Definition

Stress has been defined traditionally either as a stimulus, often referred to as a stressor, that happens to the person such as a laboratory shock or loss of a job, or as a response characterized by physiological arousal and negative affect, especially anxiety. In his 1966 book, Psychological Stress and the Coping Process (Lazarus, 1966), Richard Lazarus defined stress as a relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised as personally significant and as taxing or exceeding resources for coping. This definition is the foundation of stress and coping theory (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

Description

Stress and coping theory provides a framework that is useful for formulating and testing hypotheses about the stress process and its relation to physical and mental health. The framework emphasizes the importance of two processes, appraisal and coping, as mediators of the ongoing relationship between the person and the environment. Stress and coping theory is relevant to the stress process as it is experienced in the ordinary events of daily life, major life events, and chronic stressful conditions that stretch out over years.

Appraisal refers to the individual’s continuous evaluation of how things are going in relation to his or her personal goals, values, and beliefs. Primary appraisal asks “Am I okay?” Secondary appraisal asks “What can I do?” Situations that signal harm or potential harm that is personally significant and in which there are few options for controlling what happens are appraised as stressful. Stress appraisals include harm or loss, which refer to damage already done; appraisals of threat, which refer to the judgment that something bad might happen; and appraisals of challenge, which refer to something that may happen that offers the opportunity for mastery or gain as well as some risk of an unwelcome outcome. Situations that are appraised as high in personal significance and low in controllability, for example, are usually appraised as threats, and situations that are high in personal significance and high in controllability are more likely to be appraised as challenges.

The concept of appraisal addresses the issue of variability of responses among people experiencing a similar stressor and why a given situation may be more stressful for one person than another. The situation may involve goals, values, or beliefs that are more personally significant for one person than for another, or one person may be better equipped than another to control the situation’s outcome. Appraisal-based approaches now dominate the field (Pearlin, Lieberman, Menaghan, & Mullan, 1981).

Appraisals generate emotions that vary in quality and intensity according to the person’s evaluation of personal significance (primary appraisal) and options for coping (secondary appraisal). Threat appraisals, for example, are often accompanied by fear, anxiety, and worry; harm/loss appraisals are often accompanied by anger, sadness, or guilt; and challenge appraisals are often accompanied by eagerness and excitement as well as a touch of threat.

People experience a complex array of emotions during real-life stressful events, including positive as well as negative emotions (Folkman, 1997, 2008). Emotions indicate that something is happening that matters to the individual. Emotions also often signal what the person intends to do. Negative emotions have long been associated with the individual’s preparation to approach or avoid, fight or flee (Lazarus, 1991). Positive emotions have more recently been examined for their roles in the stress process. Positive emotions, for example, are associated with widened focus of attention, motivating meaning-focused coping, and eliciting social support (Folkman, 2008; Fredrickson, 1998).

Coping refers to the thoughts and actions people use to manage distress (emotion-focused coping), manage the problem causing the distress (problem-focused coping), and sustain positive well-being (meaning-focused coping). Emotion-focused coping includes strategies such as distancing, humor, and seeking social support that are generally considered adaptive, and strategies such as escape-avoidance, day dreaming, and blaming others that are generally considered maladaptive. Problem-focused coping includes strategies such as information gathering, seeking advice, drawing on previous experience, negotiating, and problem solving. Meaning-focused coping includes strategies such as focusing on deeply held values, beliefs, and goals; reframing or reappraising situations in positive ways; and amplifying positive moments over the course of a day (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000).

Coping is influenced by the person’s coping resources including psychological, spiritual, social, environmental, and material resources, and by the nature of the situation, especially whether its outcome is controllable or has to be accepted. Problem-focused coping is used more in situations that are controllable, and emotion-focused coping is used more in situations that have to be accepted. Meaning-focused coping appears to be used more in situations that are chronic and not resolvable, such as in caregiving or serious illness. It is hypothesized that meaning-focused coping becomes more active when initial coping efforts fail to make the situation better (Folkman, 2011). Meaning-focused coping sustains other coping efforts and restores coping resources.

People use an array of coping strategies in real-life situations. Most situations involve more than one coping task or goal, each of which requires a coping strategy tailored to that task or goal. And people switch coping strategies when the ones they are using do not have the desired effect. Coping also changes as an encounter unfolds in response to changes in the environment, the situation, or to changes within the person.

Coping effectiveness is determined contextually because effective coping in one situation may be ineffective in another. For instance, distancing may be ineffective when a person should be problem solving or preparing for an upcoming challenge, whereas it may be effective when there is nothing to be done, as when waiting for a test result. Researchers often identify on an a priori basis the outcome that is desired, such as improved mood. In such cases, effective coping is the coping that is associated with the desired outcome.

Another approach to evaluating coping is to examine the goodness of the fit between the appraised options for coping and the choice of coping strategy. Problem-focused coping that is used when the situation is appraised as controllable, for example, would be a good fit, whereas the same form of coping in situation where nothing can be done would be a poor fit. Conversely, distancing that is used when there is nothing that can be done would be a good fit, whereas the same form of coping in a controllable situation that called for attention would be a poor fit.

Like appraisal, coping is key to understanding why the outcomes of given stressful situations can vary from person to person. Two people may cope quite differently with the same stressful situation because of differences in their resources, experiences, motivation, preferences, and skills for coping.

The dynamic quality of the stress process is evident in changes in the appraisal and reappraisal process, the fluidity of emotions, and changes in coping thoughts and actions as an encounter unfolds. The processes are also in reciprocal relationships. An outcome of appraisal and coping at Time 1, such as mood, for example, can become a predictor of appraisal and coping at Time 2.