although i enjoy cats i must say that i'm really more of a dog person and a couple years ago or i guess one year ago now my wife got me a a puppy dog for my birthday and she got me a little beagle and his name is hank and like most beagles my my puppy dog hank loves to chase bunny rabbits but it's not so much a friendly game of chase that he's playing with this bunny rabbit hank is actually pretty intent on swallowing the bunny rabbit hole as soon as he catches it and so you might say that in this picture this bunny is experiencing a little bit of stress and in doing so we'd be using that word to describe a threat or a challenge however we might also say that the bunny is is stressed and and now we're talking about the bunny's response and so psychologists try to clarify this this really slippery definition by calling the threatening or challenging event which in this case is the imminent clamping down of my puppy dog's teeth the stressor so stressor so my puppy dog's teeth are the stressor and then the subsequent physical and emotional response would be would be the stress reaction so in this case we're talking about we're talking about the bunny's response that physical and emotional response to the stressor so this whole scene then is what a psychologist might call stress so then stress isn't really just a stimulus or a response rather it's it's kind of the process by which we appraise and and we cope with the environmental threats and challenges so we're appraising the stressor and then our stress reaction is our coping with that environmental threat or the challenge so based off this definition of stress a pretty famous psychologist named richard lazarus he determined that stress arises less from actual events and more from our assessment of those events and the word he used to describe that assessment was our appraisal and then describing this uh this appraisal he suggested that there are really two stages to the cognitive appraisal of stress so you have primary appraisal and primary appraisal is the initial evaluation that that focuses on the threat in the present situation um so what is your appraisal of what's going on right now what threat i'm experiencing right now and there are three categories of response to this primary appraisal for instance one response might be that whatever this uh whatever this perceived threat is is really irrelevant to me maybe it doesn't matter at all that's kind of what irrelevant means just that that i see this threat but it's not um it's not affecting me i'm not in danger at all i don't i don't find this to be particularly important so it's irrelevant another response even better than an irrelevant response might be a benign or a positive response so so benign or positive and maybe maybe this threat this maybe for example a a bird sees a dinosaur stomping through the forest but that dinosaur is actually kind of a positive threat because it's about to take out one of the birds enemies so we might have a benign or a positive response to stress and then the the last kind of major category of response would be that that this event is actually stressful and in this case we're finding that that stressor to be potentially harmful or challenging or threatening so if you if you look back over to this example here if i'm the rabbit in this picture my appraisal of this situation is being like crazy that this is in the stressful category and so if this primary appraisal is negative negative we move forward with the second appraisal so the secondary appraisal involves the evaluation of the individual's ability to cope with the situation so the individual that's perceiving the the stressor what is their material preparedness to deal with that stressor and so you have a further appraisal of harm and what what that's saying is what damage has already been caused so if you're this rabbit no damage has been caused yet but gosh that that beagle puppy is nipping at your heels and so that brings us to the the second category of secondary appraisal and that's a that's an appraisal of the threat so what future damage could be caused and in this case if you're that rabbit lots of damage could be caused for instance my entire leg meat might be pierced by some sharpest puppy dog teeth here in just a couple of seconds so that threat is quite high and then the third category of secondary appraisal the third further assessment is of the challenge and so how that that describes how can the the situation be overcome or conquered and if i'm that rabbit i'm thinking i can run like the dickens and try to make it back to my little rabbit hutch and so this is a pretty straightforward concept for most of the animal world there's a stressor and and then a stress reaction and a stressor and a stress reaction and it goes and and so on but for humans it's a little bit different because as humans we have this higher level of cognitive functioning than the other animals in the world and we have the seemingly unique ability to not only respond to stressors so not only have a stress reaction but also to anticipate stressors and that makes the the whole triggering and the duration and the response to stress really a little more interesting and those are the topics that we're going to cover as we explore the psychology of stress in the next videos