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This paper chronicles the psychophysical principles which led to the development of the Ratings of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale by Borg in 1970 and a concise, comprehensive summary of research on the scale. The current status of research is examined by discussion of several important areas within the field including psychophysical scaling, scale development, psychometrics, and applications. Physiological and psychological approaches are examined and the need for an interdisciplinary approach is addressed.

Child abusers and potential child abusers tend to be more physiologically reactive to child-related stressful stimuli. A study using at-risk and low-risk matched parent groups was conducted to determine whether at-risk mothers show sympathetic nervous system reaction to non-child-related stressors. A stressful film, a car horn, unsolvable anagrams and a cold pressor task were the stressors used. Results revealed that physical child abuse may be brought about by generalized sympathetic reaction to child-related and non-child-related stressors.

This study examined the correlations among stressors, psychological strain, and behavioral reactions in a national sample of 1785 resident physicians, 27 to 33 years old. Consistent with previous studies of resident physicians, analysis showed that those experiencing high job-related stressors experienced high psychological strain in both their personal and professional lives. Stressors were also correlated with behavioral reactions. Hierarchical regression suggested that psychological strain mediated the relations between two of the stressors and behavioral reactions to some extent. This was consistent with recent research suggesting that psychological reactions may mediate the relations between stressors and outcomes. Further research on both medical residency and the stressing process was suggested.

Since training in deep muscular relaxation is common to most behavioral treatments for anxiety and tension-related disorders, muscle tension measures, such as electromyography (EMG), would provide valuable information as to the efficacy of these treatments. In the past, however, the majority of clinical reports on behavioral treatments employing muscular relaxation have based results primarily on self-rated outcome measures, despite evidence in the literature of a lack of correspondence between self-ratings and physiological measures of muscle tension. An experiment was performed on 20 normal subjects comparing self-ratings of anxiety and frontalis muscle tension with frontalis EMG before and after a 15-min. relaxation period accompanied by frontalis EMG biofeedback. Analysis showed that the self-ratings of anxiety and frontalis tension correlated significantly both before and after the relaxation period. However, no correlation was observed between self-rated anxiety or frontalis tension and frontalis EMG either before or after the relaxation period. The relaxation period had no significant effect on the dependent measures. It is suggested that, if people are unable to report accurately on their somatic states, then physiological outcome measures, such as EMG, would be preferable to self-rated measures in assessments of relaxation training procedures.

Five patients who were undergoing surgery were instructed to tense their forehead muscles. On 11 out of 12 trials, the patient's muscle tension was greater during the suggestion period than during the nonsuggestion condition.

Previous studies have shown that increased stress, as measured by life-change scales, is associated with poor performance. The present study examined the effect of stress on the performance of 86 adult male runners in a half marathon. Subjects responded to a questionnaire from which several independent variables were derived. These variables were entered in a stepwise multiple regression to predict race times. The combination of age, weekly mileage, and number of races previously entered yielded a significant multiple R. However, stress was not significantly related to race times, and subsequent statistical analyses were carried out to explain this lack of significance. It was suggested that the effects of stress on athletic performance may be reduced by physical and psychological variables associated with exercise or that race performance is too well determined by physical variables to be affected by life changes.

In Experiment 1, male rats were exposed to either aggressive (i.e., alpha) or nonaggressive con-specific colonies and tested 24 h later, with or without alpha odors, for freezing behavior and burying of a wall prod that had been the source of a brief electric shock. The results indicated that prior defeat experience and the presence of alpha odors alone during testing had no significant effects, but the combination of prior defeat and alpha-odor testing significantly decresed burying and increased freezing behavior. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of noncontact exposure to a cat, as a predatory stressor, during subsequent prod-shock tests involving the presence or absence of cat odors. Exposure to a cat failed to disrupt later prod burying and did not produce freezing. However, the presence of cat odors during testing significantly reduced the amount of defensive burying, without resulting in an increment in freezing. In Experiment 3, rats were given 1, 5, or 30 inescapable preshocks in the presence of either cat odors or a hedonically neutral citronella odor and were tested 24 h later for prod burying and freezing with or without these odors. Both the cat and the citronella odors resulted in a significant reduction in burying and an increase in freezing for rats given 5 and 30 preshocks and tested in the presence of these respective conditioned odors. For the groups that were given 5 preshocks, preshock and later testing in the presence of cat odors resulted in significantly less prod burying and more freezing than for rats that were preshocked and tested in the presence of citronella. The findings of these three ethoexperimental studies are discussed in terms of the learned-helplessness theory, the stress-coping-fear-defense (SCFD) theory, and the concept of selective CS-US associability.

A field study of 109 clerical workers explored work stations' characteristics as potential occupational stressors. Contrary to predictions, intrusions from atmospheric conditions and intrusions from other employees were not consistently related to negative reactions. As predicted, however, the evidence suggested that intrusions were more strongly associated with reactions to employees' work stations than with general reactions to their work. Results also indicated that employees reporting high role overload had relatively fewer negative reactions to hotness and density. The findings provide modest support for the detachment hypothesis, which predicts that overworked employees concentrate harder on their work than other employees and ignore intrusions stemming from their physical environment. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)