Personality traits, stressful life events, and coping styles in early adolescence

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Abstract

The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between personality traits, stressful life events and coping styles in early adolescence. On a sample of 265 subjects, ranging in age from 11 to 14 years, a junior EPQ, questionnaire of coping styles and scale of subjective stress were applied.

Using the path analysis, the direct and indirect effects of personality traits and perceived intensity and frequency of stressful life events (subjective stress) on three coping styles (problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping and avoidance coping) were tested. The results obtained demonstrated that extraversion has a direct positive effect on problem and emotion-focused coping style while neuroticism and psychoticism have direct positive effects on avoidance coping style. The indirect effects of personality traits on coping styles through subjective stress are low for all three coping styles. Subjective stress has statistically significant positive effects on all three coping styles and the greatest independent effect is on avoidance coping.

In general, the results of this research demonstrate that the relationship between personality traits, subjective stress and coping styles in early adolescence are similar to those obtained on the samples of adult subjects and that already in early adolescence coping can be meaningfully viewed in a larger dispositional context.

Introduction

In an attempt to answer the question whether the ways of coping in stressful situations are primarily determined by personality traits, types of stressful situations or their interaction, two dominant approaches have been developed. Within the framework of a structural approach, coping is conceptualized in terms of relatively stable individual differences where variations in stressful situations are of little importance. The coping process is determined, above all, by individual differences and intraindividual stability while the influence of the nature and course of the stressful situation is unimportant. Within this approach, there are two assumptions on how individual differences could influence coping.

Some authors (e.g. McCrae & Costa, 1986) assume that preferred coping styles can directly be derived from personality traits such as extraversion and neuroticism. There is some empirical evidence on the cross-situational and temporal consistency and stability of coping efforts that is under the influence of personality traits (Bolger and Schilling, 1991, McCrae and Costa, 1986, Scheier and Carver, 1985). McCrae and Costa (1986) reported that neuroticism is related significantly to the use of hostile reaction, escapist fantasy, self-blame, sedation, withdrawal, wishful thinking, passivity, and indecision, coping styles which these authors term immature or neurotic coping. On the other hand, extraversion is significantly linked to coping styles which include rational action, positive thinking, substitution and restraint, in other words with those coping styles which could be called problem-focused coping. Parkes (1986) also states that extraversion has a significant positive effect on active, problem-focused coping, while neuroticism is linked to less effective coping styles. Kardum and Hudek-Knežević (1996) found a significant positive link of extraversion with emotion-focused coping and neuroticism with avoidance coping while psychoticism is negatively linked to emotion and problem-focused coping and positively to avoidance coping.

The second assumption relating to the influence of personality characteristics on coping that exists within the structural approach is that there are stable styles, dispositions or preferences for coping people employ when in stressful situations. The proponents of this assumption (e.g. Carver, Scheier & Weintraub, 1989) do not deny the potential importance of personality traits to coping, but assume that coping dispositions are not directly the function of personality traits. Stable coping preferences can be derived from personality traits, and also because of some other reasons, e.g. during the process of socialization. Although the results of some authors (e.g. Carver et al., 1989, Hudek-Knežević and Kardum, 1996) demonstrate that various coping styles are related in a theoretically meaningful manner to numerous personality dimensions such as optimism-pessimism, self-esteem, internality, anxiety, the correlations obtained are considered not so substantial as to permit the conclusion that coping styles are determined only by personality traits.

Within the framework of a transactional approach to stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), coping is conceptualized in terms of the person–environment relationship and the dynamic, interactive nature of the stressful transaction is emphasized. Individual differences and environmental factors are mainly considered under the global construct of cognitive appraisal, although it is emphasized that personality traits such as hardiness, self-efficacy and sense of coherence represent important protective factors from stressful experience (Lazarus, 1990).

Thus, although there is a divergence of opinion about the role of personality traits in the development of relatively stable coping styles, both structural and transactional approaches agree with the fact that personality traits are important factors which are operational in the process of stress and coping. However, the above-mentioned research was carried out on adult subjects, whereas there are few studies dealing with this problem on adolescent samples. Adolescence is a time of special stress and a number of physical, psychological and sociological influences are brought to bear on the individual at this stage of development. As a result, it is especially important to examine the determinants of coping styles in that developmental period.

In some research, the self-concept of adolescents is linked to coping styles. So, for example, Seiffge-Krenke (1990) found a link between coping styles and self-concept. The sample in her study was classified into three categories taking into consideration the predominant coping style (active copers, internal copers and problem avoiders). Each of the coping styles was linked to a different self-description; active copers had high self-esteem and reported excellent relationships with their parents whereas the problem avoiders gave depressed self-descriptions and lacked confidence in their own abilities. The reciprocity was found in the relationship, so that self-esteem determined the choice of coping strategies in some respects and the use of strategies in turn helped to shape self-esteem and self-concept. It has been proposed that high self-esteem is in itself a positive coping mechanism. Similar results were obtained by Jerusalem and Schwarzer (1989) on samples of German and Turkish adolescents. Their results show that emotion-focused coping is mainly influenced by anxiety while positive self-concept turned out to be beneficial for problem-focused coping in the German subsample. Gomez (1997) found that external locus of control correlates negatively with approach coping and positively with avoidance coping on an adolescent sample in an age range of 14–17 years.

Dimensions of temperament are also sometimes considered important determinants of coping responses. The child’s temperament may define a range of responsivity to stress and influence the style that characterizes the child’s way of coping (Compas, 1987). Hauser and Bowlds (1990), for example, point out that temperament influences the available range of coping strategies an individual may call upon in stressful situations, and at the same time temperament affects the types of events that are recognized as being stressful by individual. However, until now, very little systematic and comprehensive research has been carried out on how adolescent temperament is linked to their coping styles. On a high school and college student sample, Rehulkova, Blatny and Osecka (1995) found that coping strategies of expressed-emotions, wishful thinking and self-criticism were markers of neuroticism. The coping strategy markers for extraversion were problem-solving, cognitive restructuring, social support and social withdrawal (contrary oriented). The authors concluded that neuroticism was associated with coping strategies of the disengagement type, and extraversion with strategies of the engagement type. Assuming that neuroticism tends to exacerbate the association between stressful life events and adjustment, while extraversion tends to ameliorate it, Hoffman, Levy-Shiff and Malinski (1996) obtained significant interactions between personality traits and stressful life events in the prediction of adjustment among adolescents (12–13 years) but not among preadolescents (10–11 years).

As is well-known, stressful life events have substantial impact on the coping process along with personality traits. On the other hand, stressful life events are themselves influenced by personality traits. For example, research carried out on adult subjects has shown that neuroticism is related with increased exposure to stressful life events (Bolger & Schilling, 1991). Also, neuroticism has been linked to heightened processing and recall of negative situational elements (Larsen, 1992), while extraversion has been linked to a preference for positive situational features over negative ones (Graziano, Feldesman & Rahe, 1985).

From studies such as the above, it is clear that personality dispositions and temperament are concomitants of coping and as such need to be taken into account when considering the process of stress and coping. The greatest amount of previous research included few dispositional constructs that appear to be potentially relevant while a very small amount attempted to place adolescents’ coping styles in the context of general structural models of personality traits.

The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between personality traits, perceived intensity and frequency of stressful life events and coping styles in early adolescence. The relations between the variables were tested by the model assuming direct and indirect effects of personality traits on coping styles, controlling for perceived stress. Since personality is observed as a general frame which is connected with the individual’s coping repertoire, Eysenck’s trait taxonomic scheme, which provides sampling of a wide range of characteristics that are potentially relevant in the process of coping with stress, has been used in this research.

On the basis of the above-mentioned research, it can be assumed that, already in early adolescence, extraversion acts as a protective factor in the stress and coping process, i.e. there is a low or negative link to perceived stressful life events and to less effective coping styles, e.g. avoidance coping, and a positive link with problem and emotion-focused coping. On the other hand, we can expect that neuroticism and psychoticism are linked to increased perception of stressful life events and to higher scores on avoidance coping.

Section snippets

Subjects

Research was carried out on 265 subjects (120 female and 145 male) from four primary schools. The subjects’ age ranged from 11 to 14 years (M=12.56; SD=1.12).

Measures

The Croatian version of the junior EPQ (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1994) comprising four scales was used: extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism and the lie-scale (L-scale). Internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach-alpha) obtained on this sample were 0.63 for extraversion, 0.79 for neuroticism, 0.64 for psychoticism and 0.82 for the L-scale.

On

Results

Initially, the correlation coefficients between Eysenck’s personality traits, subjective stress and coping styles were computed. These correlations are shown in Table 1.

From the correlations obtained, it can be seen that extraversion and neuroticism are significantly positively linked both with problem and emotion-focused coping. Neuroticism and psychoticism are significantly positively linked to avoidance coping, while the L-scale is not significantly related to coping styles. Neuroticism and

Discussion

The results obtained mainly confirm the hypothesis and, basically, they are very similar to the results obtained on samples of adult subjects.

From all three models, it can be concluded that Eysenck’s personality traits are linked to coping styles in various ways. Extraversion has direct positive effects on problem and emotion-focused coping (see Fig. 1, Fig. 2), while neuroticism and psychoticism have direct positive effects on avoidance coping (see Fig. 3). Indirect effects of personality

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Research Support Scheme of the OSI/HESP, grant No.: 251/1997, awarded to Igor Kardum.

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