Proactive Coping and its Relation to the Five-Factor Model of Personality

Research on personality’s role in coping is inconclusive. Proactive coping ability is one’s tendency to expect and prepare for life’s challenges (Schwarzer & Taubert, 2002). This type of coping provides a refreshing conceptualization of coping that allows an examination of personality’s role in coping that transcends the current situational versus dispositional coping conundrum. Participants (N = 49) took the Proactive Coping Inventory (Greenglass, Schwarzer, & Taubert, 1999) and their results were correlated with all domains and facets of the Five-Factor Model (FFM; Costa & McCrae, 1995). Results showed strong correlations between a total score (which encompassed 6 proactive coping scales), and Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism, as well as between several underlying domain facets. Results also showed strong correlations between specific proactive coping subscales and several domains and facets of the FFM. Implications for the influence of innate personality factors in one’s ability to cope are discussed. An individual’s methods of coping with adversity are important aspects of their overall adaptation. Although characteristic ways of coping likely reflect learned experiences and situational factors to some degree, it is also likely that innate dispositions contribute to specific coping styles and overall ability to cope. Thus, there may be systematic relationships between enduring personality traits and coping ability. To show the theoretical importance of such a relationship, an account of empirical data that highlights the fundamental role of personality will develop a rationale for the hypothesized influence of personality on overall adaptation, and reasons why personality is likely to affect coping ability. Personality Until recently, the field has lacked consensus regarding an overall, comprehensive theory of personality. The emergence of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) over the past 10 to 15 years has provided a valuable paradigm from which to gain deeper understanding of important adaptational characteristics. Though there is still some disparity with regard to the comprehensiveness and conversely the succinctness of the model, there is no other model as well supported by research than the FFM (McCrae & John, 1992). The FiveFactor Model (FFM) consists of five broad domains and 30 lower-order facets that surfaced over decades of research and factor analysis (see Cattell, 1943, for an in-depth review). Though debate ensues concerning the exact name of each domain (Loehlin, Hambrick... / Individual Differences Research, 2010, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 67-77 68 1992), it is generally agreed that five is the true number of mutually exclusive domains. The five domain names used by Costa and McCrae (1995) will be described for our purposes: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Neuroticism is best understood as “individual differences in the tendency to experience distress” (McCrae & John, 1992, p. 195). Further, Neuroticism is ways in which a person thinks about and deals with problems and experiences that arise due to their susceptibility to unpleasant experiences. The definition of Extraversion is historically not as parsimonious as that of Neuroticism, because Extraversion encompasses a broader theme. The tendency toward social interaction and positive affect (Watson & Clark, 1997) is usually evident in a person who is highly extraverted. The next domain, Openness to Experience, encompasses intellectual curiosity as well as other affinities that are not related to intellect; for example, this domain has shown to describe a person who appreciates aesthetic value and who has a creative lifestyle (McCrae & John, 1992). Agreeableness is a domain that has often been associated with morality and the ability to get along with others (McCrae & John, 1992). An agreeable person would tend to work well in a group setting, because agreeableness is often expressed as a person’s tendency toward pro-social behavior (Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997). The final domain is Conscientiousness. Conscientious persons are “governed by conscious” and “diligent and thorough” (McCrae & John, 1992, p. 197). Further, Conscientiousness is often used to describe one’s ability to be in command of their behavior; i.e., driven and goal oriented (Hogan & Ones, 1997). The FFM is robust in several respects. First, the model suggests that personality is related to temperament, and is not influenced by environmental factors (McCrae et al., 2000). Instead, the ways traits are expressed are affected by culture, developmental influences, and situational factors. For example, a person’s personality can produce several different response patterns depending on the environment. Therefore, personality can be considered an enduring and relatively stable trait. Second, research on the FFM shows that the five factors are legitimate in a crosscultural context (McCrae & Costa, 1987). McCrae and Costa showed that six different translations of their FFM-based personality test, the NEO-PI-R, supported the validity of the previously described five factors. Moreover, the same five factors were evident and dominant in many different cultures that utilize extremely diverse linguistic patterns (1987). In a more recent study (McCrae et al., 2000) that investigated “intrinsic maturation”, pan-cultural age-related changes in personality profiles were evidenced. The implication is that as people in diverse cultures age, uniform changes in their personality profiles are observed. The emergent pattern showed that levels of Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience decrease with age, and that levels of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness increase with age in many cultures (McCrae et al., 2000). Gender differences in personality also seem to be cross-cultural. Williams, Satterwhite, and Best (1999) used data from 25 countries that had previously been used in the identification of gender stereotypes. A re-analysis of these data in the context of the FFM showed that the cross-cultural gender stereotype for females was higher on Agreeableness than it was for males, and the cross-cultural gender stereotype for males Hambrick... / Individual Differences Research, 2010, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 67-77 69 was higher than females on the other four domains. Though these data do not represent actual male and female responses on a personality inventory, it is remarkable that gender stereotypes alone would relate so distinctly to the FFM. The FFM has amassed plenty of evidence that personality is pervasive, enduring, and basic. Though individuals experience circumstances that cultivate certain abstract characteristics and promote particular outcomes, these tendencies and outcomes are derivatives of a diathesis that is created by personality traits (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Thus, it is practical to use personality to predict adaptational characteristics, such as coping ability. Coping Folkman and Lazarus (1980) defined coping as “the cognitive and behavioral efforts made to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts among them” (p. 223). The cognitive aspect of coping ability pertains to how threatening or important to the well-being of a person a stressful event is considered to be. The behavioral aspect of coping ability refers to the actual strategies and techniques a person employs to either change the situation (problem-focused coping) or to deal with the distressful emotions that arose due to the situation (emotion-focused coping). Clearly, the concept of coping is multi-faceted. The ways in which people appraise situations vary, the ways in which situations influence the options a person has to contend with situations vary, and the person-centered characteristics that predispose a person to certain appraisals and responses at each stage of the coping situation vary. Accordingly, Lazarus and Folkman (1987) formulated a transactional theory of coping that considers both a person’s coping response and their cognitive appraisal of the situation. This theory suggests that the person-environment interaction is dynamic and largely unpredictable. Despite evidence for coping as a process and the impact of situational factors on coping, it is important to realize that exact strategies employed are highly variable from person to person (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985). In addition, Lazarus and Folkman (1987) suggest that person-centered characteristics are influential to coping at the most basic level. For example, they recognize that emotion-focused coping tends to be related to person-centered characteristics; for example, some people are not able to cognitively reduce their stress or anxiety, while others are. In addition, the concept of cognitive appraisal creates the possibility that some people will appraise events to be more threatening or more amenable than others. Moreover, different people employ diverse behavioral styles to cope with the same situation (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985). Since the emergence and prominence of the FFM, the focus in coping research has moved increasingly toward an attempt to understand the dispositional basis of coping. Studies that employ dispositional coping measures (see Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989, for one such scale) have examined the relationship of self-reported coping tendencies to the FFM. One study (Watson & Hubbard, 1996) found that Neuroticism relates to maladaptive coping styles, Conscientiousness relates to problem-focused, action-oriented coping styles, Extraversion relates to social-support seeking, and Agreeableness shows only a modest correlation to coping style. O’Brien and DeLongis (1996) observed similar results, but continued to assert that the best understanding of the Hambrick... / Individual Differences Research, 2010, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 67-77 70 role of personality in the coping process is one that takes situational and dispositional