by John Hobbs

Created on: January 22, 2009   Last Updated: January 29, 2009

When considering the relationship between coping and stress we must take note of the extent into which stress can affect us and our health. There has been a wealth of research into the effect that stress has, and numerous models proposed to explain how we react and respond to potential stressors. Hans Selye introduced one of the earlier models looking into how we respond to stress. The model imposes the idea of three stages in which we go through in responding to stress. In basic terms the three stages are alarm reaction' when the body mobilises its defences against the stressor, this is followed the resistance stage whereby the body becomes adaptive to the source of stress. Ultimately if the person cannot cope with the stress they enter the exhaustion stage and their body's capacity to resist finally breaks down.

Early research has given support to this model whereby animals have demonstrated physiological reactions during the resistance stage which in some cases lead to ulcers, cardiovascular disease and asthma. This evidence gives a good indication that stress can impact health, however it has many limitations due to the fact it is a linear model which concludes that we respond to stress in a universal way. Furthermore the model fails to elaborate on how different people cope with stress and how psychological perception can give us a better insight into an individual's coping mechanisms rather than simply monitoring physiological changes that can occur as a result of stressors.

Modern ideas have branched out identifying different factors which affect how we perceive a potential stressor and why, depending on the specific situation we can become more able to cope. An example of such as an idea comes from Siegrist (2001) who argues that the characteristics of work an imbalance of effort/reward' can determine whether someone sees their work as being stressful. In simple terms, someone could work hard in their job (effort) as a result they receive a promotion with a pay rise (reward). In this situation the factors are equally balanced and as such the hard work (effort) will not be deemed stressful as it was subsequently rewarded.

This was reviewed by Natasja van Vegche et al (2005) who looked at a collection of over forty-five empirical studies to test the effort-reward imbalance model. It was found that this imbalance in general across the forty-five studies increased the risk of poor health. However, this evidence is limited due to the methodical weaknesses of

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