title: State affect and emotion-focused coping: examining correlated change and causality.
abstract: The purpose of the study was to verify whether two kinds of emotion-focused coping, namely strategies aimed at reducing negative emotions (palliative coping [PC]) and strategies aimed at inducing positive emotions (salutary coping [SC]) are related longitudinally to relevant affective states. Positive and negative state affects were assessed among 133 cardiac patients, along with coping strategies at three time points: a few days after myocardial infarction, one and 6 months later. Due to SC stability, the correlated change with affect was estimated only for PC, but the directionality was examined in all four affect-coping pairs. For uncomplementary pairs, the models with diagonal paths equal to zero fitted the data best. For the first complementary pair, i.e., negative affect-PC, reciprocal influences were revealed with both starting points and the amount of decline positively correlated. For the second pair, i.e., positive affect-SC, strategies consequently increased affect, whereas affect decreased SC, but only at first lag. Concluding, PC may be a behavioral manifestation of negative affect rather than reflective goal-oriented efforts. Although the relation between SC and positive affect is more complex, it still supports the idea of distinctiveness within the scope of emotion-focused coping.
authors.affiliation: Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Chodakowska Street 19/31, 03-815, Warsaw, Poland. egruszczynska@swps.edu.pl
authors.forename: Ewa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gruszczyńska
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires