Personal resilience, cognitive appraisals, and coping: an integrative model of adjustment to abortion.
We hypothesized that the effects of personality (self-esteem, control, and optimism) on postabortion adaptation (distress, well-being, and decision satisfaction) would be fully mediated by preabortion cognitive appraisals (stress appraisals and self-efficacy appraisals) and postabortion coping. We further proposed that the effects of preabortion appraisals on adaptation would be fully mediated by postabortion coping. Results of a longitudinal study of 527 women who had first-trimester abortions supported our hypotheses. Women with more resilient personalities appraised their abortion as less stressful and had higher self-efficacy for coping with the abortion. More positive appraisals predicted greater acceptance/reframing coping and lesser avoidance/denial, venting, support seeking, and religious coping. Acceptance-reframing predicted better adjustment on all measures, whereas avoidance-denial and venting related to poorer adjustment on all measures. Greater support seeking was associated with reduced distress, and greater religious coping was associated with less decision satisfaction.
Major
B
B
Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106, USA. major@condor.psych.ucsb.edu
Richards
C
C
Cooper
M L
ML
Cozzarelli
C
C
Zubek
J
J
D000028:Abortion, Induced / Q000523:psychology*; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007389:Internal-External Control; D009042:Motivation; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011247:Pregnancy; D012649:Self Concept; D012647:Self-Assessment