![]() Life events demand the same levels of adjustment across the population.While some correlations emerged between SRRS scores and illness (Rahe, Mahan, & Arthur, 1970 Johnson & Sarason, 1979), there were problems with the stress as stimulus theory. Holmes and Rahe theorized that stress was an independent variable in the health-stress-coping equation - the cause of an experience rather than the experience itself. The theory of stress as a stimulus was introduced in the 1960s, and viewed stress as a significant life event or change that demands response, adjustment, or adaptation. Holmes and Rahe (1967) created the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) consisting of 42 life events scored according to the estimated degree of adjustment they would each demand of the person experiencing them (e.g., marriage, divorce, relocation, change or loss of job, loss of loved one). As early as 1932, Walter Cannon described the notion of self-regulation in his work The Wisdom of the Body. Thus, along with the early conceptualization of stress as a physiological response, early research on coping was also born. The resistance response then initiates physiological systems with a fight or flight reaction to the stressor, returning the system to homeostasis, reducing harm, or more generally accommodating the stressor, which can lead to adaptive diseases such as sleep deprivation, mental illness, hypertension, or heart disease. When confronted with a negative stimulus, the alarm response initiates the sympathetic nervous system to combat or avoid the stressor (i.e., increased heart rate, temperature, adrenaline, and glucose levels). ![]() The idea of adaptation or coping is inherent to the GAS model at both the alarm and resistance stages. The response model of stress incorporates coping within the model itself. Figure 12.6 General Adaptation to Stress (GAS) Model. Gradually, other researchers expanded the thinking on stress to include and involve psychological concepts earlier in the stress model. However, Selye always considered stress to be a physiologically based construct or response. In this way, stress could be experienced as eustress (positive) or dystress (negative). Later, in The Stress Concept: Past, Present and Future (1983), Selye introduced the idea that the stress response could result in positive or negative outcomes based on cognitive interpretations of the physical symptoms or physiological experience (Figure 12.6, “The General Adaptation to Stress Model”).
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