, not stress itself. The goal is good coping, not zero stress.

Q9 (MC). Which statement about the mind–body link in health psychology is accurate?
- A. Stress is purely psychological and has no measurable effect on the body
- B. Chronic stress can suppress the immune system, and chronic hostility (the Type A risk factor) is linked to heart disease ✅
- C. Type A people are at higher heart-disease risk mainly because they are ambitious and successful
- D. Cortisol strengthens the immune system the longer stress continues
Feedback: Chronic high cortisol suppresses immune function (why a run-down person catches the cold going around), and the cardiac-risk ingredient in the Type A pattern is chronic hostility/anger — not ambition or success itself. Stress has real, measurable effects on the body.

Q10 (MC). Decades of research show that people with strong, supportive relationships tend to be healthier and live longer than those who are socially isolated. This illustrates the stress-buffering value of —
- A. social support ✅
- B. the exhaustion stage
- C. hindsight bias
- D. primary appraisal
Feedback: Social support — the soothing, protective impact of friends, family, and community — is one of the strongest buffers against stress, for both mental and physical health (and it's the heart of the tend-and-befriend response). (Exhaustion is a GAS stage; hindsight bias and appraisal are different concepts.)

Answer key (quick reference)

Quality gate (self-checked): each single-answer item has exactly one correct option; the multiple-answer item (Q3) lists all three healthy strategies (A, B, C) and excludes the two unhealthy ones (D, E); the matching item (Q6) pairs four terms to four distinct descriptions; no item asserts a fact outside the Week 14 course definitions. No computation in this quiz, so no arithmetic to mis-key.

Item-bank entries (for variants + the midterm/final)

All ten items are tagged course=PSYC1 · week=14 · objective=8 · topic=stress-health-coping and deposited in Item Bank: Week 14 — Stress, Health & Coping. The final (Week 16) and the per-term variant updates draw fresh items from this bank. (Tags: q1 stressor-type, q2 gas-resistance, q3 healthy-coping-multi, q4 fight-or-flight-cortisol, q5 appraisal, q6 gas-match, q7 emotion-vs-problem-focused, q8 all-stress-bad-myth, q9 immune-typeA, q10 social-support.)

Canvas placement block

canvas_object   = Quizzes::Quiz
title           = "Week 14 Quiz — Stress, Health & Coping"
assignment_group = "Quizzes"
points_possible = 10
grading_type    = points
due_offset_days = 6        # 6 days after module start
published       = true
shuffle_answers = true
provenance      = "~ Prof. Bennett's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com"