Author Description

This interdisciplinary work addresses the psychology of stress and its effect on health. Contributors offer diverse perspectives on stress and its relations to public health and epidemiology, medical sociology, social psychiatry, experimental and clinical psychology, nursing studies, and animal physiology. Provided is an assessment of the various ways in which personal control is invoked in a range of health-relevant issues. The current state of knowledge is summarized, and opportunities for new developments are highlighted. Three major sections address the role of control in job settings and its influence on health; the relationship of control to clinical problems such as pain, stress, and heart disease; and the pathways through which control affects behavior and psychobiological responses, from an experimental perspective.