Stress and Stress Responses

Today in class we'll be taking a look at "Psychological Factors Affecting Other Medical Conditions," otherwise known as Psychophysiological Disorders. There are a couple of pieces of research that your text introduced that are worth revisiting here.

The first is the Social Readjustment Rating Scale developed by Holmes and Rahe. This attempts to measure the number of stressors one has encountered in a particular period of time. Each item on the scale is assigned a number of "Life Change Units," and this Undergraduate Stress Questionnaire (designed for college students) gives you a sense of how it is scored.

You'll also encounter the work of Friedman and Rosenman, whose work established a link between personality style and risk of heart attack. This (brief) Type A/Type B Indicator will give you a sense of the different personality styles addressed in the model.