Put simply, a target of racist attitudes and behaviors can act upon her anger or suppress her anger. As discussed by Brondolo et al. In the end, racism-related stress is a complex issue and each of the coping strategies discussed here has strengths and weaknesses. Beyond having a sense of control and establishing social support networks, there are numerous other means by which we can manage stress.
A common technique people use to combat stress is exercise Salmon, There is considerable evidence that physically fit individuals are more resistant to the adverse effects of stress and recover more quickly from stress than less physically fit individuals Cotton, One reason exercise may be beneficial is because it might buffer some of the deleterious physiological mechanisms of stress.
One study found rats that exercised for six weeks showed a decrease in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal responsiveness to mild stressors Campeau et al. In high-stress humans, exercise has been shown to prevent telomere shortening, which may explain the common observation of a youthful appearance among those who exercise regularly Puterman et al.
Clearly, exercise is a highly effective tool for regulating stress. In the s, Herbert Benson, a cardiologist, developed a stress reduction method called the relaxation response technique Greenberg, The relaxation response technique combines relaxation with transcendental meditation , and consists of four components Stein, :.
Another technique to combat stress, biofeedback , was developed by Gary Schwartz at Harvard University in the early s. A number of different bodily measures have been used in biofeedback research, including facial muscle movement, brain activity, and skin temperature, and it has been applied successfully with individuals experiencing tension headaches, high blood pressure, asthma, and phobias Stein, When faced with stress, people must attempt to manage or cope with it.
In general, there are two basic forms of coping: problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. Those who use problem-focused coping strategies tend to cope better with stress because these strategies address the source of stress rather than the resulting symptoms. To a large extent, perceived control greatly impacts reaction to stressors and is associated with greater physical and mental well-being.
Social support has been demonstrated to be a highly effective buffer against the adverse effects of stress. Extensive research has shown that social support has beneficial physiological effects for people, and it seems to influence immune functioning. However, the beneficial effects of social support may be related to its influence on promoting healthy behaviors.
Emotion-focused coping would likely be a better method than problem-focused coping for dealing with which of the following stressors? Studies of British civil servants have found that those in the lowest status jobs are much more likely to develop heart disease than those who have high status jobs. Although problem-focused coping seems to be a more effective strategy when dealing with stressors, do you think there are any kinds of stressful situations in which emotion-focused coping might be a better strategy?
Emotion-focused coping would likely be a better coping strategy in situations in which a stressor is uncontrollable, or in which nothing could otherwise be done about it, such as a fatal illness. Social support seems to have a direct effect on immune system functioning.
Social support can affect health indirectly by influencing health-related behaviors, such as exercise and eating properly. Try to think of an example in which you coped with a particular stressor by using problem-focused coping. What was the stressor? What did your problem-focused efforts involve? Were they effective? Skip to content Stress, Lifestyle, and Health. Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define coping and differentiate between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping Describe the importance of perceived control in our reactions to stress Explain how social support is vital in health and longevity.
Learned Helplessness. Close relationships with others, whether a a group of friends or b a family circle, provide more than happiness and fulfillment—they can help foster good health. Coping with Prejudice and Discrimination. Stress reduction techniques may include a exercise, b meditation and relaxation, or c biofeedback. Carmen Russoniello. Donovan, D. The drinking-related locus of control scale: Reliability, factor structure and validity.
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The theory of planned behavior: The effects of perceived behavioral control and self-efficacy. British Journal of Social Psychology, 34 , These results imply that people who use more reassuring thoughts reported higher well-being due to a higher perceived sense of control. Expressing emotions was not significantly associated with psychological well-being, and negatively associated with perceived control.
We thus found no support for expressing emotions as a potentially effective coping strategy. Even though expressing emotions was not directly associated with psychological well-being, this analysis indicates that there was an indirect effect via perceived control.
However, in contrast to our theoretical reasoning, this relationship was negative rather than positive. We argued that passive reaction pattern, palliative reaction, and avoidance would be more disengaged coping styles. For these disengaged coping styles, we argued these are associated with lower perceived control, which in turn should be associated with lower psychological well-being. People who scored higher on passive reaction pattern experienced a lower sense of control and lower psychological well-being.
When including both passive reaction pattern and perceived sense of control in the regression analysis, we found that the strength of the relationship between passive reaction pattern and psychological well-being was reduced, while the effect of perceived sense of control was significant, supporting partial mediation. Indeed, it seems to be the case that people who use more passive reaction pattern reported lower well-being due to a reduced perceived sense of control.
Palliative reaction showed a negative relationship with both perceived control and psychological well-being. When entering both palliative reaction and perceived control in the analysis, the original significant association between palliative coping and psychological well-being became non-significant, while the association between perceived control and psychological well-being was significant.
People who scored higher on avoidance experienced a lower sense of control and lower psychological well-being. These results suggest that people who use more avoidance reported lower well-being due to a lower perceived sense of control. Above, we reported the analyses for each coping strategy separately. However, we categorized different coping strategies in engagement and disengagement coping.
To probe whether our data support this distinction in coping strategies, we subjected the 47 coping items of the the Utrecht Coping List UCL; Schreurs et al. This first factor analysis showed that the expressing emotions items did not clearly distinguish between the two factors. We therefore omitted these items from the analyses below, and subjected the remaining 42 items to another exploratory factor analysis requesting two factors.
In an exploratory fashion, we re-ran the analyses for these two composite coping variables see Table 4. Table 4. People who scored higher on engagement coping experienced a higher sense of control and higher psychological well-being. Again, it seems to be the case that people who use more engagement coping strategies reported higher well-being due to a higher perceived sense of control. Disengagement coping was negatively related to perceived sense of control and psychological well-being.
These findings lend support for our prediction that a disengaged way of handling stressors is related to lower well-being because it is associated with less perceived control.
Given the cross-sectional nature of our study, we also examined two alternative models in an exploratory fashion. In the first alternative indirect effect model, we examined perceived control as independent variable, coping strategies as mediator, and psychological well-being as dependent variable. Table 5. In the second alternative model, we tested the complete reversed directional model from psychological well-being to control to coping strategies.
Again, these results are weaker than for our theoretical model see Table 5. These exploratory analyses seem to suggest stronger support for our theoretical model than for models in which the direction of the relationships between the variables is partially reversed.
Our results showed that the coping strategies of passive reaction pattern, palliative reaction and avoidance were consistently and negatively related to perceived control and therefore to less well-being.
Such disengaged behaviors lead a person to experience a lack of control, and potentially a lack of possibilities to confront the stressor Latack, ; Dijkstra et al. Our results concerning active confronting and reassuring thoughts revealed a positive relationship with perceived control and through perceived control with more well-being. Seeking social support, however, was not related to either well-being or control and therefore could not be regarded as an effective coping strategy.
Elaborating on this further it can be argued that the extent to which seeking social support will be related to perceived control is contingent on the success of the search. In other words is seeking social support resulting in actually getting social support? If not, for example when asked support when in fear of job loss is being denied, a lack of possibilities to confront the stressor might be experienced.
Indeed, in light of the importance of social support for health and well-being Tian et al. The coping strategy expressing emotions also was not related to well-being but there was a significant relationship with perceived control. This relationship was, however, in the opposite direction of what we expected. In line with this inconsistent finding, our exploratory factor analysis indicated that expressing emotions did not clearly map onto engagement or disengagement coping, but was negatively related to control, and indirectly negatively to well-being.
When examining the items pertaining to this coping style e. Finally, expressing anger or frustration might be associated with a lack of perceived control, given that these emotions do not help to reappraise or handle the stressor, and as such might be associated with diminished well-being Leonard and Alison, Whereas past research has clearly supported control as being relevant for well-being Mirowsky and Ross, ; Thoits, ; Turner and Lloyd, ; Chipperfield et al.
The main contribution of this study therefore is that it suggests an important role of control in the stress process and that it deepens our understanding of the differential effectiveness of different coping strategies Britt et al. Indeed, perceived sense of control might be identified as an important explaining variable in the relationship between coping and psychological well-being.
Rather than merely activating or de-activating someone, the lack of engagement implied by disengagement strategies is correlated to feeling that the situation is outside of someone's control, which in turn is associated with negative consequences. In line with the theoretical reasoning that the most insightful distinction in coping strategies is engagement vs. However, given that expressing emotions did not satisfactorily fit in with one of the two factors, and that reassuring thoughts when analyzed separately showed no effects, our findings also suggest that when categorizing coping styles into broader categories, certain styles might involve a variety of strategies and behaviors.
This points to the importance of theoretical development based on fundamental research, and a potential more fine-grained examination of these relationships in future research.
We acknowledge that our data are of cross-sectional nature. This means that we cannot claim that the relationships really are in the direction we propose them to be. We are relatively confident, however, that our results will replicate in a more robust research design.
This confidence is based on our examination of two different exploratory indirect effect models in which a coping strategies were the mediator, perceived control the independent variable, and psychological well-being as the outcome, and b psychological well-being influenced coping strategies via perceived control. Inspection of these models revealed far less strong indirect effects, some null-effects which were previously significant e. However, in order to develop stronger theoretical notions concerning the role of control in the stress process, a thorough examination of the different coping strategies as to their potential to elicit a sense of control is needed.
Since its purpose of developing theory, such research would preferably be of experimental nature. Creating conditions in which different coping strategies are induced would allow for more causal explanations concerning the relationship between a particular coping strategy and perceived sense of control.
These relationship could then be further examined conducting longitudinal research in order to test whether more engagement coping will indeed lead to more perceived control over time, which in turn might be positively related to psychological well-being. Apart from the correlational nature of our study, a second limitation is the lack of information on the participant's locus of control.
As locus of control has been discussed as a potential predictor of the use of certain coping strategies e. However, locus of control is often seen as a relatively stable trait, which is difficult to influence.
Our data seem to indicate that perceived control is influenced by coping strategies, and thus can vary depending on which coping style is employed. As the two composite coping styles are positively correlated, it seems unlikely that locus of control is an alternative explanation of our findings.
Additionally, although our findings seem to indicate that influencing someone's sense of control might be a fruitful intervention for dealing with stress, future research might empirically test such an intervention. Finally, in the current study, we did not investigate the context in which the coping strategy was employed.
In line with the less consistent findings regarding seeking social support and expressing emotions, it might be the case that certain coping strategies are more or less needed or become more or less effective in certain contexts, for certain people, or in certain situations Mucci et al. For instance, control might be more relevant to the degree that the stressful situation is more ambiguous, certain coping strategies might be more effective for more optimistic people, and one's standing in the organizational hierarchy might affect the opportunity to employ certain coping strategies.
It would be interesting for future research to take such moderating factors into account. In sum, our data provide some preliminary insights into why different coping strategies can have negative or positive effects on psychological well-being. By increasing a sense of control, some coping strategies that are more engaging i.
Organizations could use these findings to actively coach and train their employees to seek effective control over stressful situations, and to teach them to employ engaged rather than disengaged coping styles. AH provided substantial contributions to the research conception and design.
MD and AH analyzed and interpreted the data. MD wrote the paper, AH provided critical revisions of the paper. MD and AH both attended to the revision of the paper. MD and AH both approved of this version of the paper to be published. The authors thank Nishi Ramlal for collecting the data. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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