Coping, Emotional Regulation, and Positive Psychology Approaches

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Coping, Emotional Regulation, and Positive Psychology Approaches

Abnormal Psychology · Chapter 13: Stress-Related Disorders and Emotional ResilienceSection 13.4 · lesson 50 of 9718 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

No strategy is adaptive in itself, and the level of intervention is the real question.

  • Describe the categories of coping and what makes one adaptive
  • Compare regulation strategies and their relative effectiveness
  • Evaluate positive psychology claims against their evidence
  • Identify the level at which an intervention should occur

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (2,369 words). Read along, or search it.

Stress-Related Disorders and Emotional Resilience

Coping, Emotional Regulation, and Positive Psychology Approaches

Two people are exhausted, anxious, and sleeping badly. One of them has a problem that could be solved, and is not trying to solve it. The other has no money and no housing, and no strategy in this section will change that. Telling them apart is what this section is for. We start with what coping actually is, and the claim that everything else rests on. Then the categories, the matching principle, and where each strategy fails. Then emotion regulation, mindfulness, and resilience, each stated at its real strength. And we finish with the level at which an intervention should occur.

What Coping Is

A Process, Not a Style

Coping is the set of cognitive and behavioral efforts a person makes to manage demands. Demands appraised as taxing, or as exceeding their resources. Three features of that definition matter. It is effortful rather than automatic. Which distinguishes it from the reflexive physiological response we covered earlier. It is a process rather than a trait. People do not simply have a coping style that they apply everywhere. The same person copes differently with different situations. And differently with the same situation at different times. And it follows from appraisal. What a person does about a demand depends on what they have made of it. Now the central claim, stated at the outset, because everything else depends on it. No coping strategy is adaptive in itself. Effectiveness is a matter of fit. Between the strategy, the situation, and the person's resources. The opposite belief is widespread. That some strategies are simply good and others simply bad. And it is the source of most of the misuse this material attracts. One more thing before we go on, and it belongs at the start rather than the end. This does not say that a person should be able to manage difficulty alone. It does not say professional help is unnecessary. And it does not say that anyone's difficulty reflects a failure to cope well enough. No amount of individual skill offsets a genuinely overwhelming situation. One note before we go on. This material is educational. It is a description of what has been studied, not a program to follow.

Four Categories

What a Strategy Is Aimed At

Coping strategies fall into four categories, defined by what they are aimed at. Problem-focused coping is directed at the situation. Gathering information. Generating and evaluating options. Planning and acting. Seeking practical assistance, or removing an obstacle. Emotion-focused coping is directed at the emotional response. Reappraising the situation. Seeking comfort. Expressing feeling. Accepting what cannot be changed, or using distraction. Meaning-focused coping is directed at finding significance or purpose in a situation. It is particularly relevant where nothing can be changed. And avoidant coping is directed at not engaging with the situation or the emotion at all. Through withdrawal, distraction, denial, or substance use. Now, the distinction is useful and it is not clean. Seeking support is frequently both. A person who talks to a friend may obtain practical help and comfort in the same conversation. Reappraisal changes the emotion, and frequently changes what the person then does. So treat these as a way of asking what a strategy is aimed at. Not as a partition of behavior.

Matching

The Most Robust Finding, and Its Limits

The most robust general finding in this literature is a matching principle. Problem-focused coping tends to work better where the situation is controllable. And emotion-focused coping where it is not. Put that in a two-by-two and read the diagonal, rather than either row. Neither strategy occupies the good-fit cells on its own. That is the whole point. Problem-focused coping applied to something unchangeable produces repeated effort. At mounting cost, and changing nothing. Emotion-focused coping applied to something fixable manages the distress. While the problem continues. Three qualifications keep this from being over-applied, and they matter. Controllability is often uncertain. A person cannot always know in advance whether effort would change an outcome. Situations are usually compound. A serious diagnosis contains elements that can be acted on, and elements that cannot. And the matching finding is an average, across people and situations. It is not a rule about any individual case.

Fit

Every Strategy Has a Failure Condition

Now the same point applied strategy by strategy. Active problem-solving fits where the situation can be altered and the person can act. It fails where the outcome is settled. Repeated effort then accumulates cost without changing anything. Seeking emotional support fits almost universally. Particularly where the situation cannot be changed. It fails where it becomes reassurance-seeking, which maintains rather than relieves. Cognitive reappraisal fits where the appraisal is contributing to the distress. And could reasonably be otherwise. It fails where the appraisal is accurate. There is then nothing to restructure. Acceptance fits where the situation genuinely cannot be changed. It fails where it is applied to something modifiable, at which point it becomes resignation. Meaning-making fits in loss, chronic illness, and irreversible change. It fails where it is imposed by others, or offered too early after a loss. And humor fits frequently, particularly in sustained difficult work. It is associated with better outcomes. It fails where it consistently prevents anything being addressed seriously. Read any row both ways. Every strategy has both columns. Even the strategies with the best average records have conditions under which they fail.

Avoidance

The Poorest Average, and a Narrow Window

Avoidant coping has the poorest average outcomes of the categories. And stating only that would be misleading. First, why the outcomes are poor. It prevents the problem being addressed, where it could be. It prevents the disconfirmation of feared expectations. And it is negatively reinforced by the immediate relief it produces. Which makes it self-sustaining. That is the two-factor account applied to coping. Now, when it is nonetheless appropriate, because there is a real window. Immediately after an overwhelming event, when a person needs to function before they can process. Where the situation genuinely cannot be addressed at present, and dwelling on it serves nothing. And where attention must be directed elsewhere for a period. Completing an urgent task before turning to a difficult one. So what distinguishes functional from problematic avoidance? Duration and flexibility. Brief and chosen, against sustained and automatic. One exception is named directly. Substance use is not identified as an adaptive strategy here. It is associated with poorer outcomes, and with the development of related conditions.

Regulation

Position on the Timeline Predicts Effectiveness

Emotion regulation is the set of processes by which people influence which emotions they have. When they have them, and how they experience and express them. Its relationship to coping is one of overlap rather than containment. Coping concerns managing demands. Regulation concerns managing emotional states. And much regulation is automatic, where coping is by definition effortful. The process model organizes regulation strategies by where they act. Along the timeline of an emotional episode. And that ordering turns out to predict their effectiveness. Situation selection is choosing whether to enter a situation at all. It is powerful, and it is easily overused. Systematically avoiding situations that produce difficult emotions maintains the avoidance of chapter eleven. Situation modification is changing something about the situation once in it. That overlaps substantially with problem-focused coping. Attentional deployment is directing attention within the situation, through distraction or concentration. Cognitive change is altering how the situation is appraised. Reappraisal is the principal instance of that. And response modulation is altering the emotion after it has arisen. Including expressive suppression, and physiological approaches. Read the position of each family on the line rather than its description. Acting earlier shapes the emotion as it forms. Acting last, once the emotion has arisen, changes only its expression.

The Comparison

Reappraisal Against Suppression

The most studied comparison in this literature is reappraisal against suppression. And the general finding is consistent enough to state directly. Reappraisal is associated with better outcomes. Across wellbeing, relationships, and physiological measures. Suppression is associated with worse. The proposed explanation follows directly from the timeline. Reappraisal acts before the emotional response is fully generated. So it changes the emotion itself. Suppression acts after, so the emotion continues while its expression is inhibited. Which carries a cognitive cost. It reduces the social signal that would elicit support. And it leaves the physiological component running. Two qualifications keep this from becoming a rule. Suppression is appropriate in some contexts. A professional maintaining composure during an emergency is regulating appropriately, not badly. So is a person deferring a reaction until a private moment. And regulatory flexibility predicts outcomes better than the habitual use of any single strategy. That includes reappraisal. The finding is about averages across situations. It is not about what any person should do in a particular one.

Mindfulness

Real Support, Promoted Beyond It

Mindfulness, in the clinical sense, is attention to present experience. With an attitude of acceptance rather than evaluation. Structured mindfulness-based programs are clinical interventions delivered by trained practitioners. This material gives no instructions and no exercises. The evidence, stated in both directions. There is reasonable evidence for structured programs in several presentations. Including for the prevention of depressive relapse in people with recurrent episodes. That is where the evidence is strongest. Against that, several things. Many studies have used inactive control conditions. So comparisons with an equivalent alternative are fewer than the volume of publications suggests. Effect sizes vary considerably across outcomes and populations. And the field has been criticized for inconsistent definitions, and for publication practices. So describe it as an approach with real support for particular uses. Promoted well beyond what that support establishes. One more thing deserves stating, because it is frequently omitted. Adverse effects. A minority of people experience increased distress. And sustained or intensive practice is not appropriate for everyone. Including, in some circumstances, people with trauma histories or with certain presentations. That is one reason these are clinician-delivered programs. Rather than universally recommended activities.

Resilience

A Description Used as an Expectation

Resilience is the maintenance or recovery of functioning following significant adversity. Three points about it are frequently lost, and each matters. First, it is ordinary rather than exceptional. The most consistent finding in this literature is worth stating carefully. The commonest outcome following adversity, including serious adversity, is disruption followed by recovery. Resilience is the typical trajectory, not a rare achievement. Second, it is a trajectory rather than a trait. The same person is resilient in some circumstances and not in others. And a person who did not cope well with one adversity is not thereby lacking a quality. Third, much of it is circumstantial rather than personal. Resources, relationships, income, security, and access to support. Those account for a substantial share of who recovers. Which means describing resilience as a personal characteristic misattributes a good deal of it. Now the misuse, which is common enough to name directly. Resilience is descriptive, and it is frequently used prescriptively. It describes an observed outcome. Used as an expectation, that people ought to be resilient, it becomes a standard. And those who struggle are found wanting against it. The organizational version is the clearest case. Resilience training offered to a workforce facing excessive demand or unsafe conditions. That locates the problem in the workers, and leaves the conditions untouched. The clinical version matters too. A person who has not recovered from an adversity has not failed at resilience. They may have faced more, with less, for longer.

Positive Psychology

Descriptions Hold Up; Causal Claims Do Less Well

Positive psychology is the study of wellbeing, strengths, and flourishing. Rather than of difficulty and disorder. Its founding argument is that psychology built its models overwhelmingly from what goes wrong. And therefore described damage well, and health poorly. That argument is reasonable. What follows is an assessment of what the field has established. Gratitude practices have some support for modest short-term effects on wellbeing measures. Findings on duration, and on clinical populations, are weaker. Character strengths. The classification itself is descriptive. It is not validated as a causal framework, and intervention evidence is mixed. Flow. The state is well described and reliably reported. Causal claims about producing it deliberately are weaker. Optimism shows reasonably consistent associations. But the direction of causation is not settled. The association may reflect good circumstances producing both optimism and better outcomes. And wellbeing interventions generally. Meta-analytic estimates have fallen. As methodological standards have risen. Now read that middle column down, because the pattern is consistent. Reasonable support for descriptions. Much weaker support for causal claims. Claims about producing these states deliberately. And note that the last row applies to everything above it. This field was substantially affected by the replication problems described in two point three.

Levels

The Question Is Not Which Strategy, But Which Level

The most consequential question raised here is not which strategy works. It is at what level intervention should occur. Most of what has been described operates at the individual level. And the individual level is frequently not where the problem is. Individual work gives real benefit where the demand is manageable. And where the difficulty is partly in appraisal or regulation. What it cannot do is change the demand. Where the situation is genuinely overwhelming, individual skill does not offset it. Relational work alters one of the better-established protective factors. And does so without requiring the person to change. It cannot substitute for material resources, or for changing an unsafe situation. Organizational work addresses the source where the source is occupational. The evidence favors it over individual training. It cannot reach people outside the organization. And structural and policy work alters exposure to adversity at population scale. Which no clinical intervention can do. But it cannot help the person in front of a clinician this week. So read that final column. Each level has something it cannot do. And the bottom two rows cannot do the thing clinicians are asked to do daily. That is the genuine tension here, and it is not resolved by preferring one level. Individual work is not a mistake because structural causes exist. The person in front of a clinician needs something now. And offering only individual work for a structurally caused problem is a mistake. It leaves the cause in place, and implies the person was the problem. One last caution before you leave this chapter. Post-traumatic growth. People do report positive change after adversity, consistently and meaningfully. Whether those reports correspond to measured change is contested. Almost all the evidence is retrospective, and prospective studies frequently do not find it. So growth is not to be expected, encouraged, or suggested to anyone in the aftermath. And nothing about the finding implies that difficult experiences are good for people.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Coping, Emotional Regulation, and Positive Psychology Approaches

What is the difference between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping?
Problem-focused coping is aimed at the situation itself, through gathering information, planning, acting or seeking practical help, while emotion-focused coping is aimed at the emotional response, through reappraisal, comfort, acceptance or distraction. Research suggests a matching principle: problem-focused coping tends to work better when a situation is controllable, and emotion-focused coping when it is not. No strategy is adaptive in itself, because effectiveness depends on fit.
Is reappraisal better than suppression for regulating emotions?
On average, cognitive reappraisal is associated with better outcomes than expressive suppression across wellbeing, relationships and physiological measures. Reappraisal acts early and changes the emotion itself, while suppression acts after the emotion has arisen, hiding its expression but leaving the physiological response running. Suppression can still be appropriate, as when a professional stays composed in an emergency, and flexibility across strategies predicts outcomes better than relying on any single one.
When is avoidant coping helpful?
Avoidant coping can help when it is brief and chosen, such as right after an overwhelming event when a person must function before processing it, or when a situation genuinely cannot be addressed yet. Even so, it has the poorest average outcomes of the coping categories. Sustained, automatic avoidance blocks problem-solving, prevents feared expectations from being disconfirmed, and is reinforced by the relief it brings. Substance use is not considered an adaptive form of coping.
How strong is the evidence for positive psychology interventions?
The evidence for positive psychology is strongest for describing wellbeing and weaker for causal claims. Gratitude practices show modest short-term effects, the character strengths classification is descriptive rather than validated as a causal framework, and optimism's links to better outcomes may reflect good circumstances. Meta-analytic estimates for wellbeing interventions have fallen as research standards have risen, and the field was affected by the replication crisis.

About the Abnormal Psychology course

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Abnormal Psychology (Psychology 180) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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