TITLE:
Clarification of Psychological Change and Development in Stressful Situations
AUTHORS:
Liyang Zhang, Koichiro Aoki, Chieko Kato
KEYWORDS:
Psychological Stress, Eustress/Distress, Stress Response, Text Mining
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.1,
January
28,
2021
ABSTRACT: Previous studies about
stress suggested that stressors are associated with positive feelings when they
are regarded as “challenge”. In such cases, the stressors can contribute to one’s
mental health as eustress related to positive feelings and healthy physical
states. This study conducted a questionnaire in the form of free description
focusing on people’s awareness of stress and mental and physical stress
responses. The purpose of this study is to clarify characteristics of stressful
situations which lead to positive psychological change and development by analyzing descriptive data. Free
description acquired from the questionnaire was analyzed by means of
co-occurrence network and self-organizing maps. The analysis of the free-description
revealed the characteristics of eustress and distress, stress regarded as
threat or challenge, and thoughts, behaviors,
and situations in the process of changing the evaluation of stress. From
the results of analysis, it can be said that even in a stress situation that feels like a “threat”, the situation can be re-evaluated
as a “challenge” by causing a positive psychological transformation that
raises confidence in problem sol-ving.