APFCC+-+Selye

APFCC: Hans Selye

 * Theorist ** : Hans Selye
 * Study ** **of**: General Adaptation Theory
 * Year ** : 1956

Developed a theory based on the immune systems of lab rats after continued stress. Found three stages to stress: Alarm, Resistance and Exhaustion.
 * Summary: **

To study environmental stressors upon the immune system
 * Aim: **

Selye studied lab rats who were injected everyday with hormones related to another experiment.
 * Procedures: **

He found that regardless of the substance the rats were injected with they still developed the same symptoms and often died if the injections continued.
 * Findings: **

He concluded that the symptoms were due to environmental stressors. Once placed under stress the body would release the hormone Cortisol. The stages of release for different hormones were documented in his General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).
 * Conclusions: **

His work‍ was mainly conducted on lab rats, which make it harder for the results to be generalised to humans ‍. This also raises ethical issues. His system also doesn’t take into consideration the fact that humans are able to reason with environmental stressors, and how that fits into the cycle. It is hard to generalise this results to all of human kind as each person has a different reaction to different situations.
 * Criticisms: **

Note that this does NOT mean the results cannot be applied to humans, just that they can only be applied 'to some extent'. Page 193 (Hill)
 * Resources: **