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Emotion-focused vs. Problem-focused Coping Strategies

Travis Dixon

What's better to reduce stress? Trying to solve your problems or trying to manage your reactions? We'll find out in this post.

Coping is “a person’s efforts to manage demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding their resources.”(1) In other words, coping is how we try to deal with stress. It is a widely studied topic in psychology and there are over 400 categorized styles of coping. (2) These styles are commonly grouped into two distinct types: problem focused vs. emotion-focused. In this post we’ll look at which strategy is better and why. 

This post is written with content adapted from our Student’s Guide to Stress for IB Health Psychology.

Problem-focused coping strategies aim to change or eliminate a stressor. If you adapt a strategy to try to deal with the stressor directly, you’re using problem-focused coping. For example, planning, problem-solving, or removing the stressor altogether are examples of problem focused coping.(3)

Emotion-focused coping is when you try to deal with your emotional response to the stressor. If you are trying to reduce, eliminate, or simply tolerate your emotional response to a stressor, then you’re using emotion-focused coping. Examples include withdrawal, letting out anger and frustration, emotional support seeking, distractions, rumination, and resignation acceptance (accepting the problem will always exist).

The general consensus among psychologists is that problem-focused coping is the more effective coping strategy because it’s consistently associated with lower stress levels and better mental health (4). Similarly, people who use emotion-focused coping are more at risk for stress-related illnesses (e.g. heart disease) compared to those using problem-focused coping (5).

Coping strategies could explain gender differences in levels of perceived stress. Numerous studies have shown a tendency for females to use more emotion-focused coping whereas males use more problem focused coping (6) When it comes to the study of teenagers and stress, however, there is “…limited research about what may affect adolescents’ perceptions of stressors from school, how they cope with such stressors, and how this differs from a gender perspective.”(7) Most of the research has been on adults. However, some researchers have studied connections between coping and mental health problems closely related to stress (e.g. depression) amongst teenagers.(8)

Key Study: Coping strategies in Italian teens (Cicognani, 2011)

Aim: To understand coping strategies and how they relate to mental health in teenagers.

Can you relate to the findings of this study? What advice can you take from it?

Methods: 

Results:

Conclusions

These findings are consistent with other research that shows females tend to use more emotion-focused coping, which could explain gender differences in perceived stress and prevalence of stress-related mental health issues like anxiety and depression. However, factors like social support and self-efficacy can influence which coping strategy we use. Studies have shown that girls have reported having higher levels of emotional self-efficacy, whereas boys report higher levels of problem-solving self-efficacy (9). Our self-efficacy influences our appraisal of our resources, so we’ll naturally use the coping strategy that we perceive to be our strength. This could be why boys and girls use different coping strategies.

Psychology is never as simple as A=B: while problem-focused coping is probably better, it’s not always the right answer. 

It is important to note, however, that people tend to use a mixture of both strategies. In a yearlong study of 100 participants, Folkman and Lazarus (1980) found that in 98% of stressful situations, their participants used a combination of both strategies. The stressor, who is involved, appraisals, gender, and age also influenced the strategies used. For example, people used more problem-focused coping at work and emotion-focused coping when it came to their health (10).

Similarly, it’s not a clear black-and-white answer regarding which coping strategy is better. For example, positive reappraisals could be considered an emotion-focused coping strategy and this is linked with positive health outcomes (11) The effectiveness might also depend on the stressor: using a problem-focused approach for a stressor that is uncontrollable and unable to be changed could be less effective than an emotion-focused one.

Being able to cope effectively with stress involves understanding how to use a variety of different strategies and applying the relevant ones to the stressors in your life. This reminds me of the serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” There is a lot of psychological research that supports the wisdom found in this simple prayer.

Copy from here for Critical Thinking Considerations

Critical Thinking Considerations

  • While Cicognani’s study could be used to explain a link between coping and stress in teens, there’s a fundamental limitation in doing so. Can you see what it is?
  • Assumptions: The above guiding question is based on the assumption that problem-focused coping is better than emotion-focused coping. However, this is not always the case. When might emotion-focused coping be the superior strategy? Can you apply this to specific examples in your life?
  • An area of uncertainty is how to classify cognitive reappraisal. How might this be a problem-focused and/or an emotion-focused coping strategy? Austenfeld and Stanton(2004) have used the term ‘‘emotional approach coping” to describe active emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal.

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References

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