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

Publisher Summary
This chapter outlines the two basic routes to persuasion. One route is based on the thoughtful consideration of arguments central to the issue, whereas the other is based on the affective associations or simple inferences tied to peripheral cues in the persuasion context. This chapter discusses a wide variety of variables that proved instrumental in affecting the elaboration likelihood, and thus the route to persuasion. One of the basic postulates of the Elaboration Likelihood Model—that variables may affect persuasion by increasing or decreasing scrutiny of message arguments—has been highly useful in accounting for the effects of a seemingly diverse list of variables. The reviewers of the attitude change literature have been disappointed with the many conflicting effects observed, even for ostensibly simple variables. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) attempts to place these many conflicting results and theories under one conceptual umbrella by specifying the major processes underlying persuasion and indicating the way many of the traditionally studied variables and theories relate to these basic processes. The ELM may prove useful in providing a guiding set of postulates from which to interpret previous work and in suggesting new hypotheses to be explored in future research.

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The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion

The present article examines the nature and function of human agency within the conceptual model of triadic reciprocal causation. In analyzing the operation of human agency in this interactional causal structure, social cognitive theory accords a central role to cognitive, vicarious, self-reflective, and self-regulatory processes. The issues addressed concern the psychological mechanisms through which personal agency is exercised, the hierar- chical structure of self-regulatory systems, eschewal of the dichotomous construal of self as agent and self as object, and the properties of a nondualistic but nonreductional conception of human agency. The relation of agent cau- sality to the fundamental issues of freedom and deter- minism is also analyzed. The recent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the self-referent phenomena. One can point to several reasons why self processes have come to pervade many domains of psychology. Self-generated activities lie at the very heart of causal processes. They not only contribute to the meaning and valence of most external influences, but they also function as important proximal determi- nants of motivation and action. The capacity to exercise control over one's own thought processes, motivation, and action is a distinctively human characteristic. Because judgments and actions are partly self-determined, people can effect change in themselves and their situations through their own efforts. In this article, I will examine the mechanisms of human agency through which such changes are realized.

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Human Agency in Social Cognitive Theory

A protection motivation theory is proposed that postulates the three crucial components of a fear appeal to be (a) the magnitude of noxiousness of a depicted event; (b) the probability of that event's occurrence; and (c) the efficacy of a protective response. Each of these communication variables initiates corresponding cognitive appraisal processes that mediate attitude change. The proposed conceptualization is a special case of a more comprehensive theoretical schema: expectancy-value theories. Several suggestions are offered for reinterpreting existing data, designing new types of empirical research, and making future studies more comparable. Finally, the principal advantages of protection motivation theory over the rival formulations of Janis and Leventhal are discussed.

A Protection Motivation Theory of Fear Appeals and Attitude Change1.

Erik Eriksen is a remarkable individual. He has no college degrees yet is Professor of Human Development at Harvard University. He came to psychology via art, which explains why the reader will find him painting contexts and backgrounds rather than stating dull facts and concepts. He has been a training psychoanalyst for many years as well as a perceptive observer of cultural and social settings and their effect on growing up. This is not just a book on childhood. It is a panorama of our society. Anxiety in young children, apathy in American Indians, confusion in veterans of war, and arrogance in young Nazis are scrutinized under the psychoanalytic magnifying glass. The material is well written and devoid of technical jargon. The theme of the volume is that it is human to have a long childhood which will leave a lifelong residue of emotional immaturity in man. Primitive groups and

Childhood and Society.

Self-efficacy theory asserts that personal mastery expectations are the primary determinants of behavioral change. Further, it is suggested that individual differences in past experiences and attri...

The Self-Efficacy Scale: Construction and Validation:

This article reports the first meta-analysis of the literature on protection motivation theory (Rogers, 1975, 1983; Rogers & Prentice-Dunn, 1997), a model of disease prevention and health promotion that has generated research for over two decades. The literature review included 65 relevant studies (N= approximately 30,000) that represented over 20 health issues. The mean overall effect size (d+= 0.52) was of moderate magnitude. In general, increases in threat severity, threat vulnerability, response efficacy, and self-efficacy facilitated adaptive intentions or behaviors. Conversely, decreases in maladaptive response rewards and adaptive response costs increased adaptive intentions or behaviors. This held true whether the measures were based on intentions or behaviors, and suggests that PMT components may be useful for individual and community interventions.

A meta-analysis of research on protection motivation theory.

Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory of fear appeals and attitude change

How do people cope with a threat when they do not plan to adopt an adaptive, protective response? We explored this question by examining the effects of information about a health threat and two aspects of coping ability, self-efficacy and response efficacy, on two adaptive and five maladaptive coping strategies (e.g., avoidance, wishful thinking). The results disclosed that the high-threat condition energized all forms of coping; it did not differentially cue specific coping strategies. The critical factor in determining the specific strategies used was the coping information. The high-response-efficacy and high-self-efficacy conditions strengthened adaptive coping and did not foster any maladaptive coping. A supplementary path analysis revealed an intriguing pattern of relations, including the finding that the most maladaptive strategy was avoidant thinking, which simultaneously reduced fear of the threat and weakened intentions to adopt the adaptive response.

Ronald W. Rogers

Papers

The Self-Efficacy Scale: Construction and Validation:

A meta-analysis of research on protection motivation theory.

Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory of fear appeals and attitude change

Effects of components of protection-motivation theory on adaptive and maladaptive coping with a health threat.

Protection motivation theory.