# Stress and Coping

Psychology I · Society and Health · https://tryals.app/learn/psychology-i/stress-and-coping

## The Body Under Pressure

**Stress** is how we perceive and respond to environmental demands, or **stressors**, appraised as threatening or challenging.

Physiologist **Hans Selye** found the body's response to prolonged stress follows the **General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)**:

| GAS stage | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| **Alarm** | Immediate fight-or-flight arousal |
| **Resistance** | Sustained arousal while adapting |
| **Exhaustion** | Resources depleted; illness risk rises |

Chronic activation of the **HPA axis** during resistance keeps cortisol elevated, suppressing immunity and raising cardiovascular risk.

**Common pitfall:** Assuming stress lives in the event itself. Under **Richard Lazarus** and **Susan Folkman**'s model, stress is a transaction dependent on **appraisal**.

## Appraisal and Coping

Appraisal happens in two rounds:
- **Primary appraisal:** Is this a threat, a challenge, or irrelevant?
- **Secondary appraisal:** Do I have the resources to cope?

**Coping** is our effort to manage appraised stress through two distinct styles:

| Coping style | Focus | Best used for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Problem-focused** | Changes the situation | Controllable stressors |
| **Emotion-focused** | Manages emotional response | Uncontrollable stressors |

Neither style is universally superior. Match the strategy to the controllability of the stressor.

## Practice questions

7 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Lazarus argued that reappraisal, deliberately re-reading a situation, reduces stress more reliably than trying to suppress the feeling. Why would the earlier step be the effective one?

A. Because reappraisal removes the demand rather than the reaction to it
B. Because appraisal generates the stress response in the first place
C. Because appraisal is conscious and suppression is not
D. Because suppression is impossible for most people to perform

**Answer:** B. Because appraisal generates the stress response in the first place

**Why:** Intervening upstream is cheaper than fighting downstream. Suppression reliably shows physiological cost and poorer outcomes in exactly the comparisons where reappraisal helps.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/stress-and-coping/lazarus-argued-that-reappraisal-deliberately-re-reading-a-situation

### 2. Sort each coping example as problem-focused or emotion-focused.

**Answer:**

- Problem-focused coping: Making a detailed study plan before an exam, Directly confronting a fixable problem at work
- Emotion-focused coping: Seeking comfort from a friend about an unchangeable loss, Meditating to calm anxiety about something you cannot control

**Why:** Changing the situation (study plan, confronting a fixable problem, researching solutions) is problem-focused; managing the emotional response (comfort, meditation, reframing) is emotion-focused. The tell is whether the effort targets the stressor or the feeling.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/stress-and-coping/sort-each-coping-example-as-problem-focused-or-emotion-focused

### 3. The same email from your manager, *"Can we talk tomorrow?"*, leaves one colleague energised and another awake at 3 a.m. The email is identical. Where does the difference live?

A. In personality, one is simply a more anxious person than the other
B. In the email, it must carry different implications for their two roles
C. In appraisal, each reads what it means for them, then whether they can meet it
D. In coping style, one uses problem-focused coping, the other emotion-focused

**Answer:** C. In appraisal, each reads what it means for them, then whether they can meet it

**Why:** Stress is a transaction, not a property of the event. Two appraisals sit in the gap: what does this mean for me, and have I got what it takes. Coping is the tempting wrong answer, it is what you do *once* appraisal has already ruled the email a threat.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/stress-and-coping/the-same-email-from-your-manager-can-we-talk-tomorrow-leaves-one

### 4. Emotion-focused coping works best for controllable stressors and problem-focused coping for uncontrollable ones.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** False. It is the reverse: problem-focused coping suits stressors you can change, and emotion-focused coping suits those you cannot, a terminal diagnosis, a bereavement. Mismatching them is itself a predictor of poor outcome, which is why the fit matters more than the strategy.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/stress-and-coping/emotion-focused-coping-works-best-for-controllable-stressors-and

### 5. Cortisol is superb for a two-minute emergency and corrosive over two years. **Set the slider to the point in Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome where the body's resistance is at its highest**: 0 is the moment the stressor lands, 100 is collapse.

**Answer:** 55 (within ±18)

**Why:** Peak resistance sits in the middle, through resistance, the body has adapted and is holding, at a price. That is the cruel part of the curve: the stage that looks like coping is the stage that spends the reserves, and exhaustion is the bill arriving.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/stress-and-coping/cortisol-is-superb-for-a-two-minute-emergency-and-corrosive-over-two

### 6. Select every statement that is TRUE about stress and coping.

A. The Alarm stage is when the body's resources become depleted.
B. The transactional model treats stress as an interaction between person and event.
C. Emotion-focused coping is always superior to problem-focused coping.
D. The body pays a measurable price for staying mobilised, not only for the original threat.
E. Secondary appraisal asks whether one has the resources to cope.

**Answer:** B. The transactional model treats stress as an interaction between person and event.; D. The body pays a measurable price for staying mobilised, not only for the original threat.; E. Secondary appraisal asks whether one has the resources to cope.

**Why:** The cortisol effects, the transactional view, and secondary appraisal are all true. Neither coping style is universally superior, and resource depletion occurs in Exhaustion (not Alarm) - so those two are false.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/stress-and-coping/select-every-statement-that-is-true-about-stress-and-coping

### 7. Order the stages of Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome, from a stressor's onset onward.

**Answer:**

1. A stressor appears and triggers immediate fight-or-flight arousal (Alarm).
2. The body sustains elevated arousal as it adapts to the ongoing demand (Resistance).
3. If the stressor persists too long, physiological resources become depleted (Exhaustion).
4. Vulnerability to illness rises as the body's reserves run out.

**Why:** The GAS runs Alarm (immediate arousal), Resistance (sustained adaptation), then Exhaustion (resources depleted, illness risk rising). The stages are defined by how long the stressor persists, not by its type.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/stress-and-coping/order-the-stages-of-selyes-general-adaptation-syndrome-from-a