ead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Graves and Lancaster (1994) expand the list of the psychological consequences of stress to include a number of general psychological reactions regardless of the stage model. These general reactions include: emotional outbursts, irritability, depression, hostile and assaultive behavior, a tendency to blame others, anxiousness, suspicion, and feelings of worthlessness.
Graves and Lancaster (1994) further report that stress has debilitative effects on behavior, and that these effects can seriously depress performance in the workplace. Behavioral effects are said to include poor judgement, the tendency to make mistakes, forgetfulness, diminished attention to detail, preoccupation (e.g. day dreaming or "spacing-out"), reduced creativity, increased smoking and/or alcohol usage, increased absenteeism, lethargy, and accident-proneness.
Differential Impact of Stress on Workers
In the work-setting, the effects of stress have been found to vary greatly from worker to worker. For example, Sue, Sue and Sue (1994) report that some workers continue to perform well and to maintain their morale under very stressful conditions while other workers experience debilitation of both morale and job performance under relatively mild conditions of stress. Researchers have attempted to discover factors that contribute to variance in the impact of stress on workers.
Many of the factors believed to contribute to differences are personal. For example, Timm and Peterson (1982) report that some people are more stress-prone than others because of their personality type. Specifically, the authors report that people with Type A personality, (described as impatient,
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