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severity will depend upon the strength of a particular need of the individuals as well as, upon the extent
to which conditions are unfavourable.
An individual may be aware or unaware of the stresses acting on him. Thus, a student at an
examination is usually aware of the stress of the examination. An example of unconscious stress would
be the daily routine of duties. Most individuals are not aware of a mild continuous stress which
everyday work imposes. It is only when the individual goes on a holiday that he realises the difference.
Behavioural symptoms of stress are withdrawal from a situation avoiding responsibility and
passing the same to others : conflicts and anxiety preventing effective functioning, aggression
or rigidity in behaviour, vacillation and indecision, lack of capacity to think clearly on simple
problems, disorganisation and confusion, errors in simple tasks; forgetting to do or name
things one does not normally forget; breaking rules and resorting to short-cuts to reach the
goal, tendency to cheat for small gains when things are difficult, justifying wrong acts or
telling lies, nervousness, unhappiness, depression and frustration etc., Intense stress of a fairly
long duration will deeply penetrate the superficial crust of facade and conscious compensations
and reveal the deeper strata of personality. However, the intensity and duration of the stress
must be kept within the maximum tolerance limit of the individual and the group. Extreme
application of stress must be avoided as it would require a high degree of psychological skill to
‘seal-off’ or disperse the after effects of the same.
A number of laboratory studies on individual under stress and field studies of reaction of the group
to a wide variety of environmental stresses have led to the following generalisation about the effects of
external stresses :
(a) In their initial impact stress increases variability of behaviour and reduce its consistency.
(b) Moderate external stress tends to produce some performance improvement; severe stress results
in disorganised performance.
(c) Initial response to moderate stress is shock or resistance. This is followed by recovery and even
over compensation. If the stress is extreme or continues over a longer period of time, lowers
performance and ultimately collapse or breakdown occurs.
(d) Effective leadership and healthy interpersonal relationship reduce the initial shock reaction and
make possible a longer period of adaption to unabated stress. No momentous discovery is made when it
is remarked that an individual exterior is a bit of same. There is a same in all of us, the difference being
only in degree. Rather then accepting things at face value, if therefore, becomes necessary to recognise
the thing as they are and to try to penetrate through the outer layout of an individual to his inner core to
arrive at the true evaluation of the individual’s actual basic set.
An individual who shows a poor sort of veneer may, in actual fact, have sound enough basic set
and an individual with an impressive veneer may have a poor basic set. It is only under emotional
stress, that this superficial veneer drops away to reveal the true basic set. For this reasons the group
situational tasks are stressful group tasks providing sufficient emotional stress for the real part of the
individual to reveal itself.
The capacity to withstand stress is known as Stability. Stability is not a very dynamic term, for
what is essentially a dynamic concept. i.e., the active and continuous capacity not only to resist the
deteriorating effects of stress but also to return to normal when this has passed off. It indicates more of
an actively normalising function that a passively resisting inertia.
The tests provide a medium by which an individual’s functional capacity in stress can be assessed.
The 2 main stresses in the tests are the problem stress and the social stress.
A well adjusted person is not the one without stress but the one who has learnt to handle the
stress that he encounters. A diagonistic criterion for a stable person is the manner in which he
copes with stress.