Abstract

Five hundred participants completed a short, ten-item measure of coping along with measures of self-esteem, intelligence, belief in a just world (BJW) and conspiracy theories (CT). The scale factored into four recognisable coping styles labelled socio-emotional, cognitive, internalisation and distraction. Correlations showed all factors were related to self-esteem and trait optimism. Regressions onto each factor indicated that self-esteem was the most consistent factor being associated positively with all factors, except internalisation. Younger females with low self-esteem tended to use socio-emotional coping, optimists with high self-esteem cognitive coping, younger, less optimistic people with low self-esteem internalisation and high self-esteem, less intelligent people with BJW distraction as a coping strategy. Implications and limitations are acknowledged.

Keywords

Coping, Resilience, Socio-emotional, Internalisation, Distraction

Share and Cite:

1. Introduction

There is, understandably, a very large literature in clinical and counselling psychology on the topic of coping [1]-[9]. Coping refers to the process of facing, and contending with, a range of life difficulties in an effort to overcome them. It is thought to be an essential “life-skill”.

There is a distinction between defence mechanisms (DMs) and coping styles. DMs are considered to be unconscious strategies used to cope with anxiety arising from socially unacceptable thoughts or feelings. Coping strategies are conscious DMs and can be classified from healthy and effective to pathological and problematic. There is also a specialist literature on very specific concepts like repressive coping [10] [11] [12]. Sometimes one very specific coping style like stoicism is explored [13]. Most of the coping literature concerns the measurement of coping, differentiating between healthy and unhealthy styles and strategies, and helping people learn and unlearn particular strategies [1] [4] [5] [6] [14]-[20].

Many studies and measures have been done in order to provide a rigorous and parsimonious categorisation of conceptually different ways of coping [5]. As a result, there are various categorical and dimensional models and ways to measure them. In an early paper, Folkman and Lazarus [21] identified eight factors: Confrontive Coping, Distancing, Self-Controlling, Seeking Social Support, Accepting Responsibility, Escape-Avoidance, Planful Problem and Positive Reappraisal.

Over the years there have been many attempts to classify coping styles and strategies with a variety of labels such as self-soothing, mindfulness, crisis-planning, confrontative, distancing, and escape/avoidance. There are other ways of classifying the coping styles such as internalisation-externalization, cognitive-emotional or adaptive-maladaptive [1] [22]. Whilst there is clearly overlap in these schemes, it makes conceptualising the literature difficult. However nearly all have differentiated between primarily cognitive and emotional techniques as well as ignoring/repressing problems.

Predictably there have been a number of studies on individual difference correlates of coping [9]. Some more recent studies have attempted to explore the genetic determinants of coping [6].

2. This Study

This study explores some individual difference correlates of coping style preference. Some factors, like sex/gender have been widely explored and results suggest females favour emotional coping and males cognitive techniques [23]. Other individual difference factors like personality traits have been explored [24] [25]. They tend to show predictably that emotional/stability is most closely linked to coping style preference.

In this study we were interested in individual correlates of coping preferences. We were interested in six classes of variable. First, we examined classic demographic variables, age, sex and education, to see if they were linked to coping preferences. From the literature we expect both sex and age differences, with females using more emotional and males more cognitive and distractive strategies. We also expect older people to use less emotional coping strategies. Second, we measured self-esteem, which is a measure of self-confidence, because we expected those who were more self-confident would use more effective cognitive strategies and less effective repression strategies.

Third, we were interested in three belief/ideological variables: politics, religion and optimism. We asked people how religious they were and whether they believed in an afterlife, which we surmised would be related to a number of deistic arguments for the Problem of Evil [26].

Fourth we looked at intelligence (IQ) which is usually correlated with education and social class. We expected brighter people to favour cognitive strategies more and therefore use more cerebral DMs.

Fifth, we examined beliefs in a Just/Unjust World (BJW), which is concept about the tendency of people to blame victims of misfortunes for their own fate [27]. The idea is that people have a fundamental need to believe that the (social) world is a just place, and that this belief is functionally necessary for them to develop principles of deservingness. People are confronted with difficult issues like why some people get ill, are abused, descend into poverty etc., while others do not and may be recipients of fortune. The idea of the BJW is that it helps answer some of these very difficult questions.

Sixth, Conspiracy Theories (CTs) entails the beliefs that the causes of many major social, political and economic events are because of the action of multiple, evil, secretive people with a selfish, global political goal in mind. They seem toform a monological belief system [28] in the sense that people have a conspiracist worldview. They accept and integrate new CTs on a wide range of issues, and accept often strange, new and outlandish CTs because they serve a psychological function for people who feel powerless, excluded or disadvantaged [26]. They could be seen as superstitious, magical, and paranormal beliefs with no credible scientific evidence for them; that is what functions do they fulfil.

3. Method

3.1. Participants

There were 502 participants, 254 males and 248 females. They ranged in age from 30-69 years old, with a modal age of 36. In all 70.9% were graduates. With regard to their religious beliefs (1 = Not At All to 9 = Very), they scored a mean of 3.80 (SD = 3.01). In all 41.3% said they did, and 58.7% said they did not, believe in an afterlife. They rated their political views from (1) Very Conservative to (9) Very Liberal, with a mean of 5.83 (SD = 1.81). They rated “I am an optimist” from (10) Agree to (1) Disagree, with a mean of 6.74 (SD = 2.15).

3.2 Questionnaires

Coping. This questionnaire was from the UCLA Dual Diagnosis Clinic. It is a simple 10-item scale shown in Table 1. It has the advantage over some other scales in being short, comprehensive and clear.

Self-Esteem [29]. This comprised of four other factors on a scale from 1 - 100: Physical Attractiveness (M = 62.16; SD = 19.23), Physical Health (M = 69.07, SD = 18.18), Intelligence (IQ) (M = 73.09, SD = 13.49) and Emotional Intelligence (M = 72.81, SD = 17.01). The Alpha for these four items was 0.73, and they were summed together forming a variable labelled Self-Esteem.

Conspiracy Thinking [28]. This was a 10-item scale devised as part of the Conspiracy and Democracy project at the University of Cambridge. It consisted of 10 statements that are generic in nature and not connected to any specific societal, economic or political systems. People note those they believe to be true. In this study the Alpha was 0.68 with a mean of 2.01 (SD = 1.77).

Belief in a Just World. Rubin and Peplau [30] devised a 20-item self-report inventory to measure the attitudinal continuity between the two opposite poles of total acceptance and rejection of the notion that the world is a just place. The scale has been quoted over 650 times in the academic literature. Because some items were both dated and country specific, 6 were removed leaving 9 Just World and 4 Unjust World items. The Cronbach Alpha in this study for the Just World was 0.88 and 0.82 for the Unjust World.

The Wonderlic Personnel Test [31]. This 50-item test can be administered in 12 minutes and measures general intelligence. Items include word and number comparisons, disarranged sentences, story problems that require mathematical and logical solutions. The test has impressive norms and correlates very highly (r = 0.92) with the WAIS-R. In this study we used 16 items from Form A.

3.3. Procedure

Data was collected online through Prolific, a platform like the better-known Amazon-Turk. We specified that they need to be over 30 years, working and be fluent in English. Participants were compensated for their time (receiving £2.50). Usual data cleansing and checking led to around 5% of the participants recruited being rejected before further analysis.

4. Results

Sex Differences. Table 1 shows sex differences on each item. Two were significant at p < 0.001 which indicated that females reported higher use of seeking social support and venting.

Factor Structure. Table 2 shows the results from a Varimax rotated factor analysis of the 10 ratings. Table 2 shows that four factors emerged which accounted for 60% of the variance. The first factor was labelled Socio-Emotional, the second Cognitive, the third Internalisation and the fourth Distraction. Four factor scores were calculated.

Correlations. Table 3 shows the correlations between all variables considered. Two variables, degree-status and political beliefs, showed no correlations with all four variables while two, self-esteem and optimism, correlated with all four. There were most significant correlations with the first factor.

Regressions. Table 4 shows the results of the four regressions with each coping style being the criterion variable. The regressions indicated that our individual difference variables accounted for between 4% and 12% of the variance. The first regression onto first factor socio-emotional indicated that younger females with high self-esteem had higher scores on this factor. The second regression indicated that optimists with high self-esteem were more likely to use cognitive coping strategies. The third regression indicated that younger, pessimistic people with lower self-esteem were more likely to use internalisation coping strategies.

Table 1. Means, SDs and sex difference ANOVAs.

These are rated on a 0 (not at all) to 9 (use very frequently) scale.

Table 2. Results of the factor analysis.

Table 3. Correlation between demographic, ideological, belief, IQ and coping variables.

***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.

Table 4. The results of the multiple regression.

Code: Sex: 1 = Male, 2 = Female; Degree 1 = Yes, 2 = No. ***p < 0.001 **p < 0.01 *p < 0.05.

The final regression indicated that high self-esteem, but less intelligent people who had a BJW used distraction as a coping method.

5. Discussion

The understanding of personal preferences for, and the efficacy of, coping strategies has long been recognised to be important. Just as healthy and adaptive coping strategies can mitigate acute and chronic life stressors, so adopting ineffective or even destructive strategies can cause even more stress and damage. There are various coping models, but most note three or four very different approaches called cognitive/problem solving, affective/emotional and disengaging repressing. Also, there are various distinctions between adaptive and maladaptive forms of each approach.

In this study we were interested in a number of individual correlates of preferred coping. We also explored a relatively unknown but simple and short measure that has face validity. It showed that people claimed to use problem-solving and humour most frequently and therapy and denial least frequently. The sex differences supported other literature in this field which showed that females more than males sought social support and expressed their emotions. The work on stoicism and dysfunctional masculinity suggests that this is overall an ineffective way of coping

The regressions shown in Table 4 show some variables were unrelated to the four coping strategies. These included education, religious and political beliefs, as well as endorsement of conspiracy theories. In this sense it appears that coping is not an ideological issue. Similarly, some other variables like intelligence and beliefs in a just world were only marginally related to one factor, namely internalisation. On the other hand the factor most closely related to all the coping strategies was self-esteem based on four simple self-ratings. People with high self-esteem were more likely to use distraction, socio-emotional and cognitive strategies but less likely internalisation. This poses the interesting question of the process or mechanism underlying this observation: do people with high self-esteem use coping strategies that maintain or boost their self-esteem or does the adoption or use of particular coping strategies have positive or negative effects on coping strategies over time?

The two regressions that accounted for most of the variance were particularly interesting. The regression onto the third factor labelled internalisation showed it was used more frequently by younger people, with low self-esteem and a pessimistic outlook. This may seem an example of a vicious circle where people tend to employ poor coping strategies which effect their outlook and sense of self-efficacy. Similarly, the regression onto the factor labelled distraction suggested that it was used most by people with high self-esteem, but, interestingly, comparatively of lower intelligence. This may be because in essence distraction is a way of coping by not coping

Like all others, this study had limitations. All the measures used were very short, particularly the new measure of coping, where possible it is always preferable to use longer measures with higher reliability and possibly facet scores. It is always preferential to have a larger, more representative population and to know more about them, such as their medical history and interpersonal relationships.

Data Availability

This is obtainable from the first author upon request.

Registration

This paper was not pre-registered with the journal.

Ethics

This was sought and obtained.

Informed Consent

Participants gave consent for their anonymised data to be analysed and published.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

References