LSP Health Psychology & Behavioral Medicine 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A clinician notices that a patient with hypertension only takes medication when they feel symptoms, believing pills are only needed when 'blood pressure is high.' Which construct from the Health Belief Model explains this behavior?
- Perceived severity of hypertension
- Perceived barriers to medication
- Inaccurate perceived susceptibility to complications (Correct answer)
- Cues to action triggering treatment-seeking
Correct answer: Inaccurate perceived susceptibility to complications
The patient underestimates ongoing risk because hypertension is asymptomatic most of the time, reflecting a distorted perceived susceptibility that medication is only needed during symptomatic episodes.
Question 2: Which term describes the phenomenon where patients in clinical trials show improvement simply from being monitored and receiving attention, regardless of the treatment?
- Regression to the mean
- The Hawthorne effect (Correct answer)
- Demand characteristics
- Response expectancy
Correct answer: The Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect refers to behavioral or health changes that occur because participants know they are being observed, a key confound in health intervention research.
Question 3: Stage models of behavior change, such as the Transtheoretical Model, have been criticized primarily because:
- They ignore the role of social support in health behavior
- Empirical evidence shows behavior change is often non-linear and stages are not reliably distinct (Correct answer)
- Stage-matched interventions have never been tested in randomized trials
- They were developed exclusively in smoking cessation and don't generalize
Correct answer: Empirical evidence shows behavior change is often non-linear and stages are not reliably distinct
Critics note that stage boundaries are arbitrary, individuals frequently skip stages or cycle non-sequentially, and meta-analyses show stage-matched interventions don't consistently outperform non-matched ones.
Question 4: Somatization disorder involves physical symptoms that cannot be fully explained medically. Which psychological process is most implicated in symptom amplification?
- Selective attention and hypervigilance to bodily sensations (Correct answer)
- Deliberate fabrication of symptoms for secondary gain
- Unconscious conversion of emotional trauma into neurological deficits
- Immune dysregulation causing idiopathic inflammatory pain
Correct answer: Selective attention and hypervigilance to bodily sensations
Attentional bias toward bodily sensations amplifies normal physiological signals into distressing symptoms, a process well-documented in health anxiety and somatic symptom disorder research.
Question 5: Which model explains how social support buffers the effects of stress on health, specifically proposing that support reduces the perceived threat of stressors?
- Direct effects model
- Stress-buffering hypothesis (Correct answer)
- Social comparison theory
- Convoy model of social support
Correct answer: Stress-buffering hypothesis
The stress-buffering hypothesis holds that social support is most beneficial under high-stress conditions by altering cognitive appraisal of the stressor or facilitating coping resources.
Question 6: In behavioral medicine, 'secondary gains' from illness most commonly refer to:
- Biological adaptations that temporarily reduce disease severity
- Positive reinforcers such as attention, avoidance of responsibilities, or disability benefits that can maintain sick role behavior (Correct answer)
- Cognitive benefits of meaning-making from chronic illness experience
- Social network expansion that occurs during illness recovery
Correct answer: Positive reinforcers such as attention, avoidance of responsibilities, or disability benefits that can maintain sick role behavior
Secondary gains are unintended positive consequences of illness (care, avoidance of work, financial compensation) that can inadvertently reinforce symptom maintenance through operant conditioning.
Question 7: Which intervention is best supported by evidence for managing insomnia comorbid with chronic pain?
- Benzodiazepine hypnotics as first-line treatment
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) (Correct answer)
- Sleep restriction combined with melatonin supplementation
- Hypnotherapy focused on pain imagery
Correct answer: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I)
CBT-I is the recommended first-line treatment for insomnia, including in chronic pain populations, demonstrating durable effects on sleep onset, maintenance, and pain interference.
LSP Health Psychology & Behavioral Medicine 4
A clinician notices that a patient with hypertension only takes medication when they feel symptoms, believing pills are only needed when 'blood pressure is high.' Which construct from the Health Belief Model explains this behavior?