Coping Style and Its Role in Coping with Stressful Encounters

Abstract

Early stress research tended to focus on the situational determinants of coping behavior, overlooking individual differences in responses. In this article an interactional approach to the description and explanation of coping with stress is suggested. It is presumed that coping behavior, like other forms of human behavior, depends on an interaction between situational and individual factors. From among individual factors, coping style is selected as a dispositional variable which indirectly determines coping behavior. This is defined as a repertoire of strategies available to cope with stressful encounters that are specific for an individual. A “trait-state” distinction is made between coping style as a disposition and actual coping behavior, a process composed of activated coping strategies. The attitude towards information concerning the stressful event is assumed to be the basic property of the individual coping style. Of the situational factors, controllability is regarded as a variable of special importance for coping behavior, because in controllable situations information processing concerning the stressor is adaptive, while in uncontrollable situations it has a little value. Two studies on coping with somatic illness, conducted by the author and her coworkers, are presented as examples of applying the interactional approach in research on coping with stress. In the second, more comprehensive and longitudinal study, 259 patients participated. Their coping style was evaluated using an adaptation of the MBSS. They represented illnesses differing in controllability. Results have confirmed the superiority of the interactional approach, compared with an approach including only the situational factor, in the explanation of coping behavior.