The role of psychological set in psychosocial stress

Objectively equal social stress may produce very different changes in different personalities, depending upon the subjective interpretation of the external situation. On investigation of the factors responsible for this subjective evaluation we found the psychological set to be of particular importance. We therefore compared some psychological sets of hypertensives, neurotics and adjusted normotensives. Following psychotherapy aiming at changing some of these psychological attitudes we were able to see improvement of the high blood-pressure.