are making it out to be. A man who fears he will lose his job might distract
himself from his worries by going out with friends or by drinking excessively.
In one investigation, men and women were asked how they had coped
with a series of real-life events they had experienced during the past 7 months
(Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). Participants indicated their coping strategies on
a checklist of possible responses. More than 1,300 examples of stressful ex-
periences were examined. The researchers found that participants used an
emotion-focused strategy, a problem-focused strategy, or both in more than98% of the cases. Of course, most people used more than one tactic to deal
with their stresses, and many used strategies from all three of the major cate-
gories when wrestling with a single event. Other research finds that womentend to use emotion-focused strategies more than men, whereas men are
more likely than women to take steps to solve problems directly (Ptacek,
Smith, & Dodge, 1994). This pattern is consistent with the research findingson gender roles presented in Chapter 14.
How Effective Are Coping Strategies?
Researchers consistently find that using some kind of coping strategy is
almost always better than using no strategy (McCrae & Costa, 1986 Mitchell,
Cronkite, & Moos, 1983). However, not all coping strategies are equallyeffective. The first question researchers ask is whether active or avoidance
strategies work better in alleviating anxiety. That is, should you face a prob-
lem head on or do what you can to avoid the source of anxiety? The answerfrom a large amount of research is clear: In almost all cases, active strategies
are more effective in helping people cope with stressors than avoidance strate-
gies (Suls & Fletcher, 1985).
In one study, military veterans exposed to moderate levels of combat were
better able to deal with the long-term consequences of trauma when they tookdirect steps to deal with their situation than when they tried to ignore theproblem (Suvak, Vogt, Savarese, King, & King, 2002). In another study, HIV
patients who had lost a loved one to HIV/AIDS were hopeful and optimistic
about their future when they used active coping strategies, but expressed help-
lessness when relying on avoidance strategies (Rogers, Hansen, Levy, Tate, &
Sikkema, 2005). One team of researchers found that the more medical students
relied on active coping, the better their physical health during the rigorous first
year of medical school (Park & Adler, 2003). Other studies find avoidance
strategies are not successful when coping with a loved one ’s illness (Compas,
Worsham, Ey, & Howell, 1996), a physical assault (Valentiner, Foa, Riggs, &
Gershuny, 1996), or being diagnosed with breast cancer (Carver et al., 1993).
In short, failure to face up to a problem does not bode well for coping.
Are avoidance strategies ever effective? Perhaps. Some research suggests
that on occasion avoidance strategies may help in the short run (Suls &Fletcher, 1985). For example, you might decide to ignore relationship pro-
blems for a few days while you study for finals. However, at best this strategy
only delays dealing with the problem. Moreover, research indicates that
whatever short-term advantages there are to avoidance strategies may be lim-
ited to stressors that are relatively mild and at least partially under theAnxiety and Coping Strategies 129