You’re undoubtedly familiar with the concept of stress, but like many psychological variables we’ve seen, you may find it difficult to come up with a precise definition. What exactly is stress and how can we go about measuring it
Walter Cannon coined the term “fight or flight response” to consider how we react to threats in the environment (you may also recall that a “freeze” response has since been added). Cannon was one of the first researchers to use the term “stress” when referring to something that evoked this response. The term stress was used frequently by Hans Selye (who we’ll learn more about later), though his use was criticized because the same word was used for both cause and effect (stress causes stress).
To clarify things a bit, Selye introduced the term stressor to refer more specifically to something that causes a stress response. So we can say that a stressor is something that is a threat to our safety or something that places demands on our resources. This could be as obvious as a bear chasing us through the woods or as subtle as tinges of nervousness before a first date.
The stress response is our physiological reaction to stressors, and involves activation of the sympathetic nervous system. As we’ll see throughout this chapter, this response is well-suited for dealing with some stressors but not so great for others.
Despite these more specific labels, the general term stress is still used quite frequently. Thinking in terms of stressors and how we respond to them means that stress can refer to our physiological and psychological response to stressors, which can originate from the environment or from within our own minds.
This post is an excerpt from Master Introductory Psychology: Complete Edition
