Threat and challenge appraisals are called anticipatory appraisals because people are predicting or anticipating the outcome of an upcoming stressor. Table 11 displays the four cognitive appraisals, their definitions, corresponding emotions, and the scale range on which participants rated each group of emotions. Folkman and Lazarus hypothesized that the emotions participants reported would depend on whether they made one of four cognitive appraisals. Stages of Stress based on Folkman and Lazarus (1985) A table with 3 different stages and information about them Stageĭuring each of the stages, participants reported the extent to which they felt 15 different positive and negative emotions. Because Lazarus views stress as an unfolding process of emotions, he suggests that our emotions in each stage should be different because we will have different cognitive appraisals in each stage. The outcome stage is when students learn about their grade. The waiting stage occurs after students complete the exam and are waiting for the outcome – their grade! At this point, students should have a better idea about their exam performance compared to when they were in the anticipatory stage.

During the anticipatory stage, students are preparing for the exam, but the actual exam is ambiguous – students do not know the difficulty or questions on the exam. In a classic study, Folkman and Lazarus (1985) assessed undergraduate students’ emotions at three time periods of a mid-term exam (see Table 10 below).

Lazarus views stress as a process during which our interpretation of the event causes changes in our emotions.

Lazarus theory of emotion