Richard J. Lazarus

Richard J. Lazarus was a renowned psychologist known for his work on stress and emotion. He developed the cognitive-mediational theory of emotion, which suggests that our emotional responses are influenced by how we interpret or appraise a situation. In other words, our feelings depend on our thoughts about an event, not just the event itself. His research emphasized that understanding our personal evaluation of situations helps explain why different people react differently to the same event. Lazarus’s work has significantly advanced how we understand human stress, coping mechanisms, and emotional processes.