Interpreting causes of personal stress with 'cheese'.

摘要

Attempts to identify the root causes of individual stress have been made for centuries. The result has been the development of a myriad of approaches and explanations as to the cause of stress by psychologists, educators, researchers, and self-help authors. Each approach carries a degree of validity in the context that individuals experience stress in different fashions and therefore respond more or less successfully to the management of that stress based on the approach taken. This activity helps students to understand the principles used to explain stress espoused by a variety of authors. In the self-help book Who Moved My Cheese?, students will hear about 4 mice (Sniff and Scurry who do not think much about change but rather travel through life by instinct; Hem, who is paralyzed by the thought of change; and Haw, who is nervous about change but takes some risks and finds that change can be beneficial) in search of a new location for cheese after their long-time source runs dry. Using the fictional characters, students learn to recognize the variety of behavior patterns taken by individuals to avoid, ignore, and address conflict.