100 COPING RESOURCES
Positive approaches to coping
It has been argued that coping research has focused unduly on the causes and
consequences of stress and negative affect (e.g. Folkman and Moskowitz, 2000). In
recent years there has been a move towards considering the role of positive affect and
cognitions, which may help prevent potentially negative events being appraised as
stressful. Three such approaches are considered below.
Positive affect
Research has highlighted the importance of positive affect in the midst of threaten-
ing events. This work is in line with the positive psychology movement, which is a
recent branch of psychology interested in positive human functioning (Seligman and
Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). For example, Folkman (1997) studied care-giving partners
of men dying of AIDS. They interviewed the carers at intervals before and, in many
cases, after bereavement and reported that, even in these most distressing of circum -
stances, both positive and negative affect co-occurred. While participants reported
higher levels of negative affect than is found in community samples, positive affect
was experienced with at least as much frequency as negative affect among those whose
partners did not die. Even after bereavement people still report positive affect. During
difficult circumstances such as bereavement people may feel guilty that they still manage
to enjoy a joke or feel quite cheerful. Yet this capacity may enhance adaptation and
coping. Lazarus, Kanner and Folkman (1980) suggested that it might provide a respite
or a breathing space in which people replenish resources. Being miserable all the time
mediator in circumstances where, for example, a breast cancer diagnosis leads
to someone joining a support group, which in turn reduces their anxiety or
depression. Alternatively, a stressor such as marital breakdown may lead to a
reduction in support (through loss of a previously supportive partner and perhaps
the partner’s family and friends) that may increase anxiety and depression.
3 Moderated effects. Moderators, unlike mediators, change the nature of the
relationship between two variables, e.g. the stressor–strain relationship.
Moderators may alter either the strength or direction of this relationship. Thus
coping would be described as moderating the relationship between a stressor
such as bereavement and an outcome such as well-being if, for example,
bereavement led to poor health only for those who did not use social support or
emotional expression as coping strategies. This kind of moderator is also
referred to as a buffer because it reduces the impact of the stressor. This effect
can be identified as an interaction effect (e.g. in a regression equation) because
social support affects the association between stress and well-being. Other
variables such as gender or personality may also act as moderators because,
for example, some stressors may only result in strain for those scoring highly
on a certain personality trait (e.g. neuroticism). Logically, however, fixed traits
such as gender cannot act as mediators.