At diagnosis, 59 breast cancer patients reported on their overall optimism about life; 1 day presurgery, 10 days postsurgery, and at 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups, they reported their recent coping responses and distress levels. Optimism related inversely to distress at each point, even controlling for prior distress. Acceptance, positive reframing, and use of religion were the most common coping reactions; denial and behavioral disengagement were the least common reactions. Acceptance and the use of humor prospectively predicted lower distress; denial and disengagement predicted more distress. Path analyses suggested that several coping reactions played mediating roles in the effect of optimism on distress. Discussion centers on the role of various coping reactions in the process of adjustment, the mechanisms by which dispositional optimism versus pessimism appears to operate, third variable issues, and applied implications.
A good deal of research now indicates that the personality dimension of optimism-pessimism plays an important role in a wide range of behavioral and psychological outcomes when people confront adversity (reviewed in Scheier & Carver, 1992). What is less clear is the mechanism (or mechanisms) by which the beneficial effects of optimism take place. One possibility is that optimists do better than pessimists because they cope more effectively.' There is an abundance of evidence that they at least cope differently. Optimists and pessimists differ from one another in reports of their general coping tendencies (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) and in the coping responses they bring to mind when considering hypothetical situations (Scheier, Weintraub, & Carver, 1986), recalling a stressful situation from the recent past (Scheier et al., 1986), dealing with infertility problems (Litt, Tennen, Affleck, & Klock, 1992), managing a life transition (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1992), coping with a serious disease (Friedman et al., 1992), and dealing with worries about specific health threats (Stanton & Snider, 1993;Taylor et al., 1992).Far less information is available, however, concerning the hypothesis that these differences in coping serve as the vehicle by which optimists experience better eventual outcomes. Three studies in the literature are relevant to the question. One of them (Scheier et al., 1989) examined men undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery. These subjects did not complete a full measure of coping but indicated their use of several cognitive-attentional strategies before and after the surgery. Although optimism was related to several of these strategies, there was scant evidence that the strategies mediated the beneficial effect of optimism on subsequent outcomes. The second study (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1992) assessed optimism and coping in a group of students entering college and assessed well-being 3 months later. In this case, the beneficial effects of optimism appeared to operate at least in part through differences in both active coping and avoidance coping.Both of these studies have an important limitation, however. Neither included an initial measure of the variables that served as the later outcome measure. Thus,
The lack of difference between surgical groups in areas other than sexual adjustment replicates previous findings, but extends them by (1) using a fully prospective design, (2) providing data on the period surrounding the surgery (as well as later periods), and (3) examining a broader range of indices of well-being than usual.
any chapters in this book concern ways in which psychological and behavioral M qualities may have a causal influence on physical well-being. For example, dispositional hostility may predispose people to react physiologically to certain kinds of challenging situations in ways that contribute to the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disorders (see Barefoot, this volume; Smith, this volume). As another example, the tendency to suppress feelings and thoughts that are associated with distressing experiences may create strains within the body that render the person more vulnerable to later disease (see Pennebaker, this volume). two classes of variables. That is, just as certain psychological qualities may contribute to health problems, serious health problems can also produce a wide variety of psychological and behavioral responses (cf. Kaplan, 1990). It is our position that these psychological and behavioral phenomena are important in their own right. Though it may be that they also play a role in subsequent physical disorder, we will not address that possibility here (for a broader statement see Taylor & Aspinwall, 1990).
This study investigated whether socially anxious people differ from less socially anxious people in how they interpret the facial expressions of an interaction partner. Undergraduates answered a series of questions about themselves in a structured interview, replying to what they thought was the TV image of another undergraduate but was actually a videotape. The videotaped interviewer either maintained a consistently neutral facial expression or varied in expression (positive, neutral, negative) across three blocks of questions and answers. After each block, subjects rated the interviewer's approval of and interest in them. Analysis of these ratings revealed that the two social anxiety groups were equivalently responsive to changes in facial expression. Independent of this, socially anxious subjects made ratings that were consistently less favorable than the ratings made by subjects lower in social anxiety. Additional analyses tended to support the most straightforward interpretation of this finding: that persons high in social anxiety construe others' reactions to them more negatively than persons low in social anxiety.
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