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

Five studies tested two general hypotheses: Individuals differ in their use of emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal and suppression, and these individual differences have implications for affect, well-being, and social relationships. Study 1 presents new measures of the habitual use of reappraisal and suppression. Study 2 examines convergent and discriminant validity. Study 3 shows that reappraisers experience and express greater positive emotion and lesser negative emotion, whereas suppressors experience and express lesser positive emotion, yet experience greater negative emotion. Study 4 indicates that using reappraisal is associated with better interpersonal functioning, whereas using suppression is associated with worse interpersonal functioning. Study 5 shows that using reappraisal is related positively to well-being, whereas using suppression is related negatively.

Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect, relationships, and well-being.

Many prominent theorists have argued that accurate perceptions of the self, the world, and the future are essential for mental health. Yet considerable research evidence suggests that overly positive selfevaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism are characteristic of normal human thought. Moreover, these illusions appear to promote other criteria of mental health, including the ability to care about others, the ability to be happy or contented, and the ability to engage in productive and creative work. These strategies may succeed, in large part, because both the social world and cognitive-processing mechanisms impose niters on incoming information that distort it in a positive direction; negative information may be isolated and represented in as unthreatening a manner as possible. These positive illusions may be especially useful when an individual receives negative feedback or is otherwise threatened and may be especially adaptive under these circumstances. Decades of psychological wisdom have established contact with reality as a hallmark of mental health. In this view, the well-adjusted person is thought to engage in accurate reality testing, whereas the individual whose vision is clouded by illusion is regarded as vulnerable to, if not already a victim of, mental illness. Despite its plausibility, this viewpoint is increasingly difficult to maintain (cf. Lazarus, 1983). A substantial amount of research testifies to the prevalence of illusion in normal human cognition (see Fiske& Taylor, 1984;Greenwald, 1980; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Sackeim, 1983; Taylor, 1983). Moreover, these illusions often involve central aspects of the self and the environment and, therefore, cannot be dismissed as inconsequential. In this article, we review research suggesting that certain illusions may be adaptive for mental health and well-being. In particular, we examine evidence that a set of interrelated positive illusions—namely, unrealistically positive self-evaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism—can serve a wide variety of cognitive, affective, and social functions. We also attempt to resolve the following para

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Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective on mental health

The emerging field of emotion regulation studies how individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them. This review takes an evolutionary perspective and characterizes emotion in terms of response tendencies. Emotion regulation is denned and distinguished from coping, mood regulation, defense, and affect regulation. In the increasingly specialized discipline of psychology, the field of emotion regulation cuts across traditional boundaries and provides common ground. According to a process model of emotion regulation, emotion may be regulated at five points in the emotion generative process: (a) selection of the situation, (b) modification of the situation, (c) deployment of attention, (d) change of cognitions, and (e) modulation of responses. The field of emotion regulation promises new insights into age-old questions about how people manage their emotions.

http://www.elaborer.org/cours/A13/lectures/Gross1998.pdf

The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review.

Research on dispositional optimism as assessed by the Life Orientation Test (Scheier & Carver, 1985) has been challenged on the grounds that effects attributed to optimism are indistinguishable from those of unmeasured third variables, most notably, neuroticism. Data from 4,309 subjects show that associations between optimism and both depression and aspects of coping remain significant even when the effects of neuroticism, as well as the effects of trait anxiety, self-mastery, and self-esteem, are statistically controlled. Thus, the Life Orientation Test does appear to possess adequate predictive and discriminant validity. Examination of the scale on somewhat different grounds, however, does suggest that future applications can benefit from its revision. Thus, we also describe a minor modification to the Life Orientation Test, along with data bearing on the revised scale's psychometric properties.

Distinguishing optimism from neuroticism (and trait anxiety, self-mastery, and self-esteem): a reevaluation of the Life Orientation Test

Previous research has shown that dispositional optimism is a prospective predictor of successful adaptation to stressful encounters. In this research we attempted to identify possible mechanisms underlying these effects by examining how optimists differ from pessimists in the kinds of coping strategies that they use. The results of two separate studies revealed modest but reliable positive correlations between optimism and problem-focused coping, seeking of social support, and emphasizing positive aspects of the stressful situation. Pessimism was associated with denial and distancing (Study 1), with focusing on stressful feelings, and with disengagement from the goal with which the stressor was interfering (Study 2). Study 1 also found a positive association between optimism and acceptance/resignation, but only when the event was construed as uncontrollable. Discussion centers on the implications of these findings for understanding the meaning of people's coping efforts in stressful circumstances.

Coping with stress: divergent strategies of optimists and pessimists.

This study examined associations between blood pressure (BP) and dispositional variables pertaining to anger and hostility. Black and White 25- to 44-year old male and female normotensives and unmedicated mild to moderate hypertensives completed four reliable self-report scales--the Cook-Medley Hostility (Ho) Scale, the Trait Anger subscale of the State-Trait Anger Scale (STAS-T), and the Cognitive Anger and Somatic Anger subscales of the Cognitive-Somatic Anger Scale--plus the Framingham Anger Scale and the Harburg Anger Scale. They also engaged in three laboratory tasks--Type A Structured Interview (SI), a video game, and a cold pressor task--that elicit cardiovascular reactivity. Ambulatory BP readings at home and at work were also obtained from most subjects. Blacks had significantly higher Ho and lower STAS-T scores than did Whites. Women reported higher levels of somatic anger than did men. White women showed significant positive correlations between STAS-T and systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) both at rest in the laboratory and during the SI. Black women revealed significant positive relationships between STAS-T and SBP and DBP at rest in the laboratory and at work as well as with DBP during the cold pressor test. For Black men, cognitive anger and DBP at rest were positively related. In contrast, White men revealed significant negative correlations between Ho scores and SBP at rest and during the video game; these men also showed significant negative relationships between somatic anger and SBP and DBP reactivity during the cold pressor test. Women, but not men, showed significant positive relationships between all four anger measures and ambulatory BP at work. Whereas main effects relating anger and cardiovascular measures were not apparent as a function of race, Blacks demonstrated significantly greater SBP and DBP reactivity than Whites during the cold pressor test, with the converse occurring during the SI. Men demonstrated significantly greater DBP reactivity than women during the video game. The present findings indicate that self-reports on anger/hostility measures and cardiovascular responses to behavioral tasks differ as a function of race but that relationships between anger and BP regulation need to take into account possible race-sex interactions and selection of anger/hostility measures.

Associations of blood pressure with self-report measures of anger and hostility among black and white men and women.

The vibratory perception threshold, an indicator of sensory neuropathy, was measured in young type I diabetic patients (N = 55) and nondiabetic control subjects (N = 34) of similar age. Values were significantly higher in the diabetic patients (P that of any control subject. This difference was most marked among those postpubertal and persisted with allowances for age and gender in an analysis of covariance. Although the vibratory perception threshold was not related to hemoglobin A 1 in younger diabetic patients (Tanner stage

Jagdish Kumari Weintraub

Papers

Assessing Coping Strategies: A Theoretically Based Approach

Coping with stress: divergent strategies of optimists and pessimists.

Associations of blood pressure with self-report measures of anger and hostility among black and white men and women.

The Vibratory Perception Threshold in Young Diabetic Patients: Associations with Glycemia and Puberty

Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced