The Nature of Stress
Lazarus (1966)suggested that stress be treated as an organizing concept for
understanding a wide range of processes involved in social adaptation. Stress,
then, is not a unidimensional variable, but a construct or syndrome consisting of
many variables and processes. As such, stress is a response process characterized
by physiological, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional changes that function to
alert the individual to the need to adapt to environmental demands in the interests
of personal wellbeing. Personal well being is a mark of adaptive success, or
a person-environment relationship that functions to promote the attainment of
personal goals. Environmental demands, when perceived to exceed the person’s
adaptive resources, represent obstacles to that person’s ability to function
adaptively in their environment, and hence present a potential threat to goal
attainment. As obstacles to adaptive success, excessive environmental demands,
which may be cognitive, behavioral, physical, or emotional, represent a source of
strain, and are hence referred to as stressors.
In response to a stressor, an individual may experience physiological, cognitive,
behavioral, or emotional changes that function to mobilize the individual to
respond to environmental demands in the interests of adaptive success. Seyle
(1976) originally described this stress response (which he termed the “general
adaptation syndrome”) as a three-stage process involving an initial alarm reaction,
a second stage of coping (thatSeyle, 1976, referred to as “resistance”), and a
third stage involving physical or psychological burnout or exhaustion. Certainly,
this theory had some validity, with research demonstrating that there are strong
links between stress and illness, and stress and decreased performance outcomes
(Siegrist, 1998). Unfortunately, however, as an explanation of the stress response
process, this model has proved less useful. More recent research has revealed
that the stress response is a more complex, multilevel process (Lazarus, 1999),
and that there are positive as well as negative behavioral effects of stress (see
Brockner, Grover, Reed & Dewitt, 1992).
There are various physiological reactions to stress, each associated with an increase in activation or levels of arousal in a state of “readiness for action” (Hancock
& Desmond, 2001). As such, the physiological stress response is indicated by
increased skin conductance, heart rate, salivation, hormone output, respiration
rate, and sweat gland activity, to name a few. Furthermore, individuals under stress
may have heightened sensitivity to sensory stimulus, evidenced by increased
reaction time, and awareness of novel bodily sensations (see alsoSeyle, 1976).
Cognitive effects of the stress response may include distraction, narrowing
of attention, tunnel vision, decreased search activity, response rigidity, longer
reaction time to peripheral stimuli, increased information-processing errors, and
memory deficits (Salas, Driskell & Hughs, 1996). In this respect, one of the betterestablished findings in the stress literature is that, as stress or arousal increases, the
individual’s breadth of attention narrows (Combs & Taylor, 1952). For complex
tasks in which the individual must attend to a relatively large number of task salient
cues, this narrowing of attention may result in the elimination of relevant task
information and task performance will suffer. Thus, stress may result in degraded
overall performance on complex tasks because attention is narrowed in response
to cognitive overload. Furthermore, with regard to decision making under-stress,
Cohen (1952)found that stressful conditions lead to greater problem-solving
rigidity – a tendency to persist with a set method of problem solving – when
it ceases to provide a direct task solution. This process has more recently been
shown to be relevant in organizational studies.Dorner (1990), for example, found
that individuals under stress were prone to “ballistic decision making”: making
decisions without checking the consequences of their decision. Dorner concluded
that ballistic decision making tends to increase concreteness of behavior, because
evaluating the consequences of one’s action is an essential means of adapting
responses to changing environmental demands (see alsoStaw, 1981).
Behavioral characteristics of the stress response process include a reduction
in the tendency to assist others, increased interpersonal aggression, neglect of
social or interpersonal cues, and less cooperative behavior among team members
(Patel & Arocha, 2002).Cohen (1980)noted that the narrowing of attention that
occurs under stress may include a restriction of social cues as well, and that stress
may lead to a neglect of social or interpersonal cues and sensitivity to others. A
further consequence of attentional narrowing is a neglect of behavior monitoring,
and hence an increase in self-regulation failure. As such, the stress response may
interfere with effective behavioral control, which may have deleterious effects on
physical or interpersonal work-related activities (Driskell & Salas, 1991).
According toLazarus (1991), the emotional reactions to stress gauge a person’s
struggle to adapt to or cope with situational demands, emerging as a psychological
response to apparent or anticipated threats to well being. As such, each stress emotion, be it anger, frustration, anxiety, guilt, fright, or fear, is an expression of the way
in which a person appraises his or her current relationship with the environment,
and how that person is coping with this adaptive transaction. Stress emotions are
experienced and expressed physiologically, cognitively, and behaviorally (Lazarus,
1999). With regard to the experience of emotion on a physiological level, they may
be experienced as tonic muscle seizure (tension), activation of the adrenal glands
(anxiety), and/or heightened sensory awareness (fear). Cognitively, emotions are
experienced as an appraisal or evaluation of a situation that describes the content
of the felt emotions (for example, the thought “This situation is frightening!”).
Furthermore, emotions may be experienced as behavioral intentions such as impulsivity and inhibition (associated with excitement and depression). Stress emotions
are expressed physiologically via sweating, blushing, or shaking; cognitively as “I
am anxious,” and behaviorally in the form of facial expression and posture.