[Richard S. Lazarus PhD, Susan Folkman PhD] Stress(BookFi) PDF

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STRESS, APPRAISAL, AND COPING Richard S. Lazarus, Ph.D., has been Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1957. After obtaining his doc- torate in 1948 from the University of Pittsburgh, he taught at Johns Hopkins University and at Clark University where he was Dire...

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STRESS, APPRAISAL, AND COPING

Richard S. Lazarus, Ph.D., has been Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1957. After obtaining his doctorate in 1948 from the University of Pittsburgh, he taught at Johns Hopkins University and at Clark University where he was Director of Clinical Training. He has published extensively on a variety of issues in personality and -clinical psychology, and was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969. He has been a pioneer in stress theory and research, exemplified by his 1966 book, Psychological Stress and the Coping Process, and by his influential psychophysiological research during the 1960s. Professor Lazarus maintains an active program of research as Principal Investigator of the Berkeley Stress and Coping Project, and continues to be a major figure in emotion theory, as well as personality and clinical psychology. Susan Folkman, Ph.D., is Associate Research Psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and Co-Principal Investigator of the Berkeley Stress and Coping Project. After a career of full-time parenting, Dr. Folkman began her doctoral work in 1975 and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters based on her research, and has rapidly gained a reputation for her ability to expand appraisal and coping theory and to test it empirically.

STRESS, APPRAISAL, AND COPING

Richard S. Lazarus, Ph.D.

Susan Folkman, Ph.D.

Springer Publishing Company New York

Copyright © 1984 by Springer Publishing Company, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036-8002

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Springer Publishing Company, Inc.

Springer Publishing Company, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036-8002

060708/10 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Lazarus, Richard S. Stress, appraisal, and coping. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Stress (Psychology) I. Folkman, Susan. IT. Title BF575.S75L32 1984 155.9 84-5593 ISBN 0-8261-4191-9

Printed in the United States of America

To Bunny; To David

Foreword

My first encounter with Richard Lazarus was during my graduate student days, back in the early 1970s. I wanted to study meditation as an intervention in the physiology of stress arousal, and at the time Lazarus was leading the way in such studies of stress. After a meeting with him in his Berkeley office in which I described what I was hoping to do, he gave me some technical advice and most kindly helped me obtain a copy of a film he had used with success in his own work to prime stress arousal in experimental subjects. I did not realize it then, but through the lens of history I see clearly that Lazarus had already begun to play a major role in shifting the thinking of psychology as a field. At that time experimental psychology was in the thrall of behaviorists, who took as the proper study of our field the readily observable responses of organisms (whether pigeons or people) to a given stimulus. For behaviorists like B.F. Skinner (with whom I shared an occasional elevator ride in those days in Harvard's psychology building, William James Hall), the workings of the mind were but a "black box" between stimulus and response, nothing worthy of studying. But Lazarus saw that how we think about and perceive the events of our lives has direct physiological consequence: Mental events have biological outcomes. That insight may seem all too obvious today, but in the Zeitgeist of those times it was a radical proposal. His experiments and theoretical writing played multiple roles in the history of psychology. For one, they kept alive the study of emotions during a time when the behaviorist tide was washing it away. For another, his findings highlighted the role of cognition in emotion, helping open the door within experimental psychology for the cognitive v

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Foreword

revolution that was to overtake the behaviorist outlook in influence. His work on the emotional consequence of "subception," or messages that come to us outside our conscious awareness, kept alive theoretical stances with roots in psychoanalysis that were later verified by affective neuroscience—another field that itself is to some extent a legacy of the experimental wave Lazarus's work began. Lazarus's stress research led to the studies of how people cope with adversity, an early contribution to what became behavioral medicine. And his insights on the power of appraisal helped build an atmosphere of receptivity for another approach just beginning to make headway in the 1970s: Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy. This re-issue of one of his classic works, Stress, Appraisal, and Coping, written with his colleague Susan Folkman, makes accessible a seminal document in the evolution of psychology. Those of us now laboring in any of the multiple fields he helped found will still find in this historic work ideas that enrich our thinking. Daniel Goleman

Contents Foreword Preface

V

xi

1 The Stress Concept in the Life Sciences A Bit of History Modern Developments The Concept of Stress Sum man/

1

2 6 11 21

2 Cognitive Appraisal Processes Why Is a Concept of Appraisal Necessary? The Place of Cognitive Appraisal in Stress Theory Basic Forms of Cognitive Appraisal Research on Cognitive Appraisal Cognitive Appraisal and Phenomenology The Concept of Vulnerability The Issue of Depth Summary

3 Person Factors Influencing Appraisal Commitments Beliefs Summary

4 Situation Factors Influencing Appraisal Novelty Predictability

22 22 25 31 38 46 50 51 52

55 56 63 80

82 83 85

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Event Uncertainty Temporal Factors Ambiguity The Timing of Stressful Events in Relation to the Life Cycle A Comment on the Selection and Treatment of Variables Summary

5

The Concept of Coping Traditional Approaches Coping Traits and Styles Limitations and Defects of Traditional Approaches Summary

Contents

87 92 103 108 114 115 117 117 120 128 139

6

The Coping Process: An Alternative to Traditional Formulations Definition of Coping Coping as a Process

Stages in the Coping Process The Multiple Functions of Coping Coping Resources Constraints Against Utilizing Coping Resources Control as Appraisal; Control as Coping Coping Over the Life Course Prospects for the Study of Coping Styles Summary

141 141 142 143 148 157 165 170 171 174 178

7 Appraisal, Coping, and Adaptational Outcomes Social Functioning Morale Somatic Health Concluding Comments Summary

181 183 194 205 221 223

Contents

8

The Individual and Society Three Perspectives Stress, Coping, and Adaptation in the Individual Social Change Summary

9 Cognitive Theories of Emotion Early Cognitive Formulations The Fundamental Tasks of a Cognitive Theory of Emotion Attribution Theory The Relationship Between Cognition and Emotion Emotion and the Problem of Reductionism Summary

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226 226 234 251 258 261 262 265 271 273 278 284

10

Methodological Issues Levels of Analysis Traditional Research and Thought Transaction and Process The Design of Transactional, Process-oriented Research The Measurement of Key Concepts

Summary

286 286 291 293 299 306 325

11 Treatment and Stress Management Approaches to Treatment How Treatment Works Therapy from the Perspective of Our Stress and Coping Theory Stress Management Versus One-on-One Therapy Summary

334 334 343

References

376

Index

437

353 361 374

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Preface

The idea for this book originated about 10 years after the publication of Psychological Stress and the Coping Process by Lazarus in 1966, when it became evident that the field had not only grown and matured, but that it had also changed greatly in character. Cognitive approaches to stress had become widely accepted and, along with renewed interest in emotions and psychosomatic (or behavioral) medicine, the issues of stress and coping in adult life and aging, as well as stress management, were gaining attention. Most important, the concepts of cognitive appraisal and coping, not yet in the mainstream of thought in 1966, had become major themes of interdisciplinary theory and research, and our own approaches to these concepts had further developed and expanded. It was again time to pull together the field of stress, coping, and adaptation from the perspective of our current research and thought. This book, then, has a historical connection with its 1966 forebear; it shares its objectives and metatheoretical orientation, but its character and basic content are new. We have three main objectives. First, we present in detail our theory of stress, focusing on cognitive appraisal and coping. Our approach is plainly partisan, and reflects a longstanding stake in certain theoretical and metatheoretical perspectives. Second, we examine major movements within the field from the perspective of our theory, including issues of behavioral medicine and concern with the life course, emotion, stress management, and treatment. Third, since stress, coping, and adaptation represent both an individual psychological and physiological human problem—and a collective problem because humans function in society—our concerns xi

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are multilevel and multidisciplinary. Therefore, our intended audience includes clinicians (psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, and clinical psychologists), sociologists, anthropologists, medical researchers, and physiologists. Although our own emphasis is clearly psychological and centered on individual coping and adaptation, our concerns touch on each of these disciplines. A book such as this requires choices, sometimes painful ones, about how much to cover, in how much detail, with how much scholarship, and at what level of complexity. We have not tried to be encyclopedic or to cover every topic that could conceivably be included under the rubric of stress. The research literature is now voluminous; we have not here reviewed it for each of the topics covered, but emphasize the most important issues and research relevant to our conceptualization. We have had to be highly selective and have experienced ambivalence about whether or not to cite particular discourses or research studies. This is an idea book, not a review of research; where possible, we cite reviews the reader can turn to. We closed the book on new citations in the summer of 1983. We have tried to keep the text to a manageable size, which may disappoint those researchers whose work is not included. We made the decision to forgo an examination of the physiology of stress, on which there are numerous treatments, whereas there are few scholarly books devoted to the psychological and social aspects of stress from the cognitive standpoint. A workable pyschophysiology of stress depends as much on a vigorous understanding of psychological and social processes as it does on a sound knowledge of physiology. We view our contribution as mainly in the former areas. We also chose not to examine developmental issues. Relevant research on developmental aspects of stress and coping is growing, but as of this moment it seems premature to examine the topic in this book. This is not an undergraduate text or a self-help book; it is oriented toward professionals in many disciplines who might appreciate an integrative theoretical analysis of the subject matter. When one writes a book for biological and social scientists and practitioners, however, one must be wary of overestimating knowledge across disciplines. We have made every effort to be clear without assuming such prior knowledge. We hope sociologists will understand that we are not sociologists and that we are not writing exclusively for them; and similarly for physiologists, anthropologists, and so on. It is our hope not only that social and biological scientists and practitioners can read what we have written with understanding,

Preface

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but that graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and educated laypersons too would appreciate this book. We acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of a number of persons who read specific chapters and gave us comments and advice. These include James Coyne, Anita DeLongis, Christine DunkelSchetter, Rand Gruen, Theodore Kemper, D. Paul Lumsden, and Leonard Pearlin. We have also benefited from our collaboration with graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visitors who have participated in the Berkeley Stress and Coping Project, including Carolyn Aldwin, Patricia Benner, Judith Cohen, Gayle Dakof, Gloria Golden, Darlene Goodhart, Kenneth Holroyd, Allen Kanner, Ethel Roskies, Catherine Schaefer, and Judith Wrubel. Carol Carr, of the Berkeley Stress and Coping Project, has carried heavy responsibility for the management of the manuscript and provided major editorial assistance. Ursula Springer, the publisher, has also given substantial editorial assistance and encouragement. Finally, a number of federal and private granting agencies have helped with our research, some of which is reported in the book; The National Institute on Aging, the Mac Arthur Foundation, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This ongoing research has encouraged us to keep our feet on the ground of observation and has prevented us from allowing our speculations to depart too far from reality.

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1

The Stress Concept in the Life Sciences

It is virtually impossible today to read extensively in any of the biological or social sciences without running into the term stress. The concept is even more extensively discussed in the health care fields, and it is found as well in economics, political science, business, and education. At the popular level, we are flooded with messages about how stress can be prevented, managed, and even eliminated. No one can say for sure why interest in stress has gained such widespread public attention. It is fashionable to attribute this to rapid social change (e.g., Toffler, 1970), to growing anomie in an industrial society in which we have lost some of our sense of identity and our traditional anchors and meaning (Tuchman, 1978), or to growing affluence, which frees many people from concerns about survival and allows them to turn to a search for a higher quality of life. The issues encompassed by the concept of stress are certainly not new. Cofer and Appley (1964) wisely pointed out some years ago that the term stress " . . . has all but preempted a field previously shared by a number of other concepts . . ." (p. 441), including anxiety, conflict, frustration, emotional disturbance, trauma, alienation, and anomie. Cofer and Appley went on to say, "It is as though, when the word stress came into vogue, each investigator, who had been working with a concept he felt was closely related, substituted the word stress . . . and continued in his same line of investigation" (p. 449).

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Stress, Appraisal, and Coping

A Bit of History As with many words, the term stress antedates its systematic or scientific use. It was used as early as the 14th century to mean hardship, straits, adversity, or affliction (cf. Lumsden, 1981). In the late 17th century Hooke (cited in Hinkle, 1973, 1977) used stress in the context of the physical sciences, although this usage was not made systematic until the early 19th century. "Load" was defined as an external force; "stress" was the ratio of the internal force (created by load) to the area over which the force acted; and "strain" was the deformation or distortion of the object (Hinkle, 1977). The concepts of stress and strain survived, and in 19th century medicine they were conceived as a basis of ill health. As an example, Hinkle (1977) cites Sir William Osier's comments on the Jewish businessman: Living an intense life, absorbed in his work, devoted to his pleasures, passionately devoted to his home, the nervous energy of the Jew is taxed to the uttermost, and his system is subjected to that stress and strain which seems to be a basic factor in so many cases of angina pectoris. (p. 30)

Here, in effect, is an old version of the current concept of the Type A personality—hardly limited, incidentally, to any ethnic group— with a special vulnerability to cardiovascular disease. Some years later, Walter Cannon (1932), who gave much research vitality to the physiology of emotion, considered stress a disturbance of homeostasis under conditions of cold, lack of oxygen, low blood sugar, and so on. Although he used the term somewhat casually, he spoke of his subjects as "under stress" and implied that the degree of stress could be measured. By 1936, Hans Selye was using the term stress in a very special, technical sense to mean an orchestrated set of bodily defenses against any form of noxious stimulus (including psychological threats), a reaction that he called the General Adaptation Syndrome. Stress was, in effect, not an environmental demand (which Selye called a "stressor"), but a universal physiological set of reactions and processes created by such a demand. In the early 1950s Selye published an Annual Report of Stress (1950, 1951-1956) on his research. This work was pulled together in 1956 in a major book called The Stress of Life. By that time, the literature on the physiology of stress had already amounted to nearly six thousand publications a

The Stress Concept in the Life Sciences

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year (Appley & Trumbull, 1967). An invited address by Selye to the American Psychological Association in 1955 also helped spread interest in the concept from physiology to psychology and other behavioral sciences. Although the enormous volume of work on hormonal stress secretions that stemmed from Selye's work had obvious implications at the sociological and psychological levels of analysis, it did not actually clarify the latter processes. Nonetheless, Selye's work and its spinoffs have played a dominant role in the recent expansion of interest in stress. Hinkle (1977) also accords an important role in the evolution of the stress concept in medicine to Harold G. Wolff, who wrote about life stress and disease in the 1940s and 1950s (e.g., Wolff, 1953). Like Selye and Cannon, who conceived of stress as a reaction of an organism besieged by environmental demands and noxious agents, Wolff appears to have regarded stress as a state of the body, although he never tried to define it systematically, as Selye did. He wrote (as cited in Hinkle, 1973, p. 31): I have used the word [stress] in biology to indicate that state within a living creature which results from the interaction of the organism with noxious stimuli or circumstances, i.e., it is a dynamic state within the organism; it is not a stimulus, assault, load, symbol, burden, or any aspect of environment, internal, external, social or otherwise. This emphasis by Wolff on a "dynamic state" involving adaptation to demands, and by Selye on an orchestrated physiological response pattern, is important for several reasons. First, the term stress as used in the physical sciences refers to an inactive or passive body that is deformed (strained) by environmental loads. However, in the biological usage, stress is an active process of "fighting back"; the living body engages in adaptational efforts crucial to the maintenance or restoration of equilibrium, a concept derived from t...