Stress and Strategy

by Shirley Fisher

Overview

Originally published in 1987, this title is concerned with the association between stress and control, and the implications for strategic response. It aims both to provide an up-to-date, comprehensive account of research in the area of stress for the advanced student and to develop a new synthesis of ideas leading to a cognitive model of stress and illness. The book reflects the idea that responses to stressful conditions are likely to be strategic, designed in order to achieve control in different ways. Concepts such as responsibility, instrumentality and predictability are discussed in an attempt to make the relationship between stress and control explicit. Different forms of the exercise of control are identified as features of strategy.

A cognitive model of illness is developed, which assumes that the characteristics of strategies specified in terms of modes of control determine the features of ‘arousal pathology’ via hormone routes and thus influence the risk of illness. This differs from existing models at the time, which emphasise environmental properties such as incongruence, status inconsistency or ‘rule breakdown’ as determinants. A ‘constrained resource’ approach is emphasised, in which cognitive style and particular experiences exercise constraint on the range of strategies available in cognition. Hence these factors influence the risk of different kinds of ill health when life stresses are encountered. The book provides details of evidence and theory as well as new ideas and models. It will still be of interest to students of psychology, social science and medicine, who are concerned with stress and its relationship with human and health efficiency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138647176
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Series:	Psychology Revivals
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements. Introduction 1. Stress: A Problem of Definition 2. Stress and Control 3. Acquiring the Evidence about Control 4. Contingency Assessment and Control 5. Alternative Models of the Perception of Control 6. Stress and Competence: The Arousal Model 7. Stress and Competence: Mental Load and Strategic Rules 8. Stress and the Initiation of Strategies 9. Speed and Effort Strategies 10. Helplessness-Resistant Strategies 11. Strategy, Style, and Disorder 12. A Cognitive Model of Stress and Disease: An Attempted Synthesis. References. Author Index. Subject Index