COPING REACTIONS FOR THE THREAT SCENARIO
‘INEXPERIENCED DRIVER’
Imagine that you are riding in a car as a front-seat
passenger next to an obviously inexperienced driver.
Road conditions are poor due to snow and ice.
In this situation ...
1.I remember similar dangerous situations that I have
experienced in the past.
2.I tell myself: ‘Nothing terrible is going to happen.’
3.I am glad that I don’t lose my composure as easily
as most others.
4.I think: ‘I’m the one this always happens to.’
5.I tell myself: ‘Thank goodness, he’s not driving that
fast.’
6.I watch the driver carefully and try to tell in
advance when he is going to make a mistake.
7.I think that I don’t cope with this kind of situation
(for instance, by staying calm and relaxed) as well as
most of my acquaintances.
8.I just stop looking at the road and either think about
something else, or look at the scenery.
9.I stay completely calm.
10.I tell myself: ‘In future, I’ll only go on rides like this
if I myself am the driver, never again as a
passenger.’11.I‘d very much like to say: ‘Stop, I want to get out.’
12.I tell myself: ‘As a passenger, one often perceives
the driver’s way of driving as unsteady, whereas in
fact, the driver isn’t driving all that badly.’
13.I tell myself: ‘I’ve been able to cope with situations
that were far more trying than this one.’
14.‘I drive along with the driver’, i.e., I act as if I myself
were driving.
15.I think about everything that could go wrong.
16.I think: ‘Somehow this driver also has to have the
opportunity to practice driving when road
conditions are poor.’
17.I tell myself: ‘When one has fastened one’s seat belt
and is moreover driving so slowly, not too much
can go wrong.’
18.I think about what I should do if the car should start
to skid.
Source : Used with permission from Attention and
Avoidance by Heinz Walter Krohne, ISBN 0-88937-108-
3 and ISBN 3-8017-0664-8, Hogrefe & Huber
Publishers and Hogrefe, 1993. Copyright r1993
Hogrefe & Huber Publishers, Seattle, WA.
Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS)
(Endler & Parker, 1990, 1994 ).
Variable
The CISS is a dispositional measure of coping style.
Description
The CISS was developed as an alternative to other coping measures that suffered from poor psychometric
properties and consequently underwent rigorous empirical development and testing. The CISS is a 48-item
instrument comprised of three 16-item subscales measuring task-oriented coping, emotion-oriented coping, and
avoidance-oriented coping. Individuals indicate the extent to which they engage in these various coping strate-
gies when encountering a difficult, stressful, or upsetting situation.
Although the CISS was developed as a dispositional measure of coping, a modified situational measure was
developed by Endler and Parker (1994) . The CISS Situation-Specific Coping (CISS-SSC) is a 21-item instrument
with three 7-item subscales measuring task-oriented, emotion-oriented, and avoidance-oriented coping. Instead
of reporting how they normally react in stressful situations, in the CISS-SSC, individuals focus on a particular
stressful event and answer the items as they relate to that particular event.
Sample
The CISS was normed on a sample of 559 undergraduate students (Endler & Parker, 1990). The mean for task-
oriented coping was 3.53 ( SD50.57) for men and 3.54 ( SD50.63) for women; the mean for emotion-oriented cop-
ing was 2.85 ( SD50.65) for men and 3.20 ( SD50.73) for women; and the mean for avoidance-oriented coping
was 2.75 ( SD50.64) for men and 3.08 ( SD50.70) for women. The CISS-SSC was normed on 432 undergraduate
students ( Endler & Parker, 1994 ). Means and standard deviations for the CISS-SSC were omitted from the paper.332 12. MEASURES OF COPING FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING
III. EMOTION REGULATION