Experimental studies of psychological stress in man

This study was designed to further explore the experimental arousal of fear of death or injury to self. It attempted to correct for this shortcoming. In addition, a certain amount of clinical, projective, and demographic data was collected in an attempt to study the characteristics distinguishing effective from ineffective performers. The obvious logical procedure is to expose individuals experimentally to a hostile environment and monitor them throughout the duration of their response to this environment. It is argued that research on the determinants of effectiveness of performance under psychological stress, such as that during combat, must induce in subjects cognitive response resulting in the acceptance of a simulated threat as genuine. Clinical observations on subjects are presented, along with a brief description of differences between more effective and less effective performers. Evidence is also offered to indicate that the physiological and performance variables are nonlinear functions of the mean perceived subjective feelings aroused by the situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)