Question 3 Example Answer

Occupational stress is a response to factors at work that threaten satisfaction of important needs and goals. One personality characteristic is the neuroticism trait, which is a person's tendency towards emotional instability. This characteristic will influence an individual's vulnerability to occupational stress in a positive way. That is , a person high in neuroticism will be more easily stressed by demanding situations that arise from their jobs, their different roles in family and society, and the "weight" of the load they must carry at a particular time. For example, if a person has high neuroticism, a demanding job as a postal worker sorting mail, a problem with the spouse, and a busy time of the year (i.e., income tax day on April 14th) will combine to stress this person out more than the person in the same situation who has low neuroticism, ceterus paribus. This person will become alarmed more quickly, resist stress less successfully, and ultimately be exhausted by stress at an earlier point than someone who is less neurotic.

Data from Michigan undergraduates show that a high proportion of the variance in students' level of stress is due to personality characteristics. Assuming I collected the same data from a random sample of Ann Arbor residents, I would expect that more of the variance in levels of stress would be due to situational variables as opposed to personality. The university population is more homogeneous than the Ann Arbor residents' population. Although university students vary in background, culture, and roles (outside of the classroom), they are put in much more similar situations. For example, taking a sample of stress from today and this week, university students will show generally high levels of stress due to the midterms and due to the coming of spring break. In contrast, the level of stress in Ann Arbor residents at random would indeed show high stress with university-affiliated people, such as professors, faculty, and staff, as well as with people who work in the bookstores selling blue books. However, there would also be many residents who are not experiencing relatively much stress, such as a worker at a gas station or at the bike shop. Thus, situational determinants are much more influential in this sampling than in the student sampling, and personality variables take a back seat.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~finholt/Psych360/misc/360mid3.html

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