Pressure as a Form of Stress and its Relationship to Psychological Symptomatology

Although the idea that change represents the core of stress has been widely criticized, little has been done to devise new approaches to the assessment of life stress. The present article describes an effort to define, measure, and examine the impact of a conceptually different kind of stress—pressure. The Pressure Inventory (PI) was constructed to measure this form of stress and to investigate its relationship to adaptational outcomes in a retrospective study using an undergraduate sample. The PI yielded better prediction of psychological symptomatology than did the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), even after the variance it shared with the SRRS was partialed out. Implications for improving the measurement of stress and understanding its social context are discussed.