Stress Revisited: Personality, Psychoticism, and the Internal Generation of Stress

Abstract

This paper argues that stress is not only a response to external pressure but can also be generated internally through personality-linked patterns of perception, choice and behaviour. It traces the concept from Hooke's work on stress and strain in materials, through its association with shell shock and battle fatigue after the Second World War, to biological models, including psychoneuroimmunology and Selye's general adaptation syndrome with its stages of alarm, resistance and exhaustion. It then describes psychoticism as a personality trait in the Eysencks' personality scale. The paper reviews two earlier publications. The first reported a significant correlation between high stress scores and high psychoticism scores among patients of a psychiatric day unit, and unpublished dissertation findings suggested that patients scoring highly on both measures did not benefit from the unit and in some cases appeared to deteriorate, possibly reflecting a poor match between their personality profile and a setting relying on group conformity and empathic engagement. The second, conducted with commercial pilots at a pilot screening clinic in London, confirmed the connection between personality and stress in a healthy population. The paper concludes that stress is shaped by the interaction between personality, agency and environment, and that interventions should assess the personality factors that influence stress and be matched more carefully to the individual, rather than only reducing external demands.

Abstract prepared by the editorial office from the full text of the article; the authors did not supply one.