Stokols completed his doctoral studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in social psychology where he also took minors in Sociology, City and Regional Planning, and participated in research projects at the School of Public Health.
[citation needed] In 1973, Stokols joined the Program in Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine as an assistant professor.
His studies of behavioral and health responses to urban stressors[9] have focused on the impacts of airport noise on children attending elementary schools under the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport,[10] and the effects of spatial density, crowding,[11][12] residential relocation[13] and rush hour automobile commuting on adult populations.
[14] His research on the environmental psychology of the Internet has examined the relationships between individuals' perceptions of information overload from both place-based and cyber sources on their subjective well-being.
[28][29] Stokols serves as faculty advisor for doctoral and master's degree students within the School of Social Ecology, the Program in Public Health, and the M.D.-Ph.D.