AP Psychology — stress, coping and positive psychology

Unit 5 of AP Psychology opens with two topics that are easy to underestimate because they sound like common sense: health psychology and positive psychology. On the exam they are anything but. The multiple-choice questions describe a person under pressure and ask you to name precisely what is happening, and the wrong options are always real neighboring terms: the resistance stage instead of exhaustion, emotion-focused coping instead of problem-focused coping, resilience instead of posttraumatic growth.

This material trains those distinctions. It covers how stress is linked to physical problems such as hypertension, headaches and weakened immune defenses; the difference between eustress, which motivates, and distress, which wears a person down; daily hassles that accumulate compared with a single traumatic stressor; and adverse childhood experiences as a source of stress that can affect health across the lifespan. It works through the general adaptation syndrome stage by stage, from the alarm reaction through resistance to exhaustion, where susceptibility to illness is greatest, and sets the tend-and-befriend response beside fight-or-flight. It separates problem-focused coping, which works on the stressor itself, from emotion-focused coping, which manages the reaction to it.

The positive psychology half covers what the field studies (well-being, resilience, positive emotions), gratitude as a positive subjective experience, signature strengths and the six virtue categories of wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence, and posttraumatic growth.

Every person and study in the material is invented and described in full inside the question, so each item can be answered from what is on the screen. Explanations say why the right answer fits and why each tempting alternative does not.

Four formats are offered. The quiz gives twelve scenario-based multiple-choice questions. The flashcards drill the vocabulary in precise definitions. The oral exam puts you in front of an examiner who asks one question at a time, asks you to classify invented cases and to explain a stage or a coping strategy in your own words, and ends with brief feedback. The written work is a printable sheet of eight open questions, from explaining the three stages of the general adaptation syndrome to designing a simple study of a gratitude exercise, answered by hand and checked question by question.

The material follows the published AP Psychology course framework. It is a study aid, not a description of anyone's health, and it gives no personal medical advice.

• Explain how prolonged stress is linked to hypertension, headaches and immune suppression
• Distinguish eustress from distress and daily hassles from traumatic stressors
• Identify the alarm, resistance and exhaustion stages of the general adaptation syndrome in a scenario
• Tell problem-focused coping from emotion-focused coping and recognize the tend-and-befriend response
• Describe the aims of positive psychology, the six virtue categories and posttraumatic growth

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the College Board AP Psychology Course and Exam Description (effective fall 2024, with the October 2025 clarifications), Unit 5, topics 5.1 Introduction to Health Psychology and 5.2 Positive Psychology. All cases and studies are invented.