Emotion Focused Coping

Psychological stress refers to a state of mental tension often resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances, and is often described as a feeling of being overwhelmed. Baum (1990) defined stress as any ‘uncomfortable emotional experience accompanied by physiological and behavioural changes’. From an evolutionary perspective, sometimes stress can be adaptive as it can promote survival as it helps an organism adapt to changing environments and perform better in stressful situations. However excessive stress can have aversive consequences for a person, such as an array of physical and psychological health issues. Research consistently finds that females report higher average levels of stress, anxiety and depression than men (Mirowsky and Ross, …show more content…
Coping is imperative for regulating stressful emotions, and altering the environment causing the stress (Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, Delongis, & Gruen, 1986). There are different types of coping styles; Lazarus et al. (1984) distinguished between problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. Problem-focused coping includes rational cognitive and behavioural attempts to modify or eliminate the stressful situation, such as accepting the problem and taking logical steps to address it. On the other hand, emotion-focused coping involves altering the emotional response to the stressor, for example venting emotions, ruminating and wallowing in self-blame. Sigmon, Stanton and Snyder (1995) suggested that emotion-focused coping style is less effective and more likely to be associated with psychological stress than problem-focused coping style. Therefore, perhaps the higher reports of female stress could be due to them predominantly using an emotion-focused coping style, and that men typically use a problem-focused coping …show more content…
The socialization hypothesis suggests that the impact of gender on the stress process could be conditioned by traditional socialization patterns. The traditional female gender role prescribes dependence, affiliation with others, emotional expressiveness, little assertiveness, and the subordination of one’s own needs to those of others. On the other hand, the traditional male gender role prescribes attributes such as autonomy, self-confidence, assertiveness, rationality and being goal-oriented. These types of attributes may make it difficult for men to express feelings of ‘weakness, incompetence and fear’, while for women it would be more difficult to take a proactive problem-solving approach. In contrast, the role constraint hypothesis argues that gender differences in coping styles may be explained by differences for men and women in the likelihood of occupying particular social roles and the role-related resources and opportunities (Rosario et al.,

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