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commonly seen in these studies. These early signs of job stress are usually easy to recognize. The evidence is rapidly accumulating to suggest that stress plays an important role in several types of chronic health problems – especially cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders, and psychological disorders.

Stress is an unavoidable consequence of life. As Hans Selye noted, "Without stress, there would be no life". Stress is not always necessarily harmful. Winning a race or election can be just stressful as losing, but may trigger very different biological responses. Increased stress results in increased productivity – up to a point. We all need to find the proper level of stress that allows us to perform optimally as we go through life.

Text 4. Stress management

It has been found that most illnesses are related to unrelieved stress. If you are experiencing stress symptoms, you have gone beyond your optimal stress level; you need to reduce the stress in your life and/or improve your ability to manage it.

Identifying unrelieved stress and being aware of its effect on our lives is not sufficient for reducing its harmful effects. Just as there are many sources of stress, there are many possibilities for its management. However, all require work toward change: changing the source of stress and/or changing your reaction to it. How do you proceed?

1. Become aware of your stressors and your emotional and physical reactions.

Notice your distress. Determine what events distress you. What are you telling yourself about meaning of these events?

Determine how your body responds to the stress. Do you become nervous or physically upset? If so, in what specific ways?

2. Recognize what you can change.

Can you change your stressors by avoiding or eliminating them completely?

Can you reduce their intensity (manage them over a period of time instead of on a daily or weekly basis)?

Can you shorten your exposure to stress (take a break, leave the premises)?

Can you devote the time and energy necessary to making a change (goal setting, time management techniques, and delayed gratification strategies may be helpful here)?

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3. Reduce the intensity of your emotional reactions to stress.

The stress reaction is triggered by your perception of physical or emotional danger. Do not view your stressors in exaggerated terms and taking a difficult situation and making it a disaster. Do not expect to please everyone.

Work at adopting more moderate views; try to see the stress as something you can cope with rather than something that overpowers you. Try to temper your excess emotions. Put the situation in perspective. Do not think about the negative aspects and the "what if".

4. Learn to moderate your physical reactions to stress.

Slow, deep breathing will bring your heart rate and respiration back to normal.

Relaxation techniques can reduce muscle tension. Electronic biofeedback can help you gain voluntary control over such things as blood pressure.

Medications, when prescribed by a physician, can help in the short term in moderating your physical reactions.

5. Build your physical reserves.

Exercise for cardiovascular fitness three to four times a week (moderate, prolonged rhythmic exercise is best, such as walking, swimming, cycling, or jogging).

Eat well-balanced, nutritious meals. Maintain your ideal weight.

Avoid nicotine, excessive caffeine, and other stimulants.

Mix leisure with work. Take breaks and get away when you can.

Get enough sleep. Be as consistent with your sleep schedule as possible.

6. Maintain your emotional reserves.

Develop some mutually supportive friendships/relationships.

Question to the text:

1.How can job stress be defined?

2.What can job stress lead to?

3.What other concept is usually confused with the concept of job stress?

4.What does challenge do to us?

5.How do we feel when a challenge is met?

6.Where does job stress result from?

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7.What are the primary causes of the job stress?

8.How does the nervous system respond in stressful situations?

9.Why is this response of a nervous system important?

10.What stress bears little risk?

11.What does it happen when stressful situations go unresolved and last for a long time?

12.What kind of stress is related to most illnesses?

13.How can you be aware of your stressors?

14.How can you recognize what you can change in a stressful situation?

15.How can you reduce the intensity of your emotional reactions to stress?

16.How can one maintain one’s emotional reserve?

Tasks:

1.Put down your associations with the word “stress”.

2.Organize the stress factors in your workbook and share your ideas with the partner.

3.Find out some interesting points about the stress at work.

4.Write down a report about the role of stress in chronic health problems.

5.Give some examples of moderating one’s psychic reactions to stress.

6.Give some recommendations that can help people to build physical reserves.

7.Write down an essay about the stress management (180–220 words).

UNIT 4. THE PROCESS OF PERCEPTION

Text 1. Perception

What we sense we interpret, and this psychological process is called perception. By perception we mean the process by which we become aware of and interpret or identify the sensations we receive. There are a lot of factors that influence our perceptions. Inheritance seems to be one factor. Depth perception, for example, is a response that is found in very young children, and also in new-born animals. Learning is another influence. Perception depends on what you are used to, what you expect, and the context of your experience.

Our learning experiences also help us to understand the differences in the sensations we receive. Inheritance and experience are not the only

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factors which affect our understanding of the stimuli from our senses. All the different cues about the stimulus will determine the way we interpret it. The surrounding cues and features of the environment, derivable from all our different senses, collectively, contribute to the total process of perception.

Consider the two lines in the figure below and decide which is longer. The top one with the arrow ends seems to be shorter, but if you measure

them you will find them to be exactly the same in length. This illustrates that the total context of an object we are observing may change our perception of it. The relation between the stimulus-in-the-context and the viewer causes the perception to be incorrect. This sort of phenomenon is sometimes called a visual illusion. The movement of the pictures of the cinema, where the still pictures are successively exposed to the eye to give the effect of movement, is also, in an obvious sense, illusory.

Perception is influenced by the condition or state of the person at the time. We tend to perceive things as we need or want to be rather than as: they are. Standing on the street corner and waiting for someone we know, we find that we may make a number of errors of recognition. We think a person is our friend, and he is a complete stranger. The tendency to interpret things or people in a way that satisfies our motives or needs is typical of the manner in which our mental processes operate in perception. The reverse can also happen. We may not notice someone we are very familiar with, simply because we are not expecting to meet them.

The process of perception is complex and applies to the whole range of sensations. The field of visual perception happens to be the one which has been most frequently investigated and therefore most usefully discussed.

Questions to the text:

1.What does the term “perception” mean?

2.Which factors could influence our perception?

3.What is perception influenced by?

4.Which factors could affect our understanding of the stimuli from our senses?

5.When do we make the errors of recognition?

6.Is there a scientific explanation of a visual illusion?

7.What types of perception do you know?

8.What does the field of perception include?

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Tasks:

1.Make the cluster of perception using the following words and your ideas: depth, color, aware of, influence, inherit, affect, determine, distort, consider, aid, learning, measure.

2.Find out the key words from the text.

3.Write down their collocations.

4.Find the information about types of perception and make a report.

5.Think about the reasons of incorrect perception. Compare your ideas with the group.

6.Speak about the visual illusion.

Text 2. Social pressure and perception

Imagine yourself in the following situation: you sign up for a psychology experiment, and on a specified date you and seven others whom if you think are also subjects arrive and are seated at a table in a small room. You don't know it at the time, but the others are actually associates of the experimenter, and their behaviour has been carefully scripted. You're the only real subject. The experimenter arrives and tells you that the study in which you are about to participate concerns people's visual judgments. She places two cards before you. The card on the left contains one vertical line. The card on the right displays three lines of different length.

The experimenter asks all of you, one at a time, to choose which of 'the three lines on the right card matches the length of the line on the left card. The task is repeated several times with different cards. The other "subjects" unanimously choose the wrong line. It is clear to you that they are wrong, but they have all given the same answer.

What would you do? Would you go along with the majority opinion, or would you trust your own eyes?

In 1951, the social psychologist Asch used this experiment to examine how the pressure from other people could affect one's perceptions. In total, about one third of the subjects who were placed in this situation agree with the majority. Some of the subjects indicated after the experiment that they assumed the rest of the people were correct and that their own perceptions were wrong. Others knew they were correct but didn't want to be different from the rest of the group. Some even insisted they saw the line lengths as the majority did.

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Asch concluded that it is difficult to maintain that you see something when no one else does. Pressure from other people can make you see almost anything.

Questions to the text:

1.Who developed the experiment described in the text?

2.When was the experiment developed?

3.What is the purpose of the experiment?

4.Who participate in the experiment group?

5.How many members are there in the group?

6.How many real subjects are there?

7.What does the real subject know about the aim of the experiment?

8.Who is the source of information about the experiment?

9.How many cards does the experimenter put in front of the real subject?

10.What kind of information could the cards contain?

11.How many times is the task repeated?

12.Do the associates of the experiment always choose the right line?

13.How many subjects of this experiment go along with clearly erroneous majority?

14.What did some of the subjects of the experiment assume when the associates of the experiment gave the wrong answers?

Tasks:

1.Imagine that you are in situation when you feel pressure from other people. You have to make some kind of an important decision. What would you do to reduce pressure?

2.Have you ever been in situations when you experienced pressure from other people? Did you go along with what people thought you should do?

3.Why? Please, describe this situation. Who were the people in this situation? What kind of decision did you have to make? How did pressure from those people influence your decision?

4.Explain the role of the real subject in the experiment.

5.Imagine that you are an experimenter.

6.Prepare the instructions for members of the experiment.

7.Describe your own experiment connected with social pressure.

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Text 3. Stereotypes and stereotyping

Stereotyping is a simplification and generalization process. It helps people categorize and understand their world, but at the same time it often leads to errors.

Stereotypes can be positive or negative, such as when various nationalities are stereotyped as friendly or unfriendly. We often find people stereotyped around characteristics of age ("All teenagers love rock and roll and have no respect for their parents."), sex ("men want just one thing from a woman."), race ("All Japanese look and think alike."), religion ("All Catholics love the Pope more than their country."), profession ("All lawyers are greedy.") and nationality ("All Germans are Nazis").

Objects can be stereotyped around characteristics of places ("All cities are corrupt and sinful." "Small towns are safe and clean." "In England, it rains all the time.") and things ("All Korean cars are cheaply made.").

The term "stereotype" initially referred to a printing stamp which was used to make multiple copies from a single model, but the great journalist and commentator Walter Lippmann adopted the term in his 1922 book "Public Opinion" as a means of describing the way society is set about categorizing people – "stamping" human beings with a set of characteristics – as well. In his pioneering work, Lippmann identified four aspects of stereotypes. A brief look at them will serve as a summary of this valuable popular cultural tool. Lippmann wrote that stereotypes are:

1)Simple: certainly more simple than reality, but also often capable of being summarized in only two to three sentences.

2)Acquired secondhand: people acquire (and absorb) stereotypes from someone else rather than from their own experience. The culture "distills" reality and then expresses its beliefs and values in stereotypical images.

Questions to the text:

1.What is stereotyping?

2.How many functions of stereotyping do you know?

3.What is the main function of stereotyping?

4.What characteristics are stereotyped around?

5.How could you explain the term stereotype?

6.Who put into practice the term in its modern meaning?

7.What are the aspects of stereotyping?

8.Are all stereotypes true or false?

9.What are the negative things about stereotyping?

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Tasks:

1.Express your opinion about stereotypes and stereotyping.

2.Find out what kinds of the stereotypes exist in our society.

3.Make a list of stereotypes.

4.Compare your ideas with the group. Analyze the differences.

5.Explain the origin of your own stereotypes.

6.Write an essay about the aspects of stereotyping (180–220 words).

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List of Literature

1.Агабекян И.П., Коваленко П.И., Кудряшова Ю.А. Английский язык для психологов: учеб. пособие. – М.: ТК Велби, Изд-во Проспект,

2007. – 272 с.

2.Бочарова Г.В. Английский язык для психологов: учеб. пособие / Г.В. Бочарова, Е.В. Никошкова, З.В. Печкурова, М.Г. Степанова. – М.: Флинта: Московский психолого-социальный институт, 2004. – 576 с.

3.Донченко Е.Н. Английский для психологов и социологов: учеб. пособие. – Ростов н/Д: Феникс, 2002. – 512 с.

4.Дудорова Э.С. Английский язык для студентов гуманитарных факультетов (профессиональный и деловой аспект). – СПб: Изд-во Союз, 2004. – 192 с.

5.Никошкова Е.В. Английский язык для психологов: учеб. пособие для студ. высш. учеб. заведений. – М.: Изд-во ВЛАДОС-ПРЕСС, 2002. –

160 с.

6.Шевелева С.А. Английский для гуманитариев: учеб. пособие для вузов. – М.: ЮНИТИ-ДАНА, 2000. – 528 с.

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ИНОСТРАННЫЙ ЯЗЫК

АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТОВ СПЕЦИАЛЬНОСТИ «ПСИХОЛОГИЯ»

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В авторской редакции

Выпускающий редактор И.П. Брованова Компьютерная верстка Л.А. Веселовская

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