- [Instructor] Although I enjoy cats,
I must say that I'm really more
of a dog person.
A couple years ago, or I guess
one year ago now, my wife got me
a puppy dog for my birthday,
and she got me a little beagle.
His name is Hank.
And like most beagles,
my puppy dog, Hank,
loves to chase bunny rabbits,
but it's not so much a friendly game
of chase that he's playing
with this bunny rabbit.
Hank is actually pretty intent
on swallowing the bunny rabbit
whole as soon as he catches it.
So you might say that in this picture
this bunny is experiencing a little bit
of stress, and in doing so,
we'd be using that word
to describe a threat or a challenge.
However, we might also say that
the bunny is stressed.
And now we're talking about
the bunny's response.
So psychologists try to clarify
this really slippery definition
by calling the threatening,
or challenging event,
which in this case is the eminent
clamping down of my puppy dog's teeth,
the stressor, so stressor.
So my puppy dog's teeth
are the stressor.
The subsequent physical and emotional
response would be the stress reaction.
So in this case, we're talking about
the bunny's response,
that physical and emotional response
to the stressor.
So this whole scene then is what
a psychologist might call stress.
So then stress isn't really just
a stimulus or a response.
Rather, it's kind of the process
by which we appraise
and we cope with the environmental
threats and challenges.
So we're appraising the stressor,
and then our stress reaction
is our coping with the environmental
threat, or the challenge.
So based off this definition of stress,
a pretty famous psychologist
named Richard Lazarus, he determined
that stress arises less
from actual events and more
from our assessment of those events.
The word he used to describe
that assessment was our appraisal.
Then describing this appraisal,
he suggested that there were really
two stages to the cognitive
appraisal of stress.
So you have primary appraisal.
Primary appraisal is the initial
evaluation that focuses on the threat
in the present situation,
so your appraisal of what's going on
right now, what threat I'm experiencing
right now, and there are three
categories of response
to this primary appraisal.
For instance, one response might be
that whatever this perceived threat is
is really irrelevant to me.
Maybe it doesn't matter at all.
That's kind of what irrelevant means,
just that I see this threat,
but it's not affecting me.
I'm not in danger at all.
I don't find this to be particularly
important, so it's irrelevant.
Another response, even better than
an irrelevant response, might be
a benign or a positive response.
So benign or positive.
Maybe this threat, maybe for example,
a bird sees a dinosaur stomping
through the forest, but that dinosaur
is actually kind of a positive
threat because it's about to take
out one of the bird's enemies.
So we might have a benign
or a positive response to this stress.
The last kind of major category
of response would be that this event
is actually stressful.
In this case, we're finding that
stressor to be potentially harmfuler,
or challenging, or threatening.
So if you look back over
to this example here,
if I'm the rabbit in this picture,
my appraisal of this situation
is dinging like crazy that this
is in the stressful category.
So if this primary appraisal
is negative, we move forward
with the second appraisal.
So the secondary appraisal involves
the evaluation of the individual's
ability to cope with the situation.
So the individual that's perceiving
the stressor, what is their material
preparedness to deal with that stressor?
So you have a further appraisal of harm.
What that's saying is what damage
has already been caused?
So if you're this rabbit,
no damage has been caused yet,
but gosh, that beagle puppy
is nipping at your heels.
So that brings us to the second
category of secondary appraisal.
That's an appraisal of the threat.
So what future damage could be caused?
In this case, if you're that rabbit,
lots of damage could be caused.
For instance, my entire leg meat
might be pierced by some
sharp as heck puppy dog teeth
here in just a couple of seconds.
So that threat is quite high.
The third category of secondary
appraisal, the third further assessment
is of the challenge.
That describes how can the situation
be overcome or conquered.
If I'm that rabbit,
I'm thinking I can run like the dickens
and try to make it back
to my little rabbit hutch.
And so this is a pretty straightforward
concept for most of the animal world.
There's a stressor, and then
a stress reaction,
and a stressor, and a stress reaction.
And it goes and so on.
But for humans, it's a little bit
different because as humans we have
this higher level of cognitive
functioning than the other animals
in the world.
We have this seemingly unique ability
to not only respond to stressors,
so not only have a stress reaction,
but also to anticipate stressors.
That makes the whole triggering
and the duration and the response
to stress really a little more
interesting, and those are the topics
that we're gonna cover
as we explore the psychology of stress
in the next videos.