The Effect of Stress on Mood
Stress, a state of mental strain caused by aversive circumstances, is extremely common in college students as a result of coming of age, homework, career searching, and new environments. Testing over 40 different emotions, such as anxious, panicky, sluggish, etc., our study examined the effects of stress on commonly found moods. Participants used the POMS scale to rate their individual mood for each emotion on a 5-part scale of “not at all” to “extremely.” Participants were then shown a video filled with anxious statements and asked to take the POMS scale again. We hypothesized that the anxious video would cause participants to rank higher on aversive emotions, such as anxious and on edge, and lower on positive emotions such as proud and confident. In doing so, future studies can then find relationships between specific mood groups and stress in order to find coping mechanisms to improve the mental health of students and others