Fight or flight
Walter Cannon described how threat activates the sympathetic nervous system and adrenal medulla, raising heart rate and blood sugar to prepare the body to fight or flee.
Selye's general adaptation syndrome
Hans Selye defined stress as the nonspecific response of the body to any demand and proposed a three-stage pattern regardless of the stressor.
- Alarm: shock and countershock, HPA axis activation and cortisol release
- Resistance: adaptation with sustained high resistance
- Exhaustion: depleted resources leading to illness and breakdown
He also distinguished eustress from distress.
Life events
Holmes and Rahe's Social Readjustment Rating Scale (1967) scored changes such as death of a spouse (100), divorce (73) and marriage (50), with high totals predicting illness. Critics note it ignores personal interpretation.
Lazarus's transactional model
Lazarus and Folkman (1984) saw stress as a person-environment transaction shaped by appraisal.
- Primary appraisal: is the situation irrelevant, benign, or a harm, threat or challenge?
- Secondary appraisal: what coping resources and options are available?
- Reappraisal as new information arrives
Coping
Problem-focused coping tries to change the stressor, emotion-focused coping regulates feelings. The first tends to work better when situations are controllable, the second when they are not, and social support buffers stress.
References
- Selye, H. (1956). The Stress of Life. McGraw-Hill.
- Holmes, T. H., & Rahe, R. H. (1967). The social readjustment rating scale. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11(2), 213-218.
- Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Springer.
- Cannon, W. B. (1932). The Wisdom of the Body. W. W. Norton.