"

Chapter 8: Fear, Anxiety, and Stress

Dimensional View of Stress

Stress is an unfolding process of emotions, so the dimensional models wouldn’t necessarily account for stress. But the types of emotions people experience during a stressful experience could be explained by the dimensional models. It is interesting to note that “stressed” is an emotion on Russell’s (1980) circumplex model, while stress does not appear on Watson and Tellegen’s (1985) model (see Figure 25).

Figure 25
Russel’s (1980) model on right and Watson and Tellegen’s (1985) model on the left
Two circular diagrams comparing emotional models by Watson and Tellegen left (1985) and Russel right (1980), with emotions marked and highlighted.

Long Description

The image presents two circular diagrams side by side comparing emotional models. The left diagram is Watson and Tellegen’s (1985) model and the right one is Russel’s (1980) model. Both circles are divided into four quadrants labeled with emotions. Each quadrant is marked by two axes: one vertical labeled Activation-Deactivation and one horizontal labeled Pleasant-Unpleasant.

In the left circle, emotions like fear and anger are on the upper unpleasant section, whereas happiness and excitement are on the upper pleasant part. Sadness and lethargy are in the lower unpleasant section, while serenity and calm are in the lower pleasant part. Certain emotions like “stressed” are highlighted with green and red circles to denote concepts such as “Threat” in green and “Challenge” in red.

The right circle mirrors this setup with similarly labeled axes, but specific emotions like anger, disgust, and sadness are highlighted in red circles, while excited, happiness, and relieved are highlighted in green circles.

 
Note. Threat emotions in color green and challenge emotions in color red. Left image adapted from “Independence and bipolarity in the structure of current affect,” by L. Feldman Barrett and J.A. Russell, 1998, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(4), p. 970 (Independence and bipolarity in the structure of current affect.). Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association. Right image adapted from “Toward a consensual structure of mood.,” by D.T. Watson and A. Tellegen, 1985, Psychological Bulletin, 98(2), p. 221 (Toward a consensual structure of mood.). Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association.