COGNITIVE AND CULTURAL ASPECTS OF ACADEMIC STRESS: A REVIEW

Rapid developments in the field of science and technology have made the world more competitive. This competitiveness has made student life more stressful. Stressful academics have a direct impact on cognitive impairment, however there has not been an extensive amount of empirical studies documenting this phenomenon. The Indian education system is known to impart lot of stress among students. A thorough literature search has shown that superstitious beliefs can act as a moderator in some situations while in others an inverse relationship was found. Thus, the present paper encompasses the previous literature conducted till date on cognitive deficits and superstitious beliefs related to academic stress across the globe, focusing more on Indian studies. An extensive literature search with keywords academic stress, coping strategies and superstition has yielded many studies. These articles were collected mainly from online databases EBSCO and ProQuest. The critical issues for future research have been identified and discussed based on the shortcomings from previous literature.