Is stress all in the mind? It is argued that stress is a response and begins in the mind as an evaluation between our perceived demands and our perceived coping ability and when these do not match it triggers a psychological and physiological response. Stress symptoms can affect your body, mind and behavior. In this essay we will review two research studies that examine the relationship between physiology and behavior in stress. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One research method was Freidman and Rosenman's investigation of the link between Type A behavior pattern and heart disease. The conventional Type A person is ambitious, competitive and time-conscious, Type B personalities have the same level of ambition but do so in a non-competitive and relaxed way. Friedman and Rosenman conducted a study of 1,000 California men with Type A or Type B personalities over the course of nine years to see if their personality affected their stress levels. They found that Type A behavior increases vulnerability to heart disease as 257 men who took part in the program died from a heart attack, of which 70% of them had Type A. Although their observations found a strong correlation between type A behavior and heart disease, this does not prove that type A causes cardiovascular disease. This claim has been disputed by critics for numerous reasons, firstly the Type A personality varies too much and it is difficult to determine if a person has it, they also state that his stress levels were more likely linked to negative emotions such as frustration and anger which are not permanent characteristics of someone's personality also because other similar studies have failed to show a connection between the two. The sample size and practicality of the experiment are good as it was tested on a large number of people and the conditions of the observations, and demand characteristics are unlikely to alter the individual's results. The sample used was not that good as it lacked generalization as all participants were men, aged between 39 and 59 and were from California, this only represents a small fraction of the population and does not represent the population as a whole. There is also little evidence to suggest that stress levels are different between males and females. Another research method that attempted to establish a relationship between stress and illness was Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe's social readjustment rating scale. They examined the medical records of 5,000 patients and found that they had experienced major life events shortly before becoming ill. They then created a scale that measured the amount of stress caused by 43 different life events by assessing the degree of social adaptation required, for example the death of a spouse is rated 100 as it would require a substantial readjustment compared to a minor law violation which is worth 12 They gave the SRRS to 2,500 American sailors to determine how many life events occurred to each of them in the past 6 months and recorded each one's score. Over the next 6 months, they also recorded each participant's health status and found a positive correlation of +0.118 between the SRRS score and illness scores, so the frequency of illness increased with the score measured on the scale. The evidence they produced demonstrated a correlation between stress levels and illness that could contribute to a set of.