Stress and Adaptational Outcomes: The Problem of Confounded Measures

• Published in: The American psychologist 1985-07, Vol.40 (7), p.770-779
• Main Authors: Lazarus, Ricard S, DeLongis, Anita, Folkman, Susan, Gruen, Rand
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptation, Psychological; Cognition; Environment; Human; Humans; Measurement; Mental Disorders - diagnosis; Models, Psychological; Psychological Stress; Stress Reactions; Stress, Psychological - psychology
• ISSN: 0003-066X; 1935-990X
• DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.40.7.770

Confounding is a major source of uneasiness among many who do research on the relationship between stress and adaptational outcomes such as psychological symptoms and somatic health. A commonly proposed solution, illustrated by a recent article by Dohrenwend, Dohrenwend, Dodson, and Shrout, is to purify the independent variable, stress, by focusing on its environmental aspects and by making it independent of psychological response variables such as perceptions or appraisals. Such a solution, however, is neither possible nor desirable, and it obviates relational, cognitive theories of psychological stress such as our own. In this article, we closely examine the problem of confounding and circularity in stress research and provide new data. We argue that the appraisal process should not and cannot be removed in the measurement of psychological stress, and therefore some confounding is inevitable. Like emotion, stress is best regarded as a complex rubric consisting of many interrelated variables and processes rather than as a simple variable that can be readily measured and correlated with adaptational outcomes.