Coping: The Psychology of What Works (Snyder, 1999)

Coping: The Psychology of What Works (Snyder, 1999)

"A virtual `who's who' and `what's what' in coping research, this book provides a cutting-edge overview of the field of coping and its relation to personality and emotion. This is not a stale, dry presentation of where the field has been, but a forward-looking collection of papers on where the field is going." --Drew Westen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

"This is an excellent overview of some of the fundamental issues in adaptation and coping. The authors integrate the vast literatures on personality, social processes, and clinical applications. Their reflections and recommendations are timely and of practical relevance. I recommend it highly." --Michael J. Mahoney, Ph.D., author of Human Change Processes and editor of Constructivism in the Human Sciences

"Most of the major figures in the field of stress and coping have contributed to this outstanding volume. Unlike other reviews of the stress and coping literature, this collection focuses on coping strategies and efforts that work, when they work, and why they work. This is a volume you'd want to give to your graduate students and to your child head off to the first year of college. The work is useful not only for its descriptions of the resources that effective copers have, but also for understanding the efforts that people can make when they are having more difficulty coping." --Shelley E. Taylor, Professor of Social Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles

"Snyder has assembled a stellar group of theorists and researchers with an exceptional range of expertise in the arguably most important process in psychology: coping. The chapters are very well-written and provide superb coverage of the range, breadth, and depth of the issues involved in understanding coping processes. The combination of a prominent editor, first-rate authors, and a readable and comprehensive examination of coping should make this volume required reading for all mental health professionals." --Rick E. Ingram, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Doctoral Training Facility San Diego State University

"This volume provides one of the most timely, engaging, and optimistic approaches to the psychology of coping that is available in the literature today. The editor and chapter authors are leaders in developing a new focus in coping theory and research that embraces what Martin E.P. Seligman has recently called 'psychology's forgotten mission,' namely to report and build on human resilience and health." --John H. Harvey, Professor of Psychology, University of Iowa, and Editor of the Journal of Personal & Interpersonal Loss

"This is an encouraging and enlightening book that presents exciting research challenges. It would be a good library reference text, and a useful clinical tool in medical settings. The ideas presented and the work done with children and older students would also commend this book to school personnel." -- R.G. Schnurr, PhD, Annals of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Vol 33, No 4, June 2000

front flap In many ways, coping is like breathing, an automatic process requiring no apparent effort. However, when people face truly threatening events - what psychologists call stressors - they become acutely aware of the coping process and respond by consciously applying their day-to-day coping skills. Coping is a fundamental psychological process

p.5 a definition [of coping] that encompasses many previous views is that coping is a response aimed at diminishing the physical, emotional, and psychological burden that is linked to stressful life events and daily hassles... coping strategies are those responses that are effective in reducing an undesirable "load" (i.e., the psychological burden). The effectiveness of the coping strategy rests on its ability to reduce immediate distress, as well as to contribute to more long-term outcomes such as psychological well-being or disease status.

p.6 Is coping always a conscious process? ...we so often may repeatedly respond to a recurring stressor that we lose our awareness of doing so.

p.9 Lazarus's stress and coping model defined coping as "constantly changing cognitive, behavioral, [and emotional] efforts to manage particular external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person"

p.9 The centerpiece of the Lazarus and colleagues approach to understanding coping is the notion of how the person appraises the situation. Appraisal is posited to occur when the perceiver encounters situations that are interpreted as excessive relative to resources... a person utilizes two levels of appraisals in selecting coping responses. The first level is primary appraisal, where an individual evaluates whether the situation is potentially harmful... threatening... blocking a goal, creating a void, or presenting a challenge... When the event is perceived as harmful or threatening, the individual enters into secondary appraisal, wherein the available resources for coping are examined... the individual then decides which coping strategies to implement.

p.51 Carver and Scheier (5,6) provided an influential model of self-regulation based on feedback-loop theory (from 7).

p.105 According to Frijda (81), "emotions can be understood to represent a process of relevance signaling" (p.113)... Carver and Scheier (82, 83) contended that emotions signal the extent of discrepancy between an individual's progress toward a goal and her or his expected rate of progress.

p.141 Although it can be said that people cope with life events, coping is primarily a response to the emotions, particularly negative emotions, elicited by these events. This is because the meaningfulness of external events is, to a large extent, a function of their ability to arouse emotion.

p.147 The experience of stressors is an unavoidable part of life. However, individuals differ substantially in how they respond to these stressors.

p.173 The optimist remains resilient because her cognitive skills lead her to find and exert control whenever and wherever possible, but always "to the degree that reality permits"

p.249 Mastery-oriented thinking, in contrast, revolves around the task at hand and focuses on effort and strategies. Mastery-oriented students think about how to accomplish something, not about whether they're smart or not. For them, effort is the way to put their skills into motion, to surmount challenges, to accomplish their goals, and to increase their abilities.

p.249-250 Resilience in the face of challenge and setbacks is a highly valued attribute - one sometimes treated as some mysterious gift of nature. The coping styles we have described are, at bottom, resilient and nonresilient ways of responding to challenge... if we emphasize development and focus on those aspects of achievement over which the child has control, such as effort and strategy, we enhance the development of resilient, mastery-oriented coping.

p.324 The very goals we set for ourselves will be influenced, in part, by our coping armamentarium.

p.329 Wherever people encounter stressors, coping can be studied.