Rate of Change and Stress: A Test of the "Future Shock" Thesis

Abstract

A number of students of social change have assumed or asserted that change is inherently stressful for humans. Actual evidence, however, makes the relationship problematic, suggesting that rate and kind of change rather than change per se generates stress. This study was a test of the future shock thesis that relates stress to rate of change. It was hypothesized that stress is directly related to perceived rate of change. Further, it was assumed that perceived desirability of and control over change would be intervening variables, moderating the relationship between rate and stress. Results lend support to all hypothesized relationships-except that involving perceived control. That is, stress is positively related to rate, although this relationship is moderated when the change is perceived to be desirable. Students of social change have often assumed or asserted that change is inherently stressful for humans. Social change has been called an ordeal (Hoffer, 1952), a crisis (Nisbet, 1969), a foreign and unwanted agent (La Piere, 1965), and as that which almost always involves some degree of frustration (Marlowe,