Folkman Lazarus Gruen DeLongis 1986
Folkman Lazarus Gruen DeLongis 1986
Folkman Lazarus Gruen DeLongis 1986
discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/19459529
CITATIONS
READS
1,081
7,916
4 authors, including:
Anita DeLongis
University of British Columbia - Vancouver
95 PUBLICATIONS 8,280 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
All content following this page was uploaded by Anita DeLongis on 25 December 2016.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are added to the original document
and are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately.
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.
571
572
573
Procedures
Subjects were interviewed in their homes once a month for 6 months.
Husbands and wives were interviewed separately by different interviewers
on the same day and, if possible, at the same time. Interviews lasted about
1 \ to 2 hours. The data reported in this article were gathered during the
& Schooler, 1978). Folkman and Lazarus (1980) found that peo-
ple were more variable than stable in their relative use of problemand emotion-focused coping across approximately 13 stressful
encounters. In a later analysis of these data (Aldwin et al., 1980),
in which eight (rather than two) forms of coping were evaluated,
people were found to use certain forms of coping such as wishful
Measures
The second through sixth interviews were devoted primarily to the
reconstruction of the most stressful event that the subject had experienced
during the previous week. The interviewer used the Stress Interview, a
structured protocol developed for this study, to elicit information about
multiple facets of the event. We drew upon questions about the subject's
ported by Stone and Neale (1984), who found that people tended
the ways in which the subject tried to manage the demands of those
1984b) and empirical (e.g., Pearlin & Schooler, 1978; Rotter, 1980)
& Schooler, 1978). Stability could also derive from the person
grounds.
Mastery was measured during the second interview with a scale developed by Pearlin and his associates (cf. Pearlin & Schooler, 1978) for
Neale, 1984).
Our purpose is to evaluate the extent to which people are
stable in their primary and secondary appraisal and coping processes across diverse stressful encounters, and to determine the
extent to which these processes, apart from the personality char-
use with a community-residing adult sample. The scale assesses the extent
to which one regards one's life chances as being under one's control in
contrast to being fatalistically determined. Subjects responded on a 4point Likert scale about the extent to which they agreed or disagreed
with the following statements:
acteristics that might influence them, make a difference in adI have little control over the things that happen to me.
aptational status.
54. In order to provide comparability with our previous communityresiding sample (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980), the people selected for the
study were Caucasian, primarily Protestant or Catholic, and had at least
an eighth-grade education, an above-marginal family income ($18,000
for a family of four in 1981), and were not bedridden.
Qualified couples were identified through random-digit dialing. Prospective subjects received a letter explaining the study, then a telephone
call from a project interviewer who answered questions and requested a
home interview. Of the qualified couples who received letters, 46% agreed
to be in the study. The acceptance rate was comparable with that of our
In this study the internal consistency of the scale (alpha) was .75.
Interpersonal trust was measured during the third interview with a
substantially shortened version of Rotter's (1980) Interpersonal Trust Scale.
Subjects responded on a 5-point Likert scale about the extent to which
they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:
In dealing with strangers one is better off to be cautious until they
have provided evidence that they are trustworthy.
Most people can be counted on to do what they say they will do.
previous field study, and not unexpected given that both members of the
It is safe to believe that in spite of what people say, most people are
primarily interested in their own welfare.
was 39.6, and that of the men was 41.4. Tlie average subject had 15.5
years of education, and the median family income was $45,000. Eightyfour percent of the men and 57% of the women were employed for pay.
People who refused to be in the study differed from those who participated
only in years of education (a mean of 14.3 years). Ten couples dropped
Most people would be horrified if they knew how much news that
the public hears and sees is distorted.
In these competitive times one has to be alert or someone is likely
to take advantage of you.
out of the study; this was an attrition rate of 11.8%. The data from these
couples were excluded from the analysis; this yielded a final sample of
75 couples. Interviews were conducted in two 6-month waves from September 1981 through August 1982.
574
leave things open somewhat"; a = .70); seeking social support (e.g., "talked
to someone who could do something concrete about the problem," "accepted sympathy and understanding from someone"; a = .76); accepting
The alpha for the version of the Interpersonal Trust Scale used in this
study was .70.
being with people in general," "slept more than usual"; a = .72); planful
dicated that the measures of self-esteem and mastery were highly correlated (r = .65) and showed virtually the same pattern of relations with
the other variables in the system. Because of its redundancy with mastery
way," "I came out of the experience better than I went in," "found new
Values and commitments and religious beliefs were also measured with
scales developed for this study. The Values and Commitments Scale was
adopted from Buhler's (1968) work in order to assess the qualities or
things that an individual might value or feel committed to. A factor
logical symptoms and somatic health status. Psychological symptomatology was assessed with the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL), which
& Fisher, 1972; Uhlenhuth, Lipman, Baiter, & Stern, 1974) and a relatively
fatalism. Values and commitments and religious beliefs were not included
in the analysis because preliminary evaluation indicated that they were
related neither to the outcome variables nor to any other variables in the
system.
their final interview. It contains five subscales, but because of high intercorrelations among the subscales, and a similar patterning of relations
Primary appraisal (of what was at stake) was assessed as part of the
between the subscales and the other variables in the study, we used the
sum of ratings as a single score. Somatic health was assessed in the sixth
1981). The HSCL was completed by subjects during the week before
interview with a self-report questionnaire adopted with minimal modification from that used by the Human Population Laboratory (Belloc &
through factor analysis (Folkman et al., in press), were used in this study:
istrations was .78); and concern for a loved one's well-being, a three-item
healthy), according to their most serious health problem, with low scores
level were excluded from the scoring because of their overlap with psy-
Longis, Coyne, Dakof, Folkman, & Lazarus, 1982). Subjects were assigned
indicating poor health. Items that pertained to the person's overall energy
chological symptoms. The scale has been found to be acceptably reliable
and valid in comparison with medical records (Andrews, Schonell, &
Tennant, 1977; Meltzer & Hochstim, 1970).
were also used in the study. These scales were highly correlated with the
scale the extent to which the situation was one "that you could change
HSCL (rs = .72 and -.56, respectively) and with each other (r = -.74),
or do something about," "that you had to accept," "in which you needed
to know more before you could act," and "in which you had to hold
in the system. Because of their apparent redundancy with the HSCL, the
CES-D and the Bradburn Morale Scale were not included in this analysis.
Results
Four sets of variablespersonality characteristics (mastery
and interpersonal trust), primary appraisal (measured with the
six stakes indices), secondary appraisal (measured with the four
indices of coping options), and coping (measured with the eight
coping scales)were used in the analysis in order to explain
somatic health status and psychological symptoms. Paired t tests
were used to determine whether the responses of husbands and
wives differed within each of the four sets of predictor variables.
We determined significance with the Dunn Multiple Comparison
test. There were no significant gender differences in personality
575
characteristics, secondary appraisal, or coping. There was a significant difference in primary appraisal because of two stakes:
wives endorsed concern for a loved one's well-being more than
did their husbands, and husbands endorsed concern about a goal
at work more than did their wives. Given the absence of gender
differences in three of the four sets of variables and the small
gender difference in the fourth set, responses were pooled for the
Table 1
Mean Autocorrelations of the Predictor Variables
Across Five Occasions
Predictor variable
Primary appraisal (stakes)
Self-esteem
Loved one's well-being
Own physical well-being
Goal at work
Financial security
Respect for another person
Secondary appraisal (coping options)
Could change the situation
Must accept situation
Need to know more before acting
Have to hold back
Coping
Confrontive coping
Distancing
Self-controlling
Seeking social support
Accepting responsibility
Escape-avoidance
Planful problem solving
Positive reappraisal
analyses to be reported.'
Stability
The stability of each of the primary and secondary appraisal
and coping variables was estimated with autocorrelations across
the five measurement occasions, as shown in Table 1.
The mean autocorrelations of the primary appraisal of stakes
indices ranged from .12 to .37, the secondary appraisal indices
from .12 to .24, and the coping scales from .17 to .47.
Bivariate Correlations
The primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, and coping scores
were aggregated across five occasions, and a mean was calculated
for each variable. The intercorrelations within each set of predictor variables, including mastery and interpersonal trust, which
were assessed one time only, are shown in Table 2.
The correlations between the personality variables (mastery
and interpersonal trust) and appraisal and coping ranged from
.01 to .37; most of the re were below .20.
The correlations between the four sets of predictor variables
and the two outcome variables are shown in Table 3. Eleven of
the 20 correlations with somatic health status were significant;
these were all weak to moderate, and none exceeded .30.
There were 17 significant relations out of 20 with psychological
symptoms, 10 of these exceeding .30. Both of the personality
variables, all of the primary appraisal variables, and all but one
of the coping variables were significantly correlated with symptoms. The secondary appraisal variables showed weaker relations
with psychological symptoms; only two of the four coping options
showed significant correlations.
Mean
autocorrelations
.37
.12
.20
.25
.22
.21
.15
.16
.12
.24
.21
.32
.44
.17
.26
.40
.23
.47
576
Table 2
Intercorretations Within Sets of Predictor Variables
Variable set
SD
Personality variables
1. Mastery
2. Interpersonal trust
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Self-esteem
Loved one's well-being
Own physical health
Goal at work
Financial security
Respect for another
1.
2.
3.
4.
Could change
Must accept
Need to know more
Have to hold back
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
5.
Confrontive coping
Distancing
Self-controlling
Seeking social support
Accepting responsibility
Escape-avoidance
Planful problem solving
Positive reappraisal
.23
23.55
27.45
3.51
4.58
10.12
6.04
1.91
1.96
1.78
2.02
3.29
1.88
0.79
0.88
0.82
0.84
1.68
2.60
1.45
1.81
0.87
0.87
0.83
0.98
3.94
3.05
5.77
5.40
1.87
3.18
7.25
3.48
2.09
1.78
2.87
2.40
1.44
2.48
2.35
2.96
1
.08
.28
.17
.45
-.07
.27
.25
1
.36
.28
1
.22
1
-.03
.05
1
.17
1
Coping scales
1
.14
.50
.51
.48
.52
.39
.40
1
.37
.51
.42
.00
.46
.35
.16
.13
.44
.52
.46
1
.28
.38
.38
.45
1
.55
.26
.23
1
.20
.26
1
.49
Table 3
of Adaptational Status
variables were combined into one set for a final regression analPsychological
symptoms
Predictor variable
Health
status
Person variables
Mastery
Interpersonal trust
Primary appraisal (stakes)
Self-esteem
Concern for loved one
Financial strain
Goal at work
Lose respect for another
Harm to own physical
well-being
Secondary appraisal
(options for coping)
Could change the situation
Must accept the situation
Need to know more
Have to hold back
Coping
Confrontive
Distancing
Self-controlling
Seeking social support
Accepting responsibility
Escape-avoidance
Planful problem solving
Positive reappraisal
*p<.05.
p<.00l.
.20**
.08
.38***
.15*
.25**
.22**
.37***
-.20**
-.14*
-.10
-.01
-.14*
.30***
-.26***
-.10
-.08
-.14*
.32***
and concern for a loved one's well-being were negatively assoconcern about financial security, and concern about one's own
physical well-being were positively associated with symptoms.
Discussion
.02
.05
people cognitively appraise and cope with the internal and ex-
.08
-.21**
.47* *
.19*
.32* *
.27*
.37* *
.51*
.09
.19**
-.17*
-.22"
-.16*
-.01
-.25**
-.24*
-.07
.00
lies this issue, we give our attention first to our findings regarding
stability, and then turn to the relations among the personality
variables, appraisal, coping, and adaptational status.
pertains more to the person's internal State than to the environment, and it is interesting to note that it also had the highest
autocorrelation of the primary and secondary appraisal variables.
Table 4
Part
correlation
.18***
-.16**
-.14**
.14**
-.14**
.14**
.13**
-.11*
.10
.07
.06
-.06
.05
-.04
-.03
.43***
577
.01
.00
The significant relations between appraisal, coping, and somatic health status were all negative, which indicated that the
more subjects had at stake and the more they coped, the poorer
their health was. In contrast, the more mastery they felt, the
better their health was. However, none of the correlations exceeded .26. Given the modest bivariate correlations and the intercorrelations among the variables, it is not surprising that in
combination the predictor variables did not account for significant portions of variance in somatic health status.
Lazarus and Folkman (1984b) suggest three pathways through
which coping might adversely affect somatic health status. First,
coping can influence the frequency, intensity, duration, and patterning of neurochemical responses; second, coping can affect
health negatively when it involves excessive use of injurious substances such as alcohol, drugs, and tobacco, or when it involves
the person in activities of high risk to life and limb; and third,
certain forms of coping (e.g., particularly denial-like processes)
can impair health by impeding adaptive health/illness-related
behavior. Other writers, such as Depue, Monroe, and Shachman
(1979), emphasize stable patterns of appraisal as a critical pathway through which somatic outcomes are affected.
All these pathways depend on stable patterns of appraisal and
coping, which were not evident in this study. Furthermore, the
pathway through which denial-like coping impedes health/illnessrelated behavior often depends on the presence of health-related
stressors, but in this study only 48 (6%) of the 750 stressful encounters that subjects reported were directly related to health.
Thus whether appraisal and coping processes do in fact affect
health outcomes through the pathways just described remains
uncertain.
578
Psychological Symptoms
Despite the lack of stability in some of the process variables,
the regression analysis indicates that personality variables and
aggregated appraisal and coping processes have a significant relation to psychological symptoms. Mastery and interpersonal trust
were significantly correlated with psychological symptoms, even
after we controlled for appraisal and coping. Mastery and interpersonal trust were conceptualized in this study as personality
factors that influenced appraisal and coping processes, but the
bivariate correlations indicated that they were relatively independent of these processes. Thus although these personality factors are important correlates of psychological symptoms, we are
left unclear as to the mechanisms underlying this relation.
The pattern of correlations between the stakes variables and
psychological symptoms indicated that in general the more subjects had at stake over diverse encounters, the more they were
likely to experience psychological symptoms. The exception is
having concern for a loved one's well-being, which was negatively
correlated with symptoms. One interpretation of this relation is
that attending to a loved one's well-being might have a salutory
effect, or that people who are more other-centered than self-centered are less alienated and better off psychologically. Another
interpretation, which reverses the cause-effect pattern, is that
the more psychological symptoms one experiences, the more
difficult it is to attend to the well-being of a loved one.
The significant part correlations between coping and psychological symptoms were confined primarily to problem-focused
forms of coping. Planful problem solving was negatively correlated with symptoms, whereas confrontive coping was positively
correlated. These relations parallel those found in a prior analysis
of specific stressful encounters (Folkman et al., in press), in which
planful problem solving was associated with satisfactory encounter outcomes, and confrontive coping with unsatisfactory
outcomes. On the basis of the findings from the two studies, it
is tempting to suggest that planful problem solving is the more
adaptive form of coping. However, it is important not to value
a particular form of coping without reference to the context in
which it is used (see also Vaillant, 1977). There may be occasions,
for example, when confrontive coping is the more adaptive form,
as is suggested by studies of coping among cancer and tuberculosis
patients (e.g., Calden, Dupertuis, Hokanson, & Lewis, 1960;
Cuadra, 1953; Rogenstine et al., 1979).
The failure of individual forms of emotion-focused forms of
coping to contribute significantly to adaptational status at the
multivariate level may have been due to multicollinearity. Escapeavoidance, for example, which had a .51 zero-order correlation
with symptoms, was also correlated with confrontive coping at
.52. Theoretically we expect different forms of coping to be intercorrelated, as noted earlier. The intercorrelations, however,
pose problems at the analytic level, and may mask important
relations.
cesses tend to be more variable than stable (see also Folkman &
Lazarus, 1980). Nevertheless, they accounted for a significant
amount of variance in psychological symptoms. To the extent
that this finding depended on what little stability there was in
the observed processes, researchers should turn their attention
to how they might more effectively identify the stable aspects of
stressful person-environment transactions, and the appraisal and
coping processes that occur within their context.
The analysis reported here was based on a sample of just five
stressful encounters. A larger sample of encounters might have
revealed greater stability, particularly in emotion-focused forms
of coping, and increased our ability to explain adaptational status.
Another way in which our approach may have affected the
results has to do with the level of abstraction at which we assessed
appraisal and coping processes. By examining specific thoughts
and acts, we assessed these processes at a relatively microanalytic
level. Although this procedure is necessary in order to examine
the functional relations among these processes, informal observations of behavior suggest that people have characteristic ways
of appraising and coping that transcend specific thoughts and
acts, which a more abstract, macroanalytic approach might reveal. Unfortunately, traditional measures of coping style, such
as repression-sensitization (Byrne, 1961), tend to be unidimensional and do not adequately capture the richness and complexity
that characterize actual appraisal and coping processes. A major
challenge in stress and coping research is to develop a method
for describing stable styles of appraising and coping that does
not sacrifice the cognitive and behavioral richness of these processes (Folkman & Lazarus, 1981). At this higher level of abstraction the links between appraisal, coping, and outcomes such
as psychological symptoms should become clearer.
References
Aldwin, C., Folkman, S., Schaefer, C, Coyne, J. C, & Lazarus, R. S.
(1980). Ways of coping: A process measure. Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Montreal.
Andrews, G., Schonell, M., & Tennant, C. (1977). The relationship between physical, psychological, and social morbidity in a suburban
community. American Journal of Epidemiology, 105, 27-35.
Belloc, N. B., & Breslow, L. (1972). Relationship of physical health status
and health practice. Preventive Medicine, I, 409-421.
Belloc, N. B., Breslow, L., &Hochstim, J. (1971). Measurement of physical
health in a general population survey. American Journal of Epidemiology, 93, 328-336.
Billings, A. G., & Moos, R. H. (1984). Coping, stress, and social resources
among adults with unipolar depression. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 46, 877-891.
Bradburn, N. (1969). The structure of veil-being. Chicago: Aldine.
Bradburn, N. M., & Caplovitz, D. (1965). Reports on happiness: A pilot
study of behavior related to mental health. Chicago: Aldine.
Buhler, C. (1968). The general structure of the human life cycle. In C.
Buhler & F. Massarik (Eds.), The course of human life: A study of goals
in the humanistic perspective (pp. 12-26). New York: Springer.
Byrne, D. (1961). The repression-sensitization scale: Rationale, reliability,
Conclusion
A major issue raised by this research concerns the stability of
the variables that were used in the analysis. These variables represent processes that occur in specific person-environment
transactions. Our research suggests that on the whole these pro-
389.
579
Meltzer, J., & Hochstim, J. (1970). Reliability and validity of survey data
Derogatis, L. R., Lipman, R. S., Covi, L., Rickels, K., & Uhlenhuth,
E. H. (1970). Dimensions of outpatient neurotic pathology: Comparison
of a clinical versus an empirical assessment. Journal of Consulting
Psychology, 34, 164-171.
Derogatis, L. R., Lipman, R. S., Rickels, K., Uhlenhuth, E. H., & Covi,
L. (1974). The Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL): A self-report
symptom inventory. Behavioral Science, 19, 1-15.
Epstein, S. (1983). Aggregation and beyond: Some basic issues on the
prediction of behavior. Journal of Personality, 51, 360-392.
356.
Pearlin, L. I., & Schooler, C. (1978). The structure of coping. Journal of
Health and Social Behavior, 19,2-21.
Radloff, L. S. (1977). The CES-D scale: A self-report depression scale
for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385-401.
Rickels, K., Lipman, R. S., Garcia, C. R., & Fisher, E. (1972). Evaluating
clinical improvement in anxious outpatients. American Journal of
Psychiatry, 128, 119-123.
Rogenstine, C. N., van-Kammen, D. P., Fox, B. H., Docherty, J. P., Rosenblatt, J. E., Boyd, S. C, & Bunney, W. E. (1979). Psychological
factors in the prognosis of malignant melanoma: A prospective study.
Psychosomatic Medicine, 41, 147-164.
Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rotter, J. B. (1980). Interpersonal trust, trustworthiness, and gullibility.
butions, and coping among older adults. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 67-77.
Psychology.
Folkman, S., Schaefer, C, & Lazarus, R. S. (1979). Cognitive processes
ap-
43, 524-531.
Stone, A. A., & Neale, J. M. (1984). New measure of daily coping: De-
Symptom intensity and life stress in the city. Archives of General Psychiatry, 31, 759-764.
Vaillant, G. E. (1977). Adaptation to life. Boston: Little, Brown.
Wheaton, B. (1983). Stress, personal coping resources, and psychiatric
symptoms: An investigation of interactive models. Journal of Health
and Social Behavior. 24, 208-229.