Demonstrative Study On Theory Of "Multi-factor-effect System Of Stress"

With the quick social development and increasingly intensive competition, people face more and stronger stress and mental stimulation, resulting in psychological and physiological diseases. The theory of psychological stress helps explain the relation between psychological social factors and health condition. In the recent half century, this theory has become a hot research topic in clinic psychology, since it is a crucial link connecting psychological sociology ingredient to diseases."Stress" is a developing concept. The concept and related theoretical models include follows:1. One model stems from Hooke's Law on elasticity and treats reaction as a stimulator leading to strain of individuals.2. A second reaction model sources from physiology and medical science, which treats stress as a response to stimulations.3. The third model focuses on the intermediary variables (such as cognition appraisal and coping styles) between stimulator and reaction. The majority of proponents of this theory are psychologist.4. The last model suggests that reaction is a multi-factor process. It includes stimulator, reaction and intermediary ingredients. Therefore this theory is comprehensive with all the above models involved.The history of stress theory indicates that it is getting depth and improvement. The studies within this framework witness a trend of comprehensive research using multi-factors. The concept of "stress" has developed into a multi-factor comprehensive concept, including life events, cognition appraisal, coping style, social support, personality traits, psychosomatic reaction and as well related psychological, sociological and biological factors. However, the distinctions between these stress factors are blurry. There has not been an unambiguous conclusion on the role that each variable plays in the psychological stress process or the rules of reaction.Many contemporary studies investigate the effects of psychological society factors on health from the angle of reaction process. They take the changes in psychosomatic health (e.g. emotional reaction and psychosomatic symptoms) as the result of stress process or the reaction to the stimulation. While taking various psychological society factors (e.g. life events, cognition appraisal, copying style and social support etc.) as stress related factors, the researchers are able to conduct multi-factor studies. Each of the theories mentioned at the beginning has unique point of view, though none of them can completely explain the essence of stress. Nonetheless they provide us with recognition information on the stress from all sorts of directions and contribute to the construction and improvement of contemporary concept of "stress".Based on multi-factor researches of psychological stress, professor Qianjin Jiang proposes the theory of "multi-factor-effect system of psychological stress". He argues that stress is not as a simple process as cause-to-result or stimulation-to-reaction. In stead, stress is a multi-factor system including stimulator, reaction and all other related factors, adjust to or control each other. This theory refines the concept of reaction as an integrated system, rooting the biopsychosocial model in a system framework. It is a multi-factor, multi-cause, and multi-effect model. Albeit the innovation of this theory, no studies have provided comprehensive evidence to prove it. Thus all kinds of studies based on this theory, especially empirical studies along the line of positive propositions, are in a great demand.With the aforementioned background, this study aims at improving ourunderstanding of the means and rules that the stress related factors react to each other. In this study, I attempt to examine the deep psychological mechanisms of stress by using path analysis, suggesting that stress is not necessarily a single process from stimulator to reaction, but it is rather a system with multi-factor-effect to each other. This study contributes the literature by providing a new perspective to view stress.This study uses survey data of 556 med...