Study On The Coping Development In Adolescences And Its Relationship With Life Events And Personality

Since Lazarus emphasized cognitive factors in coping processes in 1966, it is two important antithetical coping theories with characteristics-oriented and process-oriented that have come into existence. Influenced by Freud's defense mechanisms theory and self-psychology, the characteristics-oriented coping theory defines coping as defensive hierarchies and stability across situations in terms of adaptive styles. But process-oriented coping theory argues that coping is a continual process. It includes some thoughts and behaviors when satisfying internal and external demands. Thus, coping is greatly concerned with specific situation, not personality traits. On the basis of these two theories, lots of researchers have carried out relevant empirical researches. However, all these research results indicate that personality traits or situational factors can only explain some aspects of coping. It shows that coping is in the nature of complicated mechanisms. Most of scholars believe that coping results from the interaction between situation and personality, but the concerned researches fall into fragment and are short of integrity. They can not provide sufficient empirical data to understand the disputation between two coping theories. Moreover, there has been a development orientation of coping in adolescence in western countries since 1985.Scholars attempt to integrate the research results of development orientation with those of clinic orientation. However, in our country, development research of coping has not yet been reported on accountant of specific age of adolescence.The purposes of this research are as following:1. To explore the development of coping in terms of specific age of adolescence;2. To explore the influence of life events and personality on coping. The results of this research are as following:1. All the adolescent students prefer to the positive coping strategies, such as problem-solving, help-seeking. And they apply less negative coping strategies (self-accusation, fantasy, retreat) and rationalization.2. The age factor shows a remarkable influence on six kinds of copings. As students grow older, the usage of their problem-solving strategies tends upward, their help-seeking strategies tends downward, then stays at a very low level, during middle school, the tendencies of negative and rationalization coping increase, but fluctuate in the course of university.3. Gender factor shows a remarkable influence on help-seeking and rationalization. Girls prefer to seeking help, and boys prefer to rationalizing.4. Life events significantly correlate with negative coping strategies and rationalization. With the stress intension of life events increasing, individuals will increasingly apply thesecoping strategies.5. Coping strategies significantly correlate with personality categories. Students with Adaptation prefer to positive coping strategies. Students with Inadaptation prefer to negative coping strategies. Students with Initiative-Flexibility use more positive and less negative coping strategies than those with Passiveness- Inflexibility. The coping usages of these two categories are between Adaptation and Inadaptation.