AP Psychology / Mental and Physical Health
Lesson
Stress, coping, and the body
The same alarm system that helps in a crisis can wear a person down.
Learning goals
- Describe stress as an appraisal of a demand plus the body's response.
- Distinguish problem-focused coping from emotion-focused coping.
Explanation
Stress is not only a feeling. It is an appraisal—'Can I handle this?'—plus a bodily response that mobilizes energy. Short bursts can help performance. Chronic stress, with little recovery, is linked to sleep loss, illness risk, and trouble concentrating.
Coping is what people do next. Problem-focused coping tries to change the situation. Emotion-focused coping tries to change the distress. Both can be useful; denial that blocks a needed action is not. Health psychology also studies habits—sleep, movement, substances—that change how the body handles load.
Key terms
- stress. The process of appraising a demand as threatening or exceeding resources, plus the resulting bodily and psychological response.
- coping. Thoughts and actions used to manage a stressor or the emotions it produces.
Common mistakes
- Treating all stress as harmful.
- Calling any break 'self-care' when it is actually avoiding a solvable problem.
Practice
Original Marlow Works items. Check the answer explanation after you try.
Researchers find that students who sleep more tend to perform better on memory tests. Why can't they conclude from this correlation that more sleep causes better memory?
Original Marlow Works item — not a College Board question.
Take your time—this is practice, not a test.
Answer explanation
A student emails a teacher for an extension and also writes in a journal about feeling overwhelmed. Which coping types are those?
Answer. The email is problem-focused; the journal is emotion-focused.
One action changes the demand; the other manages the feeling.
Related resources
External links with reuse status. Marlow Works is independent and does not copy restricted exam or textbook material.
Official / link only
AP Psychology course page
Official five-unit framework and science practices.
College Board · All rights reserved · accessed 2026-10-01
Open sourceReference only — do not copy
OpenStax Psychology 2e
Useful psychology background, but current publisher terms restrict commercial reuse and AI ingestion.
OpenStax · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 with additional restrictions · accessed 2026-10-01
Link only. Do not republish or ingest this book.
Open source