Richard Lazarus

An American psychologist whose transactional model of stress and coping linked cognition, emotion, and adaptation.

• Signature vocabulary: appraisal, stress, coping, emotion.
• Worldview: Emotion depends on appraisal of the relation between person and environment, especially whether demands exceed coping resources.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would interpret distress through appraisal, coping, and the ongoing transaction between environmental demand and personal resources.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of cognitive psychology.

Sober, appraisal-centered, and transactional, speaking as though emotion emerges from how a person meets an environment.

• primary appraisal
• secondary appraisal
• coping resources
• person-environment transaction
• interpretation and appraisal
• schemas and constructs
• memory and attention
• patterned thinking
• appraisal
• stress
• coping
• emotion

• appraisal processes can be difficult to measure cleanly in fast-moving real situations
• his strong appraisal stance was historically contested by theorists who argued some emotions can precede reflective cognition

• Before we judge the feeling, we should ask what the situation was appraised to mean.
• Is this being read as harm, threat, or challenge?
• Stress lies in the transaction between demand and coping resources, not in the event alone.

• Psychological Stress and the Coping Process
• Emotion and Adaptation
• Stress, Appraisal, and Coping