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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences pp 1–5Cite as

General Adaptation Syndrome

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Synonyms

Stress syndrome; “Syndrome of being sick”; “Syndrome of response to injury”

Definition

General adaptation syndrome denotes a nonspecific and predictable bodily response to various external agents (“stressors”) and consists of three successive phases: alarm reaction, stage of resistance, and stage of exhaustion.

Introduction

The term of general adaptation syndrome was coined by Hans Selye (1907–1982), an Austro-Hungarian endocrinologist. Selye worked at McGill University in Montreal when he made his initial and somewhat serendipitous observations. In a pursuit of identifying novel sex hormones, he discovered that ovarian extracts administered to rats evoked a triad of pathologic changes (adrenal enlargement, thymo-lymphatic tissue atrophy, and gastrointestinal ulcerations). Intriguingly, administration of placental, pituitary, and other tissue extracts as well as a large variety of physical and chemical irritants induced similar changes. In 1936, Selye published his early...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    György Baffy

Authors
  1. György Baffy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to György Baffy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Julie Schermer

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Baffy, G. (2017). General Adaptation Syndrome. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_753-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_753-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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