The relationship between psychological and physiological response to stress

The relationship between physiological and psychological response to stress, and the conditions under which the degree of relationship could be altered were in-vestigated. An intra-individual methodology was employed in which reports of psychological experience were obtained during a stressor film stimulus in a fashion analogous to the continuous measurement of physiological response. The condi-tions under which Ss made phenomenal reports were systematically varied within a 3 X 24 factorial design. A substantial relationship was obtained between physio-logical response and psychological experience. The various physiological variables demonstrated differential correspondence to the ratings of psychological impact. The degree of relationship between psychological and physiological response, quantified by multiple regression analyses of the responses of each S, were remark-ably stable in the face of the experimental variations introduced in the experiment. INVESTIGATIONS of psychological stress have utilized physiological, behavioral, or self-report measures of arousal and emotion. Historically, individual investi-gators have been prone to commit them-selves to a single criterion of emotion— e.g., awareness of bodily changes (James); vasomotor response (Lange); introspective report (Wundt); hypo