ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the research on stress relevant to the relationship between attention, information processing and unpleasant emotion. It considers cognitive theory of stress as an interaction between person and environment, the roles of personality and social influences, and the relationship between stress and objective measures of attention. The relationship between cognitive failures and appraisal has yet to be investigated; an unpublished study of dispositional self-focus and appraisal. Overall, much of error questionnaire data may be explained by supposing that negative beliefs about personal cognitive efficiency are primarily anchored in the person's general self-appraisals rather than in objective performance level. The readers have seen, too, that stress may influence everyday errors and cognitive efficiency, although self-reports of error are of limited validity, because of limited conscious awareness of cognitive processes, and contamination of error questionnaires by overall appraisal of personal competence. Two categories of appraisal are important in determining emotional experience and influencing subsequent coping efforts: primary and secondary appraisal.
