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

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.

The development of an adequate assessment instrument is a necessary prerequisite for social psychological research on loneliness. Two studies provide methodological refinement in the measurement of loneliness. Study 1 presents a revised version of the self-report UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Loneliness Scale, designed to counter the possible effects of response bias in the original scale, and reports concurrent validity evidence for the revised measure. Study 2 demonstrates that although loneliness is correlated with measures of negative affect, social risk taking, and affiliative tendencies, it is nonetheless a distinct psychological experience.

The Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale: Concurrent and Discriminant Validity Evidence

Impression management, the process by which people control the impressions others form of them, plays an important role in interpersonal behavior. This article presents a 2-component model within which the literature regarding impression management is reviewed. This model conceptualizes impression management as being composed of 2 discrete processes. The 1st involves impression motivation ― the degree to which people are motivated to control how others see them. The 2nd component involves impression construction. The 2-component model provides coherence to the literature in the area, address controversial issues, and supplies a framework for future research regarding impression management

/pdf/impression-management-a-literature-review-and-two-component-2thsvmgj5k.pdf

Impression management: A literature review and two-component model.

The question of how affect arises and what affect indicates is examined from a feedback-based view-point on self-regulation. Using the analogy of action control as the attempt to diminish distance to a goal, a second feedback system is postulated that senses and regulates the rate at which the action-guiding system is functioning

Origins and Functions of Positive and Negative Affect: A Control-Process View.

Four studies (total n= 469) examined correlates of loneliness in order to explore explanations for the persistence of loneliness among college students. Self-report and attitude scales, ratings of others following dyadic interactions, and self and other ratings at two points during an extended period of group interactions indicated that lonely students (a) rated themselves more negatively and reported deficits in social skills and self-concept, (b) rated specific others and people-in-general more negatively and were more alienated and externalized, (c) expected others to rate them negatively, but (d) in general were not differentially rated by others except in the initial phase of group interactions and by lonely others following dyadic interactions. Results suggested that loneliness may be perpetuated by its cognitive and affective concomitants, with some evidence for gender differences, whereas inconclusive evidence was found regarding responses of others to the lonely person.

The persistence of loneliness: Self and other determinants.

The relationship between social skill deficits and the psychological state of loneliness was examined in two studies. Study 1 compared conversational behaviors of high-lonely and low-lonely college students during brief heterosexual interactions. Results indicated that the two loneliness groups differed significantly in their use of a specific class of conversational behaviors termed partner attention, with high-lonely as compared to low-lonely subjects giving less attention to their partners. Study 2 examined the casual relationship between social skill and loneliness by directly manipulating the use of partner attention in a group of high-lonely males. For that group, increased use of partner attention during dyadic interactions resulted in significantly greater change in loneliness and related variables relative to interaction only and no-contact control groups. The utility of conceptualizing loneliness as a social skills problem is discussed.

Loneliness and social skill deficits.

The concept of shyness and its measurement were investigated in a series of studies (total N = 1,687). Data collection and analysis proceeded in three phases: the revision and continued development of a measure of shyness, the Social Reticence Scale; a psychometric comparison among five measures of shyness; and an examination of the factor structure underlying the construct of shyness. Phase 1 assessed the reliability and validity of the Social Reticence Scale, including ratings of videotaped monologues and ratings by significant others. Phase 2 compared the five shyness measures with one another on indices of internal consistency and with other relevant measures of emotionality, personality, relationships, and behavior. Items from the five shyness measures were combined in a factor analysis in Phase 3, and the resulting factors were correlated with the self-report and rating data obtained in Phase 2. Overall, the results from these studies confirmed that the shyness measures were valid, reliable, and empirically distinct from measures of related constructs. Behavioral validity was observed for several of the shyness scales. Additional analyses suggested that three interpretable factors underlie responses to the shyness scales but provided little support for drawing conceptual distinctions among types of shyness. Discussion focuses on the implications of these data for the measurement and conceptualization of shyness.

Shyness: conceptualization and measurement.

1. Introduction.- I. Issues in the Study of Shyness.- 2. The Stanford Shyness Project.- 3. Affective and Behavioral Components of Shyness: Implications for Theory, Measurement, and Research.- 4. A Theory of Shyness.- 5. The Measurement of Shyness.- II. Development of Shyness.- 6. Genetics and Shyness.- 7. Shyness and Temperament.- 8. Shyness in Middle and Late Childhood.- 9. Adolescent Shyness.- 10. Shyness and the Elderly.- III. The Experience of Shyness: Personal Aspects.- 11. Individual Differences in Shyness.- 12. Shyness as a Discrete Emotion.- 13. On Being "Shy like a Fox": A Self-Handicapping Analysis.- 14. Analyzing Shyness: A Specific Application of Broader Self-Regulatory Principles.- IV. The Experience of Shyness: Social Aspects.- 15. Shyness and Self-Presentation.- 16. Positive, Negative, and Balanced Shyness: Self-Definitions and the Reactions of Others.- 17. Shyness, Social Behavior, and Relationships.- 18. A Trait-Situational Analysis of Shyness.- V. Related Constructs.- 19. Anxiety and Interfering Thoughts: Their Effect on Social Interaction.- 20. Physiological, Affective, and Behavioral Implications of Extraversion-Introversion.- 21. Oral Communication Apprehension.- 22. Embarrassment: Causes and Consequences.- VI. Therapeutic Interventions.- 23. Cognitive Therapy for Shyness and Social Anxiety.- 24. Self-Perception Theory and the Treatment of Shyness.- 25. Interpersonal Process Training for Shy Clients.- 26. Rhetoritherapy: The Principles of Rhetoric in Training Shy People in Speech Effectiveness.- 27. Short-Term Group Psychotherapy for Shyness.- Author Index.

Shyness : perspectives on research and treatment

The development of a 22-item measure of shyness, the Social Reticence Scale, is described. Shyness is a common hut often seriously limiting constellation of feelings and attitudes experienced in social situations. Research on shyness has been hampered by the lack of a valid, reliable and easily administered instrument with which to measure shyness. The Social Reticence Scale was found to have substantial internal consistency and test-retest reliability and several assessments of criterion and construct validity suggested that the scale was a valid measure of shyness. Preliminary evidence regarding discriminant validity is also presented as well as the factor structure of the scale.

Warren H. Jones

Papers

The persistence of loneliness: Self and other determinants.

Loneliness and social skill deficits.

Shyness: conceptualization and measurement.

Shyness : perspectives on research and treatment

The Social Reticence Scale: An objective instrument to measure shyness.