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70 free Stress trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This stress trivia quiz covers everything from what happens in your adrenal glands when a deadline lands to the people who worked it out. Expect questions on cortisol and adrenaline, the fight-or-flight response, the general adaptation syndrome, the Holmes and Rahe life-events scale, the Yerkes-Dodson curve, burnout, PTSD and the strange condition known as broken heart syndrome. There is history too: the endocrinologist who borrowed the word 'stress' from engineering, the Harvard physiologist who coined 'fight or flight', the doctor who drank bacteria to prove ulcers were not caused by stress, and the reasons the British Army banned the phrase 'shell shock'. Plus the lighter side: stress balls, treadmill stress tests, bank stress tests and Stress Awareness Month. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer has been checked against a reliable source, so the quiz works for a psychology class, a workplace wellbeing session or a quiz night. Nothing here is medical advice; it is just good trivia.
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Q 01Which Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist introduced the word "stress" to biology in the 1930s?
Hans Selye
He spent most of his career in Montreal, and his 1956 bestseller for general readers turned the idea into a household word.
Q 02Before biologists borrowed it, the word "stress" was a technical term in which field?
Physics
In engineering it still means the internal distribution of force within a material, and the biological sense was an analogy that stuck.
Q 03The endocrinologist who introduced "stress" to biology was born in 1907 in which city?
Vienna
He was born in Austria-Hungary and later became a fixture of McGill University and the Université de Montréal.
Q 04In the general adaptation syndrome, what final stage follows the alarm and resistance phases?
Exhaustion
The model was meant to describe any organism's non-specific response to a threat, and its author was blunt that the last stage ends in death if the stressor never lets up.
Q 05What term did the father of stress research coin for positive, beneficial stress?
Eustress
The prefix is Greek for good; the unpleasant kind he called distress, and he argued the body's response is the same either way.
Q 06Which 1956 bestseller by Hans Selye brought his general adaptation syndrome ideas to the public?
The Stress of Life
It was written for doctors and lay readers alike; the other three titles are real stress books by other authors.
Q 07Which Harvard physiologist coined 'fight or flight' and wrote The Wisdom of the Body (1932)?
Walter Cannon
He also pioneered feeding patients bismuth and barium so their digestive tracts would show up on X-rays.
Q 08In what year was the fight-or-flight response first described?
1914
The Harvard physiologist who described it wrote of "the necessities of fighting or flight" the following year.
Q 09In fight-or-flight, the adrenal medulla releases norepinephrine and which other hormone?
Epinephrine
It speeds the heart, opens the airways and shunts blood toward the muscles.
Q 10What happens to the pupils during the fight-or-flight response?
They dilate
More light means better vision for spotting the threat; at the same time blood is pulled away from the gut, which is why fear kills appetite.
Q 11Popular extensions of "fight or flight" add which two further F responses?
Freeze and fawn
Freezing is the deer-in-headlights response; fawning means appeasing the threat. Some versions include faint as well.
Q 12Which branch of the autonomic nervous system drives the fight-or-flight response?
Sympathetic
Its opposite number takes over once the threat passes, and the two are constantly trading control like a see-saw.
Q 13The parasympathetic nervous system is often summarised by which four-word phrase?
Rest and digest
The cheekier version is "feed and breed". It slows the heart and gets digestion moving again once the threat has passed.
Q 21In 1901 Jokichi Takamine patented a purified extract from the adrenal glands. What was it?
Adrenaline
Parke, Davis & Co trademarked it in the US as Adrenalin; today the same drug, as epinephrine, is what an auto-injector delivers during anaphylaxis.
Q 22Cortisone was first identified by Edward Kendall and Harold Mason at which US institution?
The Mayo Clinic
Kendall shared the 1950 Nobel Prize with Philip Hench and Tadeusz Reichstein for working out the structure and function of the adrenal hormones.
Q 23On the 1967 Holmes and Rahe stress scale, which life event scores the maximum 100 points?
Death of a spouse
Q 14Cortisol, the body's main stress hormone, is produced mainly by which part of the adrenal gland?
The cortex
Specifically the zona fasciculata, the middle layer of the cortex. The medulla, by contrast, makes the fast-acting catecholamines.
Q 15Cortisol raises blood sugar and has what effect on the immune system?
Suppresses it
That is why synthetic versions such as hydrocortisone are used to calm inflammation, and why chronic stress leaves people more prone to infections.
Q 16In a healthy person, cortisol levels are naturally highest at what time?
Early morning
The peak comes just before or at waking, part of the daily rhythm that helps get you out of bed.
Q 17Which pituitary hormone signals the adrenal glands to make cortisol?
ACTH
Adrenocorticotropic hormone is the middle link of the HPA axis, the chain of command from hypothalamus to pituitary to adrenals.
Q 18Chronically excessive cortisol produces which named condition?
Cushing's syndrome
Its opposite, too little cortisol, is Addison's disease, which John F. Kennedy lived with for most of his adult life.
Q 19The stress-response chain known as the HPA axis links the hypothalamus, the pituitary and which glands?
The adrenals
The end product is cortisol, and one of its jobs is to dampen the immune system so the body can spend energy elsewhere.
Q 20Where in the body are the adrenal glands located?
Above the kidneys
The name says so: it comes from the Latin ad, near, and ren, kidney. The right one is pyramidal, the left crescent-shaped.
Divorce scores 73 and a vacation 13. Rack up more than 300 points in a year and the scale says you are at risk of illness.
Q 24On the Holmes and Rahe scale, getting married scores how many life-change units?
50
The scale treats any big change as stressful, happy or not; a major holiday scores 12 and a vacation 13.
Q 25Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe built their 1967 stress scale from records of 5,000 what?
Medical patients
They were looking for whether the pile-up of life events in the months before illness could predict who got sick.
Q 26The Yerkes-Dodson law, published in 1908, describes the relationship between performance and what?
Arousal
Performance rises with pressure only up to a point, then falls away, giving the famous inverted-U curve. The original subjects were dancing mice.
Q 27Which German-born American psychologist used the term "burn-out" in a 1974 paper titled "Staff Burn-Out"?
Herbert Freudenberger
He was describing volunteers at a free clinic, himself included; Maslach later built the questionnaire that made the concept measurable.
Q 28How does the WHO's ICD-11 classify burnout?
An occupational phenomenon
It sits in the chapter on factors influencing health status, not among the diseases, which surprised many headline writers in 2019.
Q 29Besides reduced accomplishment and emotional exhaustion, what is the Maslach Burnout Inventory's third dimension?
Depersonalization
Depersonalization means an unfeeling, impersonal response toward the people you are supposed to be helping.
Q 30The Japanese word karoshi translates as what?
Overwork death
The first recognised case was reported in 1969, when a 29-year-old shipping worker died of a stroke.