A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.

The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

We developed a multidimensional coping inventory to assess the different ways in which people respond to stress. Five scales (of four items each) measure conceptually distinct aspects of problem-focused coping (active coping, planning, suppression of competing activities, restraint coping, seeking of instrumental social support); five scales measure aspects of what might be viewed as emotional-focused coping (seeking of emotional social support, positive reinterpretation, acceptance, denial, turning to religion); and three scales measure coping responses that arguably are less useful (focus on and venting of emotions, behavioral disengagement, mental disengagement). Study 1 reports the development of scale items. Study 2 reports correlations between the various coping scales and several theoretically relevant personality measures in an effort to provide preliminary information about the inventory's convergent and discriminant validity. Study 3 uses the inventory to assess coping responses among a group of undergraduates who were attempting to cope with a specific stressful episode. This study also allowed an initial examination of associations between dispositional and situational coping tendencies.

Assessing Coping Strategies: A Theoretically Based Approach

Major perspectives concerning stress are presented with the goal of clarifying the nature of what has proved to be a heuristic but vague construct. Current conceptualizations of stress are challenged as being too phenomenological and ambiguous, and consequently, not given to direct empirical testing. Indeed, it is argued that researchers have tended to avoid the problem of defining stress, choosing to study stress without reference to a clear framework. A new stress model called the model of conservation of resources is presented as an alternative. This resource-oriented model is based on the supposition that people strive to retain, project, and build resources and that what is threatening to them is the potential or actual loss of these valued resources. Implications of the model of conservation of resources for new research directions are discussed.

Conservation of resources. A new attempt at conceptualizing stress.

This article describes a scale measuring dispositional optimism, defined in terms of generalized outcome expectancies. Two preliminary studies assessed the scale's psychometric properties and its relationships with several other instruments. The scale was then used in a longitudinal study of symptom reporting among a group of undergraduates. Specifically, respondents were asked to complete three questionnaires 4 weeks before the end of a semester. Included in the questionnaire battery was the measure of optimism, a measure of private self-consciousness, and a 39-item physical symptom checklist. Subjects completed the same set of questionnaires again on the last day of class. Consistent with predictions, subjects who initially reported being highly optimistic were subsequently less likely to report being bothered by symptoms (even after correcting for initial symptom-report levels) than were subjects who initially reported being less optimistic. This effect tended to be stronger among persons high in private self-consciousness than among those lower in private self-consciousness. Discussion centers on other health related applications of the optimism scale, and the relationships between our theoretical orientation and several related theories.

Optimism, coping, and health: Assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies.

Attachment--and loss.

Despite the importance that is attributed to coping as a factor in psychological and somatic health outcomes, little is known about actual coping processes, the variables that influence them, and their relation to the outcomes of the stressful encounters people experience in their day-to-day lives. This study uses an intraindividual analysis of the interrelations among primary appraisal (what was at stake in the encounter), secondary appraisal (coping options), eight forms of problem- and emotion-focused coping, and encounter outcomes in a sample of community-residing adults. Coping was strongly related to cognitive appraisal; the forms of coping that were used varied depending on what was at stake and the options for coping. Coping was also differentially related to satisfactory and unsatisfactory encounter outcomes. The findings clarify the functional relations among appraisal and coping variables and the outcomes of stressful encounters.

Dynamics of a stressful encounter: Cognitive appraisal, coping, and encounter outcomes.

In this study we examined the relation between personality factors (mastery and interpersonal trust), primary appraisal (the stakes a person has in a stressful encounter), secondary appraisal (options for coping), eight forms of problem- and emotion-focused coping, and somatic health status and psychological symptoms in a sample of 150 community-residing adults. Appraisal and coping processes should be characterized by a moderate degree of stability across stressful encounters for them to have an effect on somatic health status and psychological symptoms. These processes were assessed in five different stressful situations that subjects experienced in their day-to-day lives. Certain processes (e.g., secondary appraisal) were highly variable, whereas others (e.g., emotion-focused forms of coping) were moderately stable. We entered mastery and interpersonal trust, and primary appraisal and coping variables (aggregated over five occasions), into regression analyses of somatic health status and psychological symptoms. The variables did not explain a significant amount of the variance in somatic health status, but they did explain a significant amount of the variance in psychological symptoms. The pattern of relations indicated that certain variables were positively associated and others negatively associated with symptoms.

Appraisal, coping, health status, and psychological symptoms.

This study examined daily stress processes among 75 married couples across 20 assessments during a 6-month period. The somatic and psychological effects of common everyday hassles were investigated. Overall, there was a significant relationship between daily stress and the occurrence of both concurrent and subsequent health problems such as flu, sore throat, headaches, and backaches. The relationship of daily stress to mood disturbance was more complex. The negative effects of stress on mood were limited to a single day, with the following day characterized by mood scores that were better than usual. Furthermore, striking individual differences were found in the extent to which daily stress was associated with health and mood across time. Participants with unsupportive social relationships and low self-esteem were more likely to experience an increase in psychological and somatic problems both on and following stressful days than were participants high in self-esteem and social support. These data suggest that persons with low psychosocial resources are vulnerable to illness and mood disturbance when their stress levels increase, even if they generally have little stress in their lives.

The impact of daily stress on health and mood: Psychological and social resources as mediators.

Although studies of major life events continue to dominate the stress literature, such events have not been shown to be strong predictors of future illness. The present study examined the relationship of both major life events and daily hassles—the repeated or chronic strains of everyday life—to somatic health. In multiple regression analysis it was found that hassles scores were more strongly associated with somatic health than were life events scores. Hassles shared most of the variance in health that could be accounted for by life events, and when the effects of life events were statistically removed, hassles and health remained significantly related. Daily uplifts made little contribution to health that was independent of hassles. The assessment of daily hassles appears to be a useful approach to the study of life stress and could be an important supplement to the life events approach which, by itself, is insufficient for full understanding and practical prediction of health outcomes. The standard methodology for assessing the impact of stress on health is the measurement of major life changes (Byrne & Whyte, 1980; Dohrenwend & This study was based on a Masters thesis submitted by the first author to the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of James C. Coyne and Richard S. Lazarus. Special thanks to Catherine Schaefer for her comments and suggestions concerning an earlier draft of this manuscript. The authors gratefully acknowledge the help provided by the Human Population Laboratory of the California State Health Department in facilitating this research. This research was supported in part by a research grant from the National Institute on Aging (AG 00799). Requests for reprints should be addressed to Anita DeLongis, Stress and Coping Project, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720. 120 DELONGIS, COYNE, DAKOF, FOLKMAN, AND LAZARUS Dohrenwend, 1974; Holmes & Rahe, 1967; McFarlane, Norman, Streiner, Roy, & Scott, 1980). This approach has recently received extensive criticism (Dohrenwend & Dohrenwend, 1978; Hough, Fairbank, & Garcia, 1976; Rabkin & Struening, 1976; Wershaw & Reinhart, 1974) which cover such issues as psychometric problems, the lack of representativeness of the sampled events among varying sociodemographic groups, and the absence of concern with psychological mediators such as the personal significance of events and the resources available for coping with them. From a practical standpoint, the most discouraging problem has been that the relationship between life events scores and health outcomes is extremely weak. As Rabkin and Struening (1976) point out, \"In practical terms . . . life event scores have not been shown to be predictors of the probability of future illness\" [p. 1015]. Those concerned with the impact of stress on health status must search for alternative and more promising ways of assessing stress and the processes mediating health outcomes. One such alternative is to focus on the ongoing stresses and strains of daily living, what we refer to here as hassles. The few investigators who have examined these sources of stress have typically limited themselves to a particular stressor such as noise (Glass & Singer, 1972), commuting in rush hour traffic (Novaco, Stokols, Campbell, & Stokols, 1979), sex role conflicts (Pearlin, 1975), and work overload and underload (Frankenhaeuser & Gardell, 1976). Rarely have researchers made an effort to examine a broad spectrum of everyday stresses which might characterize persons or their life settings. Our literature search revealed only three studies of this type (Cason, 1930; Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, & Lazarus, 1981; Lewinsohn & Talkington, 1979). The first of these (Cason, 1930) provided descriptive data concerning \"common annoyances,\" but did not search for antecedents or consequences. More recently, Lewinsohn and Talkington (1979) found that the combination of frequency and subjective aversiveness of unpleasant events during the previous month was moderately related to depression. Likewise, Kanner et al. (1981) examined the relationship between a broad range of daily hassles over a nine-month period and found their frequency to be significantly related to psychological symptomatology. The findings of Lewinsohn and Talkington (1979) and Kanner et al. (1981) point to a relationship between everyday stresses and psychopathology, but do not permit examination of daily hassles as a possible factor in somatic health. It cannot be assumed that psychopathology and somatic illness necessarily have the same antecedents. Much would be gained if we could extend the findings obtained with hassles and psychopathology to somatic health, for two reasons. First, it could be argued that the apparent relationship between hassles and psychological symptomatology might be due to a common underlying distress factor. Presumably, a person who is symptomatic is also distressed, as is a person HASSLES AND HEALTH STATUS 121 who is \"hassled.\" Second, a major concern of behavioral medicine is the functional relationship between stress and somatic illness. Information indicating the nature of the relationship between daily stressors and health, over and above the relationship between life events and health, would be helpful in focusing research on those events that seem to make a difference in health and in encouraging investigation of the appraisal and coping processes that mediate the effects of such events. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the relationship between the hassles of daily living and somatic health, and to compare the usefulness of this approach to the life events methodology. We hypothesized that daily hassles would have a stronger relationship to health outcomes than do major life events because the former are proximal measures of stress, whereas the latter are distal. Jessor (Note 1) has recently revived this Lewinian distinction between an actor's immediate perception or experience of the social environment (a proximal variable) and environmental characteristics (distal variables) which may or may not be experienced by the actor as such. The proximal-distal dimension refers to the ordering of various environments according to their conceptual proximity \"to experience, to perception, to interpretation, or to psychological response\" (Jessor, Note 1, p. 6). The most distal environments are without specific functional significance for the person; they are generally described in nonpsychological language. The most proximal environments usually involve personal meanings. Geographic, biological and social environments, especially social institutions of the macro type, would be more distal, whereas the most proximal environment would be the perceived environment of immediate significance to the actor. From the cognitive phenomenological perspective on stress developed by Lazarus and his colleagues (Coyne & Lazarus, 1980; Lazarus, 1966, 1981; Lazarus, Averill, & Opton, 1970; Lazarus & Launier, 1978), the proximal environment consists of person-environment transactions that the person appraises as harmful, threatening or challenging, whether these are major life events or small, daily irritations. Jessor too argues that proximal variables predict human reactions better than distal ones because they express here-and-now pressures of living as these are sensed or appraised by the individual. Life events scores can be considered distal because they do not describe the ongoing pressures of living they create, their divergent significance for individuals experiencing them, or the coping processes they require, all of which affect outcomes. On the other hand, endorsement of a hassle item is a more immediate indication of the person's perception and appraisal and the personal distress and disruption connected with them. Hassles should have a more direct impact on health, and may well mediate the effects of life events. Along with hassles, Kanner et al. (1981) assessed uplifts, positive ex122 DELONGIS, COYNE, DAKOF, FOLKMAN, AND LAZARUS periences that are likely to occur in everyday life. They found a positive association between frequency of uplifts and psychological symptoms in women, but no relationship was found between uplifts and symptoms in men. Typically, studies of desirable major life events and adaptational outcomes (Mueller, Edwards, & Yarvis, 1977; Ross & Mirowsky, 1979; Vinokur & Selzer, 1975) have found little or no relationship between the two. Therefore, the question of the impact of these positive everyday experiences is important. Before drawing any conclusions regarding the findings of Kanner et al. (1981), it would be useful to see whether they can be replicated with another adaptational outcome measure. In the present study we hypothesized that hassles and uplifts would be correlated with subsequent somatic health, and that, in multiple regression analysis, hassles and uplifts would improve upon the relationship of major life events to health. Specifically, it was hypothesized that: (1) consistent with past research, there would be a low order positive correlation between life events and somatic illness; (2) there would be a significant positive correlation between both the frequency and the intensity of hassles and illness; (3) in hierarchical multiple regression, hassles would add significantly to the relationship of life events to illness; and (4) when the effects due to life events were controlled, hassles would remain significantly related to illness. Hypotheses concerning the relationship between uplifts and somatic health were made more tentative, considering the complex findings of other researchers (Kanner et al., 1981; Mueller, et al., 1977; Ross & Mirowsky, 1979; Vinokur & Selzer, 1975) regarding the relationship between desirable events and adaptational outcomes. It was hypothesized that (1) there would be a low order negative relationship between the frequ

Relationship of daily hassles, uplifts, and major life events to health status

This article examines the influence of daily stressors on mental health in a community sample. Ss were 166 married couples who completed diaries each day for 6 weeks. In pooled within-person analyses, daily stressors explained up to 20% of the variance in mood. Interpersonal conflicts were by far the most distressing events. Furthermore, when stressors occurred on a series of days, emotional habituation occurred by the second day for almost all events except interpersonal conflicts. Contrary to certain theoretical accounts, multiple stressors on the same day did not exacerbate one another's effects: rather an emotional plateau occurred. Finally on days following a stressful event, mood was better than it would have been if the stressor had not happened. These results reveal the complex emotional effects of daily stressors, and in particular they suggest that future investigations should focus primarily on interpersonal conflicts.

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Anita DeLongis

Papers

Dynamics of a stressful encounter: Cognitive appraisal, coping, and encounter outcomes.

Appraisal, coping, health status, and psychological symptoms.

The impact of daily stress on health and mood: Psychological and social resources as mediators.

Relationship of daily hassles, uplifts, and major life events to health status

Effects of daily stress on negative mood.