In the last month, how often have you…
0 of 10 answered1…felt that things were piling up faster than you could deal with them?
2…felt confident about your ability to handle personal problems?
3…felt nervous, tense or on edge?
4…felt that important parts of your life were out of your hands?
5…felt that things were going your way?
6…snapped at people over small things?
7…been able to calm yourself down when things got tense?
8…found it hard to switch your mind off at night?
9…felt on top of things?
10…felt overwhelmed by everything you had to do?
What perceived stress is, in short
Perceived stress is how unpredictable, uncontrollable and overloaded your life feels to you. It isn't a count of stressful events: two people facing the same deadline can feel very differently about it, and it's the feeling that tracks health effects best.
That idea comes from Sheldon Cohen's Perceived Stress Scale (1983). This test uses the same format, with a month-long time frame, a 0–4 frequency scale and reverse-scored coping questions, but our own wording, so the bands are a rough guide rather than published norms.
By What's Your IQ · Reviewed 4 Oct 2026- Format
- 10 questions, 0 (never) to 4 (very often)
- Time frame
- The last month
- Score
- 0–40; 4 coping questions reverse-scored
- Guide bands
- 0–13 low · 14–26 moderate · 27–40 high
NOT ALL STRESS IS BAD
Some pressure helps. Too much, for too long, doesn't.
Drag the slider through low to extreme pressure. The inverted-U curve is a simplification of a 1908 animal study, but it captures something most people recognise: a little pressure sharpens you, and a lot wears you down.
BoredFocusedOverwhelmed
ZONEFocused
Enough pressure to engage you, not enough to swamp you. This is where stress is helpful: alert, motivated and productive.In your body:Faster heart rate and sharper attention, followed by recovery.
More coldsin volunteers with higher stress scoresIn a classic experiment, healthy adults were given nasal drops containing a cold virus. The higher their perceived stress beforehand, the more likely they were to develop a cold.2
1908The inverted U. Yerkes and Dodson found mice learned a hard task best at moderate, not high, levels of electric shock. Later writers turned this into the stress curve above.4
1967Counting life events. Holmes and Rahe scored 43 events, from a spouse's death to a holiday, by how much readjustment they demand.3
1983Perception over events. Cohen and colleagues argued how stressful life feels predicts health better than a checklist of events, and built the Perceived Stress Scale.1
1991Stress and the immune system. The cold-virus study in the panel was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and became one of the best-known demonstrations of stress affecting health.2
- Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385–396.
- Cohen, S., Tyrrell, D. A. J., & Smith, A. P. (1991). Psychological stress and susceptibility to the common cold. New England Journal of Medicine, 325(9), 606–612.
- Holmes, T. H., & Rahe, R. H. (1967). The Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11(2), 213–218.
- Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482.