Definition
Active coping is a broad term that captures the many behavioral and cognitive strategies by which a person tries to actively manage the demands of a stressful situation and the resulting emotional and physiological reactions.
Introduction
In our daily parlance, people frequently use the words cope or coping to designate a successful attempt at facing, dealing with, mastering, or overcoming a stressful situation. In their seminal research program, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) proposed a different approach and defined coping as the behavioral and cognitive efforts to manage the demands of a situation. Defining coping as efforts rather than as a successful outcome allows researchers to consider both the effective and ineffective attempts to handle a stressor as legitimate demonstrations of the coping construct. As a result,...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Ayers, T. S., Sandler, I. N., West, S. G., & Roosa, M. W. (1996). A dispositional and situational assessment of children’s coping: Testing alternative models of coping. Journal of Personality, 64, 923–958. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1996.tb00949.x.
Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267–283. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.56.2.267.
Clarke, A. T. (2006). Coping with interpersonal stress and psychosocial health among children and adolescents: A meta-analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 35, 10–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-005-9001-x.
Compas, B. E., Jaser, S. S., Bettis, A. H., Watson, K. H., Gruhn, M. A., Dunbar, J. P., … Thigpen, J. C. (2017). Coping, emotion regulation, and psychopathology in childhood and adolescence: A meta-analysis and narrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 143, 938–991. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000110.
Connor-Smith, J. K., Compas, B. E., Wadsworth, M. E., Thomsen, A. H., & Saltzman, H. (2000). Responses to stress in adolescence: Measurement of coping and involuntary stress responses. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68, 976–992. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.68.6.976.
Crocker, P. R. E., Tammien, K. A., & Gaudreau, P. (2015). Coping in sport. In S. D. Mellalieu & S. Hanton (Eds.), Contemporary advances in sport psychology: A review (pp. 28–67). New York: Springer.
Gaudreau, P., & Blondin, J.-P. (2002). Development of a questionnaire for the assessment of coping strategies employed by athletes in competitive sport settings. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 3, 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1469-0292(01)00017-6.
Lazarus, R. S. (2006). Emotions and interpersonal relationships: Toward a person-centered conceptualization of emotions and coping. Journal of Personality, 74, 9–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00368.x.
Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer.
Nicholls, A. R., Taylor, N. J., Carroll, S., & Perry, J. L. (2016). The development of a new sport-specific classification of coping and a meta-analysis of the relationship between different coping strategies and moderators on sporting outcomes. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1674. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01674.
Rumbold, J. L., Fletcher, D., & Daniels, K. (2012). A systematic review of stress management interventions with sport performers. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 1, 173–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026628.
Skinner, E. A., Edge, K., Altman, J., & Sherwood, H. (2003). Searching for the structure of coping: A review and critique of category systems for classifying ways of coping. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 216–269. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.2.216.
Acknowledgments
Preparation of this entry was prepared while Patrick Gaudreau was funded by a research grant from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#435-2015-0649). It was also facilitated by a teaching release awarded by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Gaudreau, P. (2018). Active Coping Strategies. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1119-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1119-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences