Is Stress Subjective?
Jan 5, 2019, 07:42pm
Quora
Contributor
Consumer Tech
You could make a very good case for why stress is entirely subjective. The answer all comes down to a basic question: How do you measure stress? Almost ALL stress is measured based on self-reporting. In other words, whether someone says an event is stressful or not. And obviously, that’s entirely subjective.
There are some very official sounding organizations that conduct surveys like the The American Psychological Association (APA) and the Harris Poll, that essentially codify this information making it sound very objective. So, for example, you can go on the APA website and look up statistics on what people find most stressful and you’ll see their annual “Stress in America Survey.”
The APA has been tracking stress in the US for about ten years now and during that entire time job stress and financial stress have ranked 1 and 2 on the list. But this data is entirely based on people’s opinions of what they find to be most stressful.
In her TED TALK, “How to Make Stress Your Friend,” Dr. Kelly McGonigal, a health psychology professor at Stanford, raised quite a stir when she quoted a study that said stress isn't harmful to your health: Only having the belief that stress is harmful is what makes it harmful.
More:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/01/05/is-stress-subjective/#385c3aef1912
