A theoretical approach of adaptation to stress and implications for evaluation and research

[Excerpt] The study of adaptation to occupational stress is a major topic of research on psychology, and other social sciences. In fact, data suggests that employees face significant levels of tension at work, and that there is an increasing of sources of stress, both in terms of intensity and diversity [1]. In this chapter, we analyze adaptation to stress by focusing at the individual level, discussing how professionals evaluate and cope with stressors that impose significant efforts of adjusting. However, this does not mean that occupational stress is strictly an individual phenomenon; by the contrary, a better understanding of stress at work should assume a multifactor perspective, where the employee, the employer, the work organization, the public policies and laws of work, and the cultural values and norms that influence professional relations between all these agents, play together and determine if the working activity will be a pleasant or dysfunctional experience for professionals. Despite the importance of considering all these factors when studying the working activity, it is also obvious that the way each worker adapt to their working conditions is a pivotal factor to understand how this activity can represent a source of personal gratification or, by the contrary, can ended represent a negative, or even indifferent, experience. [...]