How You Know When You're Stressed: Self-Evaluations of Stress

One hundred participants were asked to list 5 cues that they use to determine their level of stress. The responses were tabulated, and the 25 most frequent responses were retained for further analyses. A sorting task was used to assess the relationships among cues, and a similarity matrix was developed from the responses. This similarity matrix was subjected to cluster analysis. The results yielded a taxonomy of cues to stress.