Sunday, December 22, 2013

Stress: Cognitive

In the last byte, we looked at Homeostatic approach towards understanding how stress evolves. In today's byte, we look a cognitive appraisal approach towards understanding stress.

In our daily lives we observe that some situations which are stressful for some isnt stressful for others! For example, an employee would be more stressed facing an upset supervisor, compared to when the supervisor is not upset; of for that matter another supervisor itself. It is really the perception that makes this impact.

This aspect was studies by Richard Lazarus who focused more on the psychology of stress. It is similar to Cannon's approach in that it talks about the discussion between the person and environment, but the emphasis is on the cognitive appraisal of the situation at hand. Individuals differ in their appraisal of events and people!

In addition to these, there could be 2 other forms of such stress:
  • Problem Focused
  • Emotion Focused
While the problem focused coping emphasizes on managing the stressor; the emotion focused approach focuses on the response management.

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