Coping With Stress: A Workshop Framework

The work of the Open University's Coping With Crisis Research and Training Group¹ in running workshops on the theme of coping with stress² is described. A theoretical model of stress and coping is offered, and the structure within which the workshops take place is outlined. The framework described has developed over a period of four years, and is an account not of a finished product but of a continually evolving series of practices.     

Coping With Stress: Getting the Message Across

On a campus of 30,000 students there are many who will not have direct contact with the Personal Counseling Service; yet those students experience and must cope with numerous pressures, which may affect their personal lives and academic progress. To help these students become more aware of stress areas and coping skills we submitted an article to The Addition, the Division of Student Services' semester newspaper. The unusual format for the information was selected to be eye-catching and thus more likely to be read than a regular news-format article.     

Coping With Academic Problems: An Empirical Examination of Brickman et al.'s Models of Helping and Coping1

According to Brickman et al. (1982), people facing problems make attributions about responsibility for causing and for solving the problem. Four models of helping and coping emerge. The present investigation examined 2 key questions. First, do individuals assign responsibility exclusively to the person or external forces, or do they exhibit a pattern of distributing responsibility among several causes? And second, do the models provide superior explanatory power relative to the individual attributions? College students provided information about their assumptions about causes and solutions to their own academic problems. Students revealed all 3 patterns. Furthermore, those making self‐attributions of responsibility for solutions had higher grade point averages (GPAs) than did those making other attributions. Implications for the Brickman et al. analysis and framework are discussed.     

Resilience in the Face of Catastrophe: Optimism, Personality, and Coping in the Kosovo Crisis

Optimism, personality, and coping styles may alter the effects of stressful events through appraisal and stress reduction. The 1999 Kosovo crisis offered an opportunity to test this proposition under real-life, traumatic stress conditions. Dispositional optimism, personality, and coping contributions were predicted based on geographical distance and degree of reported stress for 3 groups: Kosovar refugees, Albanian citizens helping the refugees in Albania, and Albanian immigrants living in the United States. Results showed Kosovars significantly higher on all stress measures, and on maladjustment. Reduced optimism and reduced control coping were related to higher levels of maladjustment. Pessimism and escape coping showed no relation to psychological adjustment. Resilience was related to a combination of higher optimism, extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and control coping, paired with lower neuroticism.     

Adolescent Girls' Coping With Relational Aggression

This study was designed to examine coping strategies for relational aggression. Ninety-eight female middle- and high-school students completed the Revised Ways of Coping Scale (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985) and reported characteristics of a relational aggressive act of which they were the victim and characteristics of their friendship before and after the act. We explored the relationship between characteristics of the relationally aggressive act and the method of coping. Results of the study indicate that the more hurt the girl was by the aggression, the more likely she was to use passive and avoidant coping strategies, such as wishful thinking. The girls who felt closer to their friends after the aggressive act were the girls who coped by seeking social support significantly more often than any other type of coping strategy.     

Strategies for Coping With Interpersonal Hurt: Preliminary Evidence for the Relationship Between Coping and Forgiveness

This study provides a preliminary empirical test suggesting a coping framework that describes the behavioral, cognitive, and emotion‐focused activities related to the process that may lead to forgiveness. Among 170 participants, the study explored the coping strategies people use when they respond to an interpersonal hurt and also the general use of coping strategies. After controlling for dispositional forgiveness, results indicated that people use similar coping techniques both for general stressors and for interpersonal hurt. They prefer avoidance coping strategies early in the forgiveness process and approach strategies in the middle and later stages. Applied implications are discussed.     

Coping With Uncertainty: Superstitious Strategies and Secondary Control1

The aim of the present studies was to investigate the relationship between primary and secondary control and the use of superstitious strategies under conditions of uncertainty and stress. In the first study, 78 participants completed a chance‐determined card‐guessing task in which they were permitted to use a psychic's card selections instead of making their own card selections. Participants' use of a superstitious strategy (a psychic's selections) increased significantly with the perceived likelihood of failure, regardless of belief in psychic ability. A second study (N= 102) replicated these findings using a skill task. Overall, these data suggest that as the need to control outcomes becomes increasingly salient, the use of superstitious strategies may represent attempts at secondary control.     

Coping with ambiguity and uncertainty in patient-physician relationships: II.Traditio argumentum respectus

A methodology of argumentation and a perspective of incredulity are essential ingredients of all intellectual endeavor, including that associated with the art and science of medical care.Traditio argumentum respectus (tradition of respectful argumentation) as a principled system of assessing the validity of beliefs, opinions, perceptions, data, and knowledge, is worthy of practice and perpetuation, because assessments of validity are susceptible to incompleteness, incorrectness, and misinterpretation. Since the latter may lead to ambiguity, uncertainty, anxiety, and animosity among the individuals (patients and physicians) involved in such dialogue, objective analyses and criteria are desirable. A tradition of respectful argumentation is a means to this end—to maximize objectivity and minimize subjectivity as part of decision-making processes and to preserve the integrity of the participants in a patient-physician relationship. During such discourse one must always be cognizant of fallacious arguments—material, verbal, and formal fallacies—since they compromise the validity of assertions. This essay summarizes a classification of fallacious arguments, by definition and by example, predicated upon the intellectual tradition of Occidental Society; and advocates a tradition of respectful argumentation to nullify them.     

Adolescent Strategies for Coping With Cultural Diversity

This investigation tested H. L. K. Coleman's (1995b) hypotheses that the strategies adolescents use to cope with cultural diversity will be organized in a sequential manner and that adolescents will use different strategies depending on the situation. To test these hypotheses, the authors had 398 adolescents rate the likelihood of using 6 strategies for coping with cultural diversity: Separation, Assimilation, Acculturation, Alternation, Integration, and Fusion. The authors make suggestions for future research, and implications for counseling are suggested.     

Storytelling and Coping With Stressful Events1

Three studies explored the coping benefits and limitations of stories people hear about others undergoing similar stressful events. In Study One, cancer patients reported that positive stories about other patients were preferable to and more helpful than negative stories, yet negative stories were more commonly told. Study Two manipulated the valence and source of stories told to college students facing midterm exams. Stories with positive endings and those relayed by expert sources were regarded more positively than negative stories and those told by nonexperts. Study Three manipulated the valence and informativeness of stories in a similar college sample. Positive and informative stories were rated more favorably, although these effects were independent of each other. Implications for social comparison and social support are discussed.     

The Neurobiological Underpinnings of Coping With Pain

ABSTRACT— The biopsychosocial model treats pain as resulting from a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors. Individual differences in approaches to coping with pain-related symptoms are important determinants of pain-related outcomes, and are often classified under the "psychological" category within the biopsychosocial model. However, engagement in various cognitive, affective, and behavioral pain-coping strategies appears to exert biological effects, which we review here. Pain-coping activities such as catastrophizing, distracting oneself from pain sensations, or reappraisal of pain may exert effects on activity in a variety of pain-processing and pain-modulatory circuits within the brain, as well affect the functioning of neuromuscular, immune, and neuroendocrine systems. The interface between pain-related neurobiology and the use of specific pain-coping techniques represents an important avenue for future pain research.     

The General Confidence Scale: Coping With Environmental Uncertainty and Threat

We investigated general confidence as a psychological buffer for coping with environmental uncertainty and threat. In Study 1, a new scale to measure general confidence was developed and cross‐validated with different samples. Study 2 examined general confidence as a moderator of the influence of environmental stress on individual strains. Two groups of participants were presented with photographs either of terrorist attacks or of neutral scenes. We found a significant interaction between presented scenes and general confidence. Study 3 examined the effect of general confidence on acceptance of mobile phone stations while controlling for relevant variables. The results showed good incremental validity for the General Confidence Scale over related personality and social psychological constructs.     

Living With HIV/AIDS: A Psychosocial Perspective on Coping With Prejudice and Discrimination1

We examined 2 strategies used by people with HIV (N = 68) to cope with the effects of prejudice and discrimination: hiding of stigma and in‐group identification. In support of the first proposed path, we found that group‐based discrimination enhanced hiding of stigma. This reduces the perception of personal discrimination; and this, in turn, is positively related to well‐being. We also found evidence for a second, more collective path by which those who are HIV‐positive protect their well‐being. Perceived group‐based discrimination was positively associated with in‐group identification, which, in turn, was positively related to collective action intentions and well‐being. The discussion focuses on how well‐being can be protected through both individual‐ and group‐level processes.