When I wrote the first edition of Health Psychology over 30 years ago, the task was much simpler than it is now. Health psychology was a new field and was relatively small. In recent decades, the field has grown steadily, and great research advances have been made. Chief among these de-velopments has been the use and refinement of the biopsychosocial model: the study of health issues from the standpoint of biological, psychological, and social factors acting together. In-creasingly, research has attempted to identify the biological pathways by which psychosocial fac-tors such as stress may adversely affect health and potentially protective factors such as social support may buffer the impact of stress. My goal in the tenth edition of this text is to convey this increasing sophistication of the field in a manner that makes it accessible, comprehensible, and exciting to undergraduates"--