ABSTRACT
Despite extensive study of stress and anxiety, many researchers remain dismayed at the large amount of interindividual and intraindividual variability in response to challenging situations. One attempt to solve this problem of too much unexplained variance has been the use of an interactional approach that assesses how the characteristics of the individual and those of the situation work simultaneously and in interaction to produce behavior in a stress-causing situation. This chapter suggests a cognitive paradigm that emphasizes the role of moderator variables, both individual and situational, as a method of better understanding this interaction.
