FIGURE 12.9 Stress and the Common Cold Are you more likely to catch a cold if you’re under a great deal of stress? In a classic series of studies, Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues (1991, 1993) measured levels of psychological stress in healthy volunteers, then exposed them to a cold virus. They found an almost perfect relationship between the level of stress and the rate of infection. The higher the volunteers’ psychological stress level, the higher the rate of respiratory infection.
Source: Cohen & others (1993).