Life-span Developmental Psychology

Perspectives on Stress and Coping

E. Mark Cummings, Anita L. Greene, Katherine H. Karraker

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317784814
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia dello sviluppo

Although there has been a significant increase in studies of stress and coping processes in recent years, researchers have often approached these topics from rather narrow and constrained perspectives. Furthermore, little communication has occurred across disciplines and research directions, resulting in the emergence of several relatively isolated literatures.

An outgrowth of the Eleventh Biennial West Virginia University Conference on Life-Span Development, this volume emphasizes two major themes: the importance of taking a life-span approach to the study of stress and coping, and the development of new and more complete conceptual models of stress and coping processes. The first to approach these subjects from a life-span perspective, this book includes papers by distinguished researchers from each of the major periods of the life-span, and brings together the cognitive and socioemotional traditions in the study of dealing with pressures. The editors hope that this facilitation of communication among researchers with diverse views will help create a broadening and integration of perspectives.

I
Theoretical Issues

1
Coping Across the Life Span:
Theoretical Issues

Susan Folkman
University of California, San Francisco

At first glance, the questions that are asked about coping, when it is viewed from a life-span perspective, appear to differ from those that are asked about coping when it is viewed only at specific ages such as infancy, adolescence, or middle age. Research about coping over the life span is motivated by interest in changes in coping and the factors that influence such change. Research about coping at various ages is motivated largely by an interest in the influence or effect coping has on the relationship between stress, both chronic and acute, and outcomes such as behavior, psychological well-being, and physical health.

Despite the seeming differences in the questions that are suggested by the two perspectives, the questions in fact overlap a great deal. Both perspectives share a fundamental interest in coping efficacy. Those who ask about coping from the life-span perspective are generally interested not just in changes in coping qua coping but in changes in coping effectiveness over the life span. Do people become better or worse, more mature or immature, in their coping as they grow older? Those who are interested in the effects of coping on the relationship between stress and adaptational outcomes are also interested in efficacy: Are the effects positive or negative, salubrious or harmful? Both perspectives, thus, depend on having a method for evaluating coping that can be used in research settings. This evaluation presents some of the most difficult problems for coping researchers.

Many theorists and researchers, including Baltes, Block, Caspi, Costa, Elder, Levinson, Neugarten, and Thomae, have extended our understanding of adaptation over the life span by investigating stable properties of the person and the environment such as status variables, personality dispositions, biological and psychological vulnerabilities, motivational structures, history, and cohort effects. The influence such variables have on adaptation over the life span is significant.

If coping makes only a minor contribution to adaptational outcomes over and above the variables I just mentioned, this contribution is potentially highly significant, because coping, unlike most structural variables, can be modified. Analyses of coping provide us with information about thoughts and behaviors that people use in managing the acute and enduring demands of their lives. These thoughts and behaviors can be changed through educational and therapeutic interventions (cf. Meichenbaum & Jaremko, 1983). Thus, even if coping has only a minimal influence on long-range adaptational outcomes, it is potentially a critical point of entry for modifying an individual's trajectory over the life span.

Our understanding of coping over the life span is shaped by the model of coping that is used in research. In this chapter, I shall briefly describe the two models of coping that have been most widely used in life-span coping research. I shall then focus on one of these two models, namely the contextual model, and summarize the findings from empirical research on age differences in coping and highlight some of the issues that are involved in evaluating coping over the life span.

Two Models of Coping

Two major approaches have been used to consider coping from a life-span perspective, one that is organized around developmental themes, and a second that is organized around contextual themes. The developmental approach is usually based on ego psychology models in which coping is viewed essentially as an aspect of personality. The contextual approach is usually based on relational models of stress in which coping is viewed in the context of the person-environment relationship.

The ego psychology model of coping ts based on the concept of defenses, which are unconscious adaptive mechanisms that are a major means of managing instinct and affect. Vaillant's (1977) well-known study of adaptation over the life span uses this model. Vaillant arranged defense mechanism hierarchically according to their maturity. The highest or most mature group of these mechanisms consists of adaptive processes such as sublimation, altruism, suppression, and humor. The next lower group consists of neurotic mechanisms, including intellectualization, repression, reaction formation, displacement, and dissociation. Next are the immature mechanisms, including fantasy, projection, hypochondriasis, passive-aggressive behavior, and acting out. Finally the least mature are the psychotic mechanisms, including denial of external reality, distortion, and delusional projection. Ego psychology models have also been proposed by Haan (1977) and Menninger (1963). The term "coping," when used in the context of these models, refers to the most advanced or mature of the ego processes.

Contextual models of coping are widely used in current coping research (e.g., Aldwin & Revenson, 1987; Billings & Moos, 1982; Forsythe & Compas, 1987; Felton & Revenson, 1984; Manne & Sandler, 1984;McCrae, 1982,1984;Parkes, 1984, 1986; Pearlin & Schooler, 1978; Quayhagen & Quayhagen, 1982; Stone & Neale, 1984; Thoits, 1986, 1987; Vitaliano, Maiuro, Russo, & Becker, 1987). This model serves as the basis of the coping research that Richard Lazarus and I and our colleagues on the Berkeley Stress and Coping Project conducted over a ten-year program of research.

Within this model, we defined coping as the changing thoughts and acts the individual uses to manage the external and/or internal demands of a specific person-environment transaction that is appraised as stressful (Lazarus & Folk-man, 1984). Three features distinguish this definition of coping from the one that is provided by the ego psychology model. First, coping is defined as what the person actually thinks and does to manage the demands of a particular encounter: no attempts are made to infer unconscious processes. Second, the definition points to coping as a changing process. The ego psychology model, in contrast, tends to emphasize defensive styles that are stable properties of the person. Third, coping is not equated with efficacy or maturity. The efficacy or maturity of a coping process is judged on the basis or its relationship to the demands, constraints, and resources of a particular context; in contrast, the ego psychology model judges the maturity of a defense mechanism on an a priori basis.

The Coping Process as Viewed from the Contextual Model

As I noted earlier, contextual formulations of coping focus on specific thoughts and actions that a person uses to manage the demands of a specific stressful encounter. The behavioral flow begins with a person's cognitive appraisal of a person-environment relationship. The appraisal includes an evaluation of the personal significance of the encounter (primary appraisal) and an evaluation of the options for coping (secondary appraisal). In primary appraisal, the person asks, "What do I have at stake in this encounter?" and in secondary appraisal the question is "What can I do?" (Lazarus, 1966; Lazarus & Folkman 1984). Together, primary appraisal and secondary appraisal shape emotion quality and intensity and influence the coping response.

Appraisals are influenced by antecedent person and situation characteristics. Thus, the personal significance of an encounter is determined on the one hand by the pattern of motivation (e.g., values, commitments, and goals), beliefs about oneself and the world, and personal resources for coping such as financial means, social and problem-solving skills, and health and energy. Individual differences in these variables help explain why an encounter may be appraised as a threat by one person and as neutral or a challenge by another. As an example, being passed over for a promotion is likely to be appraised as a harm or loss for a person for whom career advancement is a major goal, whereas it may be only mildly stressful or even a relief for a person whose goal is to preserve as much time as possible for family life. Appraisal processes are also influenced by situation characteristics such as the nature of the danger, its imminence, ambiguity, and duration, and the existence and quality of social support resources to facilitate coping.

Coping as a Dynamic Process

Coping processes continuously change as a function of continuous appraisals and reappraisals of the shifting person-environment relationship. Shifts may be due to coping efforts directed at changing the environment or the meaning or understanding of the event. Shifts may also be the result of changes in the environment that are independent of the person. Any shift leads to a reappraisal of the situation, which in turn influences subsequent coping efforts. Thus, coping changes during an encounter as it unfolds, and it changes from encounter to encounter.

The Multidimensional Nature of Coping

Coping has two major functions: the management of the problem (problem-focused coping) and the regulation of emotion (emotion-focused coping). These two functions have been recognized by a number of coping researchers, including Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek, & Rosenthal (1964), Mechanic (1962), and Billings and Moos (1981).

In addition to the problem-focused and emotion-focused distinction, several broad categories of coping have been suggested. Pearlin and Schooler (1978), for example, were concerned with the following: responses that change the situation out of which the stressful experience arises (which is similar to problem-focused coping), responses that control the meaning of the stressful experience after it occurs but before the emergence of distress emotion (emotion-focused coping), and responses that control distress emotion (emotion-focused coping). Folkman and Lazarus (1988a) referred to cognitive activity that influences the deployment of attention (this can be either problem-focused or emotion-focused), cognitive activity that alters the subjective meaning or significance of the encounter for well-being (emotion-focused), and actions that alter the actual terms of the person-environment relationship (problem-focused coping).

Additional distinctions have been made at the empirical level. Pearlin and Schooler (1978), for example, defined 17 types of coping processes, some of which are limited to specific role areas such as family, marriage, parenting, and work. McCrae (1982) defined 28 types of coping, and Stone and Neale (1984) defined eight types, including distraction, situation redefinition, direct action, catharsis, acceptance, seeking social support, relaxation, and religion. Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schettel, DeLongis, and Gruen (1986) also defined eight types, including intrapersonal processes that are directed at problem solving and regulation of emotion (distancing, self-control, positive reappraisal, and escape-avoidance) and interpersonal problem-focused processes (confrontation) and emotion focused processes (the seeking of informational and emotional support). Regardless of the taxonomy of coping that is used, what is clear is that coping is a complex, multidimensional process that includes a variety of intrapersonal and interpersonal strategies for managing problems and regulating emotions.

A fascinating finding that has been reported by all the contextually oriented researchers cited previously is that people use a wide range of these strategies in any given encounter. For example, in a study of 150 community resident subjects of 45 to 64 years of age. we found that people used both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping in over 95% of the more than 1,300 stressful encounters they reported (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). In subsequent studies with two other community samples in which 8 types of coping were assessed, we found that, on the average, people used between 6 and 7 different types of coping in each stressful encounter (Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & Gruen, 1986).

Empirical Findings

The contextual model has been used to evaluate the relationship between coping and age in a relatively small number of cross-sectional studies, which I summarize here. My discussion is limited to studies of adults. To read about coping development in children and adolescents, see Compas (1987), Garmezy and Rutter (1983), and Murphy and Moriarty (1976).

Pearlin and Schooler (1978) investigated coping in a large sample of adults that was representative of the Chicago area. The ages of subjects ranged from 18 to 65 years. Pearlin and Schooler were interested in the persistent life strains that people encounter as they act as parents, job holders and breadwinners, husbands, and wives. As noted earlier, they assessed 17 types of coping. The questions about coping were designed to assess how the person usually coped with the strains associated with each of the role domains. Several age differences in coping were observed. For example, in coping with marital problems...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Theoretical Issues
• Part II: Infancy
• Part III: Childhood
• Part IV: Adolescence
• Part V: Adulthood
• Part VI: Older Adulthood
• Part VII: Epilogue
• Author Index
• Subject Index