As part of their research, Bricker and Sarason developed an Air Transit Stress Scale to gauge how upset people become when they encounter 11 typical situations faced by travelers.
Anxious people are more likely to suffer air-travel stress.
The risk climbs for men who are also anger-prone and for women who fly to unfamiliar destinations. Anxious women who fly to unfamiliar destinations are at the greatest risk due to concerns about their personal safety. That kind of information could be useful to employers when deciding who to send on business trips and where to send them, says Sarason. I think it's really important for them to know who's going to have trouble and who's going to handle it. Sarason says a cartoon by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's David Horsey, '75, captures the kind of conditions that led to the study.