Coping Behaviors in Relation to Frequency and Intensity of Anxiety-Provoking Situations

1989 ◽  
Vol 69 (3-1) ◽  
pp. 935-943
Author(s):  
Attila Olah ◽  
Bertil TÖrestad ◽  
David Magnusson

The relationships between coping strategies (constructive, passive, and escape), on the one hand, and anxiety reactions and individuals’ frequency of experiences of anxiety, and situations’ rate of recurrence, and general anxiety-inducing effect on the other, were explored. The investigated factors and their associations were studied both as individual characteristics and situational properties. Data for boys and girls were treated separately. The results for individuals showed that both trait-anxiety and frequency of stressful experience were related positively to escape strategies and negatively to constructive solutions. For situations, general situational effect correlated positively with escape solutions and negatively with constructivity. Rate of recurrence was correlated positively with constructive strategies and negatively with escape solutions. No significant sex differences were found.

2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 615-629
Author(s):  
Snežana Božić

The motif of death in teaching literatureThis paper includes a survey of the affective and cognitive limitations in the students’ perception of the motif of death, particularly when it appears as the main theme in literary works analyzed in class. The author explores the frequency of such texts in the curriculum and provides specific psychological-pedagogical findings, which should be considered and applied. Furthermore, the paper contains certain methodological solutions applicable in some stages of interpretation that refer to the analysis of the motif of death. The solutions, on the one hand, take into consideration the values and the significance of the work itself, and on the other hand, the age of students and their individual characteristics such as personality, sensibility, the experience of the death of their loved ones or its lack. The insights and suggestions are related to the results of an online questionnaire conducted among teachers of literature about their approach to the motif of death in teaching, which is presented in this paper.  Aнализ мотивa смерти на уроках литературы в школеВ статье рассматриваются аффективные и когнитивные ограничения в восприятии мотивa смерти школьниками, особенно в том случае, когда этот мотив является одним из ведущих в литературном произведении, анализируемом на уроке литературы. Исследуется количество таких текстов в учебной программе, анализируются определенные психолого-педагогические знания, которые надо учитывать в учебном процессе. Предлагаются методические рекомендации по интерпретации мотива смерти. С одной стороны, эти рекомендации учитывают ценность и значение самого литературного текста, а с другой — возраст и другие индивидуальные характеристики учащихся характер, чувствительность, опыт/отсутствие опыта. Выводы и предложения в статье сопоставляются с результатами проведенного среди преподавателей литературы онлайн-опроса, касающегося методики интерпретации мотива смерти на уроках литературы. В статье представлены результаты проведенного опроса.


1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J. Berkley

Sex is one of biology's, that is, life's most potent experimental variables. So, are there sex differences in pain? And are these sex differences applicable clinically? The answer to both questions is decidedly yes, of course. But we still have a long way to go. We have much to learn from the study of females, making use of the lifelong changes in their reproductive conditions as experimental variables. We also have much to learn from animals, especially if we apply what we know about their social lives. However, the challenge in all of these studies is not first to look for some mythical neurological entity called pain experience and then to learn how sex modulates it, but rather to seek to understand the rules by which sex influences all of biology's mutually modulatory factors – social, psychological, physiological, cellular, molecular, and genetic – that collectively create the motivating circumstances we designate as pain. It appears almost beyond doubt that on the one hand these factors interact to make women more vulnerable to these circumstances than men, but on the other hand that women have more varied mechanisms for balance. Happily, the details of these sex differences at all levels biological (social to genetic) are now emerging in a rapidly growing body of literature that promises new insights into and applications for the individual person, male or female, in persistent pain.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Merckelbach ◽  
Peter Muris ◽  
Robert Horselenberg

This study examined the correlates of overgeneral memories (i.e., non-specific memories) in normal subjects. Subjects were instructed to generate five personal memories in response to positive cue-words and five memories in response to negative cue-words. As predicted, no evidence was found for a positive association between overgeneral memories and level of depression. Neither was there an association between low memory specificity on the one hand and neuroticism and trait anxiety on the other hand. A significant though small correlation was found between hemisphere thinking style and specificity of personal memories. Surprisingly, the direction of this correlation was such that the more subjects relied on a left hemisphere mode of thinking (i.e., analytic and verbal processing), the more overgeneral their memories were. Taken together, the results indicate that in normal samples, depression symptoms, neuroticism or trait anxiety do not represent important correlates of overgeneral memories consistent with their status as trait markers uninfluenced by state factors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gal Richter-Levin ◽  
Carmen Sandi

AbstractIn neuroscience, the term ‘Stress’ has a negative connotation because of its potential to trigger or exacerbate psychopathologies. Yet in the face of exposure to stress, the more common reaction to stress is resilience, indicating that resilience is the rule and stress-related pathology the exception. This is critical because neural mechanisms associated with stress-related psychopathology are expected to differ significantly from those associated with resilience.Research labels and terminology affect research directions, conclusions drawn from the results, and the way we think about a topic, while choice of labels is often influenced by biases and hidden assumptions. It is therefore important to adopt a terminology that differentiates between stress conditions, leading to different outcomes.Here, we propose to conceptually associate the term ‘stress’/‘stressful experience’ with ‘stress resilience’, while restricting the use of the term ‘trauma’ only in reference to exposures that lead to pathology. We acknowledge that there are as yet no ideal ways for addressing the murkiness of the border between stressful and traumatic experiences. Yet ignoring these differences hampers our ability to elucidate the mechanisms of trauma-related pathologies on the one hand, and of stress resilience on the other. Accordingly, we discuss how to translate such conceptual terminology into research practice.


2020 ◽  
pp. 009539972095761
Author(s):  
Sylke Jaspers ◽  
Trui Steen

Co-production is intended to co-create public value. This article analyzes how co-producers address the tensions that arise among the various dimensions of public value. The article builds on the theory of coping strategies to examine individuals’ coping behaviors. Two urban mobility planning cases are studied in depth. This study finds that co-producers experience various tensions between public value dimensions. Furthermore, co-producers cope with the tensions both according to balancing strategies and trade-off strategies, preferring one value dimension over the other. In addition, the empirical evidence provides examples of circumstances, such as communication, in which a balancing exercise is enhanced.


Author(s):  
John Raven

Abstract In this paper I first list a number of areas in which recent research seems to reinforce the need to follow through on activities identified in Simonetta Magari’s article (Magari, Cavaleri 2009). A careful review of research in these areas would lead us into deeply mysterious psychological processes and underline the need to change the most fundamental assumptions on which modern psychology is built. Unfortunately, I am in no position to undertake this review. Accordingly, I have settled for the lesser objective of discussing (i) the problems posed by the phenomenon of emergence; (ii) the dominant role that networks of external social forces play in determining behaviour (and the way these networks of social forces perpetuate and elaborate themselves), and (iii) the emergence of a network of negative social forces which seems to have the future of mankind and the planet in its grip. I start by showing that one of the most important uses of the slippery word “intelligence” is to refer to an emergent property of a group. Groups can, to a greater or lesser extent, harness (or neglect and destroy) the diverse talents available to them to create cultures of intelligence or enterprise on the one hand and despondency and conflict on the other. Whereas we, as a species, currently have the highest levels of individual intelligence ever, it seems that we have the lowest levels of collective intelligence ever. But group and individual characteristics are not the only things transformed by networks of social forces. Time after time we see that well intentioned social action is transformed into its opposite by networks of social forces. A systemogram of the social forces which transform the “educational” system into its opposite is then used as a basis for a discussion of the role of social forces more generally. Two issues then stare one in the face. One is that our governance systems are ill equipped to promoting the kind of experimentation and societal learning that is needed…especially to enable us to survive as a species. The other is the dominance of the “sociological” forces pressing unrelentingly toward the societal hierarchy and division that is leading us so forcefully toward our self-destruction. Unexpectedly, therefore, it emerges that two key tasks for psychologists, qua psychologists, are (i) to contribute to the design of a societal management system which will act more effectively in the long term public interest – that is to say, in the interests of maintaining life itself – and (ii) to map the network of social forces which are driving us so relentlessly toward our own extinction.


1996 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 835-839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Nigro

203 Italian adolescents completed an Italian modified version of the Amirkhan's Coping Strategy Indicator and the Italian version of the Spielberger, et al. State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Three brief stories were presented to the subjects who were requested to put themselves in the protagonist's place and to indicate the extent to which they would use specific coping behaviors to deal with one of the three stressful events. Analysis of variance 3 × 2 (stressor by sex) showed effects due to the sex of the respondent on Seeking Social Support and to stressor on the subscales Problem Solving and Avoidance. A negative correlation was observed between scores on Trait Anxiety and Problem Solving and a positive one between scores on Trait Anxiety and Avoidance. Results seem to confirm the hypothesis that both situational antecedents and anxiety affect the choice of coping strategies. Further implications of finding were discussed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 47-51
Author(s):  
Frank Bosman ◽  
Archibald van Wieringen

AbstractIn times of great distress, like in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, people look for relief from the existential threat by searching for some kind of interpretation of the crisis. Some people will look for scapegoats to put the blame on, while others will search for ways by which the crisis can also be perceived as something beneficial.As far as the COVID-19 pandemic goes, earlier this year, media and politicians pointed towards China, where the pandemic started, or to Italy, from where the virus spread over the European continent.Since the beginning of the crisis, we have also been flooded with gurus, motivational speakers, and mindfulness coaches who stimulate us to view the new common as an unexpected but much needed “reboot” of our day-to-day life.Intriguingly enough, these two individual and collective coping strategies are very familiar to those who are acquainted with the Christian philosophical and theological traditions. When confronted with the apparent paradox between the idea of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity on the one hand and the experience of everyday pain and suffering on the other hand, Christians have sought for ways to find a satisfactory solution. This is known as theodicy. As the Roman and Christian philosopher Boethius summarized the problem: si Deus, unde malum? “If God exists, wherefrom evil?”


1975 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 395-407
Author(s):  
S. Henriksen

The first question to be answered, in seeking coordinate systems for geodynamics, is: what is geodynamics? The answer is, of course, that geodynamics is that part of geophysics which is concerned with movements of the Earth, as opposed to geostatics which is the physics of the stationary Earth. But as far as we know, there is no stationary Earth – epur sic monere. So geodynamics is actually coextensive with geophysics, and coordinate systems suitable for the one should be suitable for the other. At the present time, there are not many coordinate systems, if any, that can be identified with a static Earth. Certainly the only coordinate of aeronomic (atmospheric) interest is the height, and this is usually either as geodynamic height or as pressure. In oceanology, the most important coordinate is depth, and this, like heights in the atmosphere, is expressed as metric depth from mean sea level, as geodynamic depth, or as pressure. Only for the earth do we find “static” systems in use, ana even here there is real question as to whether the systems are dynamic or static. So it would seem that our answer to the question, of what kind, of coordinate systems are we seeking, must be that we are looking for the same systems as are used in geophysics, and these systems are dynamic in nature already – that is, their definition involvestime.


2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisli H. Gudjonsson ◽  
Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson

Summary: The Gudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS), the COPE Scale, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were administered to 212 men and 212 women. Multiple regression of the test scores showed that low self-esteem and denial coping were the best predictors of compliance in both men and women. Significant sex differences emerged on all three scales, with women having lower self-esteem than men, being more compliant, and using different coping strategies when confronted with a stressful situation. The sex difference in compliance was mediated by differences in self-esteem between men and women.


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