Last week, I was interviewing a candidate for a job. The room wasn’t hot. However, the candidate’s forehead was beaded with sweat. He had trouble managing the tremor in his voice. I am not a partisan of job interviews that look like torture; the kind of interviews that make you wonder if you do not accidentally land in a KGB interrogation room during the Cold War! I do my utmost to put the candidates at ease. First, I introduce myself to give them time to catch their breath, and to settle down comfortably. Then, I tell them the purpose of our meeting : get to know each other, and see if the position fits their profile. In other words, I try to eliminate the stress of my interviews. Apparently this time, I failed miserably!
This episode of my professional life made me dig a little deeper to what is “stress”. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) defined stress as “ a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being”. Lazarus and Folkman’s definition reflects their approach, which is referred to as the transactional model of stress. The basic idea of their model is that the experience of stress results from ongoing transactions between people and the environment. In their daily life, people encounter particular situations that may or may not induce the feeling of stress. These are referred as stressors. Based on their encounter with these potentially stressful events, people make an appraisal. They either perceive the stressors as threats or as challenge.
Once people have appraised a situation as being stressful, they evaluate their coping option to deal with the problem. Coping refers to thoughts, feeling, and behaviors that people engage in when trying to reduce stress. Coping strategies can be classified into two general types; problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Lazarus & Launier, 1978). With problem-focuses coping, people deal directly with the problem that has caused them to be stressed. Emotion-focused coping involves people trying to regulate their emotions so that they can minimize the distress caused by the situation.
People who experience a great deal of stress, and particularly those who show poor coping responses, tend to show higher rates of illness. For example, research has shown that people who report higher levels of stress show a higher incidence of respiratory illnesses and other infectious diseases, suggesting that stress has a suppressive effect on the immune system (Sarafino,2002).
One can wonder if stress appraisal, at first place, plays a role in health outcomes. According to a study done by Crum, Salovey, and Achor (2013), individual beliefs about the effects of stress (enhancing or debilitating) can have a great influence on how they react to it. Indeed, if you think that stress is a positive reaction because it prepares you for an important event, you will react in a positive way. Concretely, it will affect your physiology. You will secrete less cortisol. And, it will also influence your behavior, you will work better under pressure, and will not hesitate to ask for feedback on your performance.
An intervention was developed according to the results of this study by Crum, Salovey, and Achor (2013): Rethink Stress Intervention. It shows us that it is quite possible to understand stress differently in three very simple but counter-intuitive steps. First, be aware of your stress. Indeed, when you stress unconsciously you use the oldest part of your brain, the reptilian brain, which works in a fairly basic way “Stimuli, reaction”. Once you become aware of your stress, you are using the most recent part of your brain, your frontal lobe, in charge of reasoning, empathy and self-control. Instead of reacting, you can choose your stress response.
The second step is to welcome your stress with kindness. Welcome it as a messenger who wishes to share an important information For example, for my last week candidate, the message conveyed by his stress was: “This job is a real opportunity for me, I really want to get it”. The third step is to use your stress to reach your goal. Reorient your energy that you usually use to get rid of your stress, to act in accordance with your goal. Stress will allow you to focus all your efforts on this goal that is so overriding.
Stress is not bad a thing by itself. It depends on the way we appraise it and cope with it. Intervention exits that may change our mindset about stress. We can also choose to cope more efficiently with stress by choosing the coping strategy depending on the situation. We can try to either change the stressor or regulate our emotions to minimize the distress. Counting on our significant others is also a wonderful way to eliviate the negative effects of stressful circumstances
If you want to learn more about how to make stress your friend, watch this wonderful Tedtalk by the Health Psychologist: Dr Kelly McGonigal.
Crum, A. J., Salovey, P. & Achor, S. (2013). Rethinking Stress: The Role of Mindsets in Determining the Stress Response. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer.
Lazarus, R. S., & Launier, R. (1978). Stress-related transactions between person and environment. In L. A. Pervin & M. Lewis (Eds.), Perspectives in interactional psychology (pp. 287–327). New York: Plenum Press.
Rethink Stress Intervention. (n.d.). Retrieved February 9, 2019, from https://mbl.stanford.edu/interventions-toolkits/rethink-stress-intervention
Sarafino, E. P. (2002). Health psychology: Biopsychosocial interactions (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
A quick follow up that crossed my mind has to do with how you mentioned that you felt as if you had failed in making the candidate feel comfortable in your interview. You’ve explained different types of coping mechanisms, but how exactly would you yourself improve on making candidates feel comfortable? Obviously you can’t stop the interview and explain what you just did in this blog post and you already mention how you give them time to settle… so what would the next step be for you?
What a useful blog post you’ve put up! I found it quite interesting and extremely practical. I think it’s great that you consciously try to put the interviewees at ease during interviews, thats very admirable on your part and, if I were interviewing for a job, I would certainly appreciate it. Some employers wouldn’t even think to consider how the candidate is feeling in the interview situation.
It makes sense that stress coping is normally divided into two different types as you explained, that of emotion-focused and that of problem-focused. I found it very clear how you explained that how, people who do not know how to deal with their stress well and do not have control of coping with it, experience negative health situations later on in the future. All though it really is a psychological thing it can have an impact on our health as well.
Lastly, the intervention you shared is quite practical and you explained it well. The three steps are very clear and I could see how it would be a great intervention to put into practice for anyone on a daily basis, whether this be for slight stress or more extreme stress. I agree that the most important part of dealing with stress is to be aware of it in the first place. The rest will come, but recognition is key.
Thank you for the ted talk link, I’ll be sure to take a look at it!