Learning to recognize stressors gives an individual the ability to eradicate the causes of stress and alleviate its effects. Coping with stress is defined as a sum of behavioral and cognitive exertions, which aim to manage internal or external demands caused by stressors (). Therefore the purpose of this essay is to investigate stress management, stress reduction and relief techniques to propose my own study to explore ways to reduce stress.
The stressor used in Jiang et al. was a mental arithmetic task created by Linshu Zhou to induce students psychological stress. The effectiveness of the stressor was increased though the intensification of the degree of difficulty in which the test included 40 complex arithmetic questions and participants were asked to complete the test within 5min. The researchers were able to assess the participant’s state-anxiety levels by employing the subscale of State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The participants were asked to rate on a 4-point scale as to how tense they felt before and after the mental arithmetic task. From the results the researchers were able to …show more content…
Then as a stressor, the participants would be asked to present to the rest of the participants on a random complex topic with only 5 minutes of preparation with not notes in hand. Immediately after the stressor, the heart rate and blood pressure of each participant would be taken again and another STAI would be completed. The participants would then be randomly distributed to two rooms. In one room participants would perform knitting related activities for 15, whereas in the other room participants would be asked to sit quietly for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes the participants would be asked to rate their stress anxiety levels and their blood pressure and heart rate would be