Stress Research : An Indian perspective by D M Pestonjee (Working Paper, No. 1984/522)

The concept of stress was equated with "force, pressure or strain" exerted upon a material object or person which resists these forces and attempts upon a material object or person which resists these forces and attempts to maintain its original state. The use of the concept in this fashion encouraged physicists and engineers into adopting it to suit their ends. The terms stress and strain are used synonymously in a non scientific fashion. The popularity of the stress concept has dwindled in the physiological field, where it first started and the use of stress terminology continues to flourish in the physiological and social fields, and during the past 15 years the term stress has come into wide use in relation to work organisations. Thus in physics, stress is a force which acts on a body to produce strain. The various changes in the physiological functions in response to evocative agents denote stress. In psychology stress refers to a state of the organism resulting from some interaction with the environment.