Psychological Bulletin Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

1997, Vol. 121, No. 3, 417-436 0033-2909/97/S3.00

A Stitch in Time: Self-Regulation and Proactive Coping

Lisa G. Aspinwall Shelley E. Taylor
University of Maryland, College Park University of California, Los Angeles

In a conceptual and temporal framework, derived from research on social cognition, social interaction,
and stress and coping, the authors analyze the processes through which people anticipate or detect
potential stressors and act in advance to prevent them or to mute their impact (proactive coping).
The framework specifies five stages in proactive coping: (1) resource accumulation, (2) recognition
of potential stressors, (3) initial appraisal, (4) preliminary coping efforts, and (5) elicitation and
use of feedback concerning initial efforts. The authors detail the role of individual differences, skills,
and resources at each stage. They highlight the unique predictions afforded by a focus on proactive
coping and the importance of understanding how people avoid and offset potential stressors.

Anticipating that he may grow lonely over the holidays, a
recently bereaved widower makes plans to join friends for Christ-
mas. Believing that job opportunities may be shrinking in her
chosen field of work, a woman begins to acquire job skills in a
related field in which employment opportunities are still plentiful.
After a bad day at work, a man excuses himself from dinner to
avoid being grouchy around his family. Recognizing that lab
courses are especially challenging, a student arranges to take only
one lab course each semester to maintain good grades.
The English language has many colorful expressions that re-
flect the idea that people engage in proactive coping. People are
variously advised to recognize cues suggesting that trouble is
imminent (' 'Read the writing on the wall") and to act to forestall
or to minimize an adverse event ("Head it off at the pass").
Indeed, in many life domains, people experience good outcomes
or avoid bad ones because of their proactive efforts. All four
individuals in the examples above have in common that they
anticipated stressful events before the events occurred and took
steps to avoid or minimize them. As such, all four are ' 'proactive
copers.''
Proactive Coping
Definition
Proactive coping consists of efforts undertaken in advance
of a potentially stressful event to prevent it or to modify its form
Lisa G. Aspinwall, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland,
College Park; Shelley E. Taylor, Department of Psychology, University
of California, Los Angeles.
This article was supported by the University of Maryland's Depart-
ment of Psychology and in part by National Institute of Mental Health
Grant MH 42152 and National Science Foundation Grant SBR-9507642.
We thank Nancy Adler, Susanne Brunhart, Christine Dunkel-Schetter,
Stevan Hobfoll, Arie Kruglanski, Thane Pittman, Rena Repetti, Linda
Richter, Carol Sansone, and Ellen Scholnick for helpful comments on
an earlier version of this article. We also thank the MacArthur Foundation
Task Force on SES and Health for providing a stimulating forum that
contributed to the development of these ideas.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lisa
G. Aspinwall, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Col-
lege Park, Maryland 20742-4411. Electronic mail may be sent via In-
ternet to Ia28@umail.umd.edu.
417
before it occurs. As such, proactive coping differs from coping
with stressful events and from anticipatory coping in important
ways. In the stress and coping literature, coping is defined as
activities undertaken to master, tolerate, reduce, or minimize
environmental or intrapsychic demands perceived to represent
potential threats, existing harm, or losses (Fblkman & Lazarus,
1985; Lazarus & Fblkman, 1984). Anticipatory coping involves
preparation for the stressful consequences of an upcoming event
whose occurrence is likely or certain (Breznitz, 1983a; Fblk-
man & Lazarus, 1985). Proactive coping may be distinguished
from coping and anticipatory coping on three grounds.
First, proactive coping is temporally prior to coping and antic-
ipatory coping. It involves the accumulation of resources and
the acquisition of skills that are not designed to address any
particular stressor but to prepare in general, given the recogni-
tion that stressors do occur and that to be forearmed is to be
well prepared. Second, proactive coping requires different skills
than does coping with extant stressors. For example, because
the activities of proactive coping are not directed to a particular
stressor, skills relating to the ability to identify potential sources
of stress before they occur assume importance in the activities
of proactive coping. Third, as compared with coping with extant
stressors, different skills and activities are likely to be successful
for proactive coping.
Two examples illustrate this last point. First, the social sup-
port literature suggests that the emotional benefits of social
support are especially important in the effective management of
extant stressors (see S. Cohen & Wills, 1985, for a review). In
contrast, as we argue later, during the proactive stage, informa-
tion and appraisal support may be more important and emotional
support may be less so and, under certain circumstances, unhelp-
ful. Similarly, whereas coping strategies related to emotional
regulation, such as positive reappraisal, may be an effective
way of coping with an extant stressor (e.g., Dunkel-Schetter,
Feinstein, Taylor, & Falke, 1992), such emotionally soothing
reappraisals are unlikely to be helpful during the proactive stage.
Instead, as we argue, effective proactive coping is virtually al-
ways active. To summarize, because proactive coping is tempo-
rally prior, addresses nonexistent or nebulous stressors, requires
different skills, and is successfully accomplished through differ-
418 ASPINWALL AND TAYLOR
ent activities, it merits a conceptual and empirical focus that is
distinct from existing work on stress and coping.
Has Proactive Coping Been Ignored?
As a result of these characteristics, proactive coping is largely
unstudied in the stress and coping literature. In a typical investi-
gation of stress and coping, the point of departure for researchers
who are studying efforts to solve problems and to regulate the
emotional responses to them is a looming or fully developed
stressful event, such as an illness, financial strain, interpersonal
discord, or academic failure. Activities undertaken in advance
of the stressful event may go unstudied because the event itself
defines the point of departure.
This focus on coping activities that take place after the event
has occurred may create several gaps in the understanding of
proactive processes. First, if proactive coping is successful, indi-
viduals who demonstrated it may be eliminated from studies of
stress and coping altogether. To a degree, illness, financial strain,
interpersonal discord, and academic failure—the examples just
noted—are preventable occurrences. If an individual prevents
them, he or she would not be eligible for an investigation of
such stressors. Second, even if proactive copers were included
in an outcome study of some kind, they may show up as well
adjusted, successful, or healthy, but the researchers would not
assess proactive efforts made before the stressful event had ma-
terialized that contributed to these good outcomes.
Proactive coping may also go unstudied because it is difficult
to detect. When people act to avert or minimize a potential
stressor, relatively little happens (cf. McGrath & Beehr, 1990).
For example, an administrator who acts to avert a financial
shortfall that would jeopardize the payroll and discredit his
company may receive little notice for his work because the net
result, as seen by outside observers, is that nothing happened.
Nonevents are rarely selected for scientific investigation. In-
stead, our attention is drawn to those who lose such gambles.
Therefore, proactive coping may go largely unrecognized.
Of course, not all stressful events can be averted. For example,
bereavement, certain chronic illnesses, and natural disasters sim-
ply happen. Nonetheless, people may differ in the degree to
which they have undertaken proactive efforts to manage such
events. For example, a bereaved widow who has taken the time
to understand the family finances and to ensure that her benefits
will continue after the death of her spouse is better prepared for
her spouse's death than her counterpart who did not take such
precautionary steps. A Califomian who has earthquake insur-
ance and a store of earthquake-related supplies will be better
prepared for an earthquake than an individual who does not
have such preparations. Thus, even in the case of stressful events
that cannot be avoided, the person who engages in proactive
coping will typically experience better adjustment than the per-
son who did not undertake such preparatory activities.
Potential Benefits and Liabilities
Proactive coping has several important potential benefits.
First, it may minimize the degree of stress experienced during
a stressful encounter (Hobfoll, 1988, 1989). When a stressful
event is a possibility rather than an actuality, its full impact may
be lessened or averted by proactive efforts and thus never be
felt. Second, the ratio of coping resources to the magnitude of
a stressor is likely to be favorable when the stressor is tackled
in its early stages rather than in its full-blown state. Specifically,
an incipient stressor is likely to be modest, and because re-
sources have not yet been expended to address it, coping re-
sources are likely to be greater. Third, when a stressful event is
on the horizon, there may be a range of options available to
manage it; after the stressor has occurred or has developed,
options may be more constrained. Fourth, to the extent that
stressful events can be averted or minimized, the burden of
chronic stress carried by an individual is likely to be relatively
low. Because many stressful events are of long-term duration
and add to the cumulative burden of obligations in an individu-
al's daily life, proactive efforts that avoid or offset stressful
events may keep chronic stress at a low level.
There are some important potential disadvantages of proactive
coping as well. One is that, if a stressful event has not occurred,
then there is a chance that it may not occur at all. Thus, the
proactive coper may make offsetting plans and undertake activi-
ties that would have been unnecessary had conditions been al-
lowed to unfold without intervention (Schonpflug, 1986). A
second potential liability stems from the inherent ambiguity of
potential stressors. When a stressor has not yet happened, its
form may be nebulous and its attributes, ambiguous. Conse-
quently, exactly what kinds of preliminary coping efforts and
resources should be brought to bear on the problem may be
unclear. Initial coping efforts, then, may be ineffective, or they
may actually exacerbate the problem.
These two liabilities lead, in turn, to a third, namely, that
one may invest coping efforts and resources in a problem that
subsequently turns out to be different from the one initially
envisioned. As a result, coping resources may be drained at
precisely the moment they are most needed. It is important,
therefore, to understand what factors influence the quality and
accuracy of appraisals of potential and incipient stressors, to
identify how people respond to information that might qualify
these initial assessments, and to ascertain how people are able
to distinguish soluble problems from insoluble ones and allocate
their resources accordingly. These are the tasks of this review.
Overview of the Framework
In this article, we develop a conceptual and temporal frame-
work to analyze the proactive coping literature and review the
research that addresses the individual differences and resources
that may promote effective proactive coping. A second purpose
of our article is to highlight the skills that enhance proactive
coping. This position makes the explicit assumption that proac-
tive coping is generally beneficial to a person and that the poten-
tial liabilities of proactive coping either do not materialize or
are offset by the benefits gained. Our review of the resources
and individual differences that may promote or inhibit effective
proactive coping is necessarily selective, rather than exhaustive,
and is summarized in Table 1. We have included representative
research on the role of each factor at each stage of the proactive
model to illustrate its potential heuristic value.
A third purpose of this article is to develop explicit links
between a large literature in social cognition on self-regulation
 A STITCH IN TIME 419

Table 1
Influences on Proactive Coping
Stages of the proactive coping model

Resource Attention- Initial Preliminary Elicit and use

Influences accumulation recognition appraisal coping feedback

Individual differences
Anxiety 0
Control beliefs 0
Depression 0
Expertise and experience 0 + +
Future temporal orientation 0 0 7
Need for closure 0 ?
Neuroticism 0
Optimistic beliefs 0
Repression 0
Self-esteem 0 +
Tolerance for ambiguity 0 0
Vigilance, monitoring, and
sensitization 0
Types of social support
Appraisal 0 + 0
Emotional 0 0 +
Informational 0 + +
Tangible + + +
Environmental factors
Chronic burden —
Concurrent demands —
Environmental "busyness" —

Note. + = the influence facilitates proactive coping; — = the influence may compromise proactive coping;
? = the effects of the influence on this stage are unknown; 0 = the influence is not believed to affect this
stage.

and a voluminous literature in health psychology on coping.
These two literatures have evolved largely independently, but
they address similar issues (Costa, Somerfield, & McCrae,
1996). Self-regulation is defined as the ways in which people
control and direct their own actions (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).
Coping is defined as the process of managing internal or external
demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources
of a person (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). In proactive coping,
the distinctions between the two sets of processes blur because
stressful events have not yet occurred or have not progressed
to levels where resources are taxed. As we suggest later, self-
regulatory skills explain a great deal about how individuals
anticipate the occurrence of stressful events, enabling people to
avoid stressful events or minimize their impact. Yet, because
the anticipation of a stressful event involves apprehension or a
sense of impending danger, activities more traditionally viewed
as coping efforts also come into play.
Stages of Proactive Coping
We divide proactive coping into five stages. Figure 1 shows
the critical tasks undertaken at each of the five stages of proactive
coping and the interrelation and feedback among the stages. As
shown in Figure 1, proactive coping starts with the building of
resources and skills in advance of any specific anticipated stres-
sor (resource accumulation). Effective proactive coping in-
volves the mustering of time, money, planning and organiza-
tional skills, social support, and, to the extent possible, the
management of the chronic burden so that when, inevitably,
stressors are detected, one is prepared as much as possible to
manage them.
Proactive coping also involves the recognition of potential
stressors. Recognition refers to the ability to see a potential
stressful event coming. It depends on the ability to screen the
environment for danger and to be sensitive to internal cues sug-
gesting that threats may arise. After a potential stressor has been
detected, initial appraisal consists of preliminary assessments
of the current ("What is this?") and potential ("What is this
likely to become?'') status of the potential stressor as well as
related assessments, such as "Should I be worried about this?"
and ' 'Is this something I should keep an eye on?'' These apprais-
als may foster increased attention to the potential stressor and
may also give rise to initial coping efforts. Initial coping efforts
are activities undertaken that are deemed likely to prevent or
minimize a recognized or suspected stressor. We suggest that
successful proactive coping at this stage is virtually always ac-
tive rather than avoidant, involving either cognitive activities,
such as planning, or behavioral activities, such as seeking infor-
mation from others and taking preliminary action.
The elicitation and use of feedback is the final step in the
proactive coping process. It centers around the acquisition and
use of feedback about the development of the stressful event
itself ("Has it advanced, changed form, or improved?"), the
effects one's preliminary efforts have had so far on the stressful
event ("Was I successful in staving it off?"), and whether the
420 ASPINWALL AND TAYLOR

Resource Build a reserve

of temporal, financial,
accumulation and social resources

H:Atfention- Screen environment

Jrgcognition for danger

S Initial
appraisal
What will it become?

t Preliminary
* What can I do?
coping

Has the event developed?

Elicit and use Have preliminary efforts

feedback had an effect?

What has been learned about

the potential stressor?

Figure 1. The five stages of proactive coping, their component tasks, and the potential feedback loops
among them.

event requires additional coping efforts ("Is there something
more I can do, or should I wait to see if it's a problem?").
This feedback may be used to revise one's appraisals of the
potential or incipient stressor and to modify one's strategies for
offsetting it.
Thus, from the standpoint of the widower in the opening
paragraph, he must re-establish or firm up the bonds with his
social support network (resource accumulation), realize in ad-
vance that loneliness is a possible problem during the holidays
(recognition), determine whether he can do something to avert
loneliness (initial appraisal), call friends or family to see who
would welcome a holiday visit (preliminary coping efforts),
and recognize that his son's family seems a bit lukewarm about
a possible visit from him but that his friends in Jamaica are
genuinely enthusiastic (elicitation and use of feedback). How-
ever, as shown in Figure 1, the detection and appraisal of poten-
tial stressors may generate negative emotional arousal.1 As we
review later, the need to regulate negative emotional arousal
may influence—and, in some cases, compromise—the tasks of
each stage, either by limiting the person's ability to detect and
offset potential stressors or by interfering with the ability to
engage in coping efforts.
An important element of the model is the presence of several
feedback loops. Specifically, resource accumulation, attention,
appraisal, and regulation of negative emotional arousal are con-
ceptualized as interrelated tasks in which appraisals that suggest
a possible threat lead to increased attention to the potential
stressor, while prompting efforts to regulate emotions and to
shore up resources (cf. Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Schonpflug,
1986). Specific kinds of initial appraisals influence the prelimi-
nary coping efforts undertaken, which, in turn, influence the
kinds of information that may be extracted about the potential
1
Some researchers have identified two qualitatively distinct patterns
of physiological arousal, one corresponding to a positive state of energy
mobilization to meet perceptions of challenge and the other representing
a negative state of perceived threat or stress (cf. Blascovich & Tomaka,
1996; Dienstbier, 1989; Manuck, Kamarck, Kasprowicz, & Waldstein,
1993). Although the former may facilitate proactive coping, the latter
may interfere with it. We use the term negative emotional arousal to
denote this latter state. Note that this term is certainly an oversimplifica-
tion of many sophisticated models concerning the links among physio-
logical arousal; cognitive appraisals; and the intrapsychic, social, and
environmental factors that lead to the interpretation of physiological
arousal as specific emotions (see Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996, for a
discussion).
 A STITCH IN TIME
stressor, providing more information for the appraisal process
and the modification of coping efforts.
Resource Accumulation: The Maintenance and
Acquisition of Resources
An important first step in effective proactive coping is the
preservation and accumulation of resources. Such resources in-
clude time, money, organizational and planning skills, and a
social network of family and friends as well as more individual-
ized resources. As Hobfoll (1989) noted, individuals who have
a surplus of resources and who are not responding to immediate
challenges can use them preventively to offset future net losses
of resources.
As an example of how external resources may affect proactive
efforts, consider the the importance of time. In the absence
of time pressures, individuals may be attentive to subtle cues
suggesting that a potential problem may develop. The absence
of time pressures may also enable an individual to think through
likely future events, anticipate stressors, and take proactive mea-
sures to offset or minimize their occurrence. In contrast, con-
sider an individual who works 70 hr a week at two jobs with
little vacation time or sick leave benefits or a single parent who
works full time. Although such individuals may become expert
at time management, they may have little time available for
reflection.
Lack of time and associated factors, such as fatigue, can have
several effects on proactive coping. First, they may minimize
the likelihood that an individual will recognize a warning sign
that is at a relatively low level. Second, they may prevent the
individual from thinking through the future to the point that he
or she can anticipate likely future stressors. Third, time pressure
or fatigue may lead an individual to premature closure, with
accompanying deficits in the processing of subsequent informa-
tion related to the stressor (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Web-
ster, Richter, & Kruglanski, 1996). Finally, lack of time or en-
ergy may interfere with the enactment of proactive strategies.
For example, even if a worker correctly anticipates the need to
acquire new job skills, he or she may not have the time or energy
to attend evening classes. Other finite resources, such as money,
may affect proactive coping in a similar fashion.
Resource accumulation also involves the acquisition of proac-
tive coping skills. From early childhood, children are exposed
to others who influence the skills that they develop with respect
to anticipating stress and coping with it (Bandura, 1986) and
to planning in general (McGillicuddy-De Lisi, De Lisi,
Flaugher, & Sigel, 1987). For example, research indicates that
chief determinants of the practice of preventive health behaviors
are whether parents set an effective example and encouraged
the practice of such proactive steps (R. Y. Cohen, Brownell, &
Felix, 1990; Maddux, Roberts, Sledden, & Wright, 1986). Such
health-relevant practices as a healthy diet, abstinence from
smoking, moderate or no alcohol consumption, exercise, seatbelt
use, and other kinds of proactive behaviors depend heavily on
learning in the family (see S. E. Taylor, 1995).
Families also influence the development of specific coping
skills. Children living with mothers who are chronically de-
pressed, for example, develop ways of coping that include hypo-
responsivity to the environment and withdrawal from stressful
421
circumstances (Hammen, 1992). Other families are more proac-
tive. For example, in one family, children may be taken to a
store to get their school supplies or wardrobes; whereas in an-
other family, they may be asked to list in advance what they
need. Such organizational skills generalize to new settings and
tasks. Similarly, schools differ in the degree to which they expect
their students to be involved in the planning and enactment of
activities. In large, chaotic classrooms in which teachers have
many responsibilities, students may simply be given assignments
with due dates; whereas in smaller and more orderly classrooms,
children may be taught how to gather and organize information,
plan a long-term project so that it will be done by a due date,
and enlist the cooperation of their parents in the completion of
certain assignments. Such training helps create general organiza-
tional skills, time management skills, and the ability to use a
support network to achieve goals. Thus, differences in the per-
sonal environments to which an individual is exposed produce
differences in the degree to which proactive coping skills are
acquired and practiced.
The establishment of a social network and social support are
valuable resources that not only enable individuals to cope with
a wide variety of extant stressors but may also facilitate proac-
tive coping efforts. Social support is thought to be helpful for
coping with stressful events because it serves several explicit
functions. Individuals in a social support network may provide
information germane to stressors (information support), enable
individuals to appraise situations effectively (appraisal sup-
port), provide concrete aid or assistance during times of stress
(tangible aid), and provide emotional support (see S. Cohen &
McKay, 1984; S. Cohen & Wills, 1985; and Thoits, 1986, for
reviews). Although analyses of social support often maintain
that emotional support is the most important benefit of a social
support network (e.g., Dakof & Taylor, 1990), for proactive
coping—as we note in subsequent sections—the ability of a
support network to provide information and appraisals germane
to ambiguous or potential stressors may be especially valuable.
Resources also enable people to keep chronic stress under
control. Proactive coping is difficult, even impossible, in chroni-
cally stressful environments. Chronic problems, such as finan-
cial difficulties, domestic discord, or a troublesome car, or
chronic environmental stressors, such as crime, overcrowding,
and noise, may diminish one's opportunities to learn and use
proactive coping skills. Because high-stress environments exac-
erbate cognitive load, reduce perceptions of personal control,
and reduce the opportunity to engage in proactive coping, they
favor reactive coping skills (cf. Pearlin, Menaghan, Lieber-
man, & Mullan, 1981). In addition, chronic stress is reliably
associated with negative affect, especially depression, and these
affective consequences of chronic stress may reduce the likeli-
hood that people will be able to respond proactively (Brown &
Harris, 1978; McGonagle & Kessler, 1990; Pearlin & Schooler,
1978). To the extent that people are prevented from proactive
coping, the cumulative burden of stress that they face is likely
to be great.
Moreover, the degree to which an individual is able to under-
take an activity free of distraction or simultaneous stressors
may greatly moderate the quality of performance on that task.
Attention is a finite resource (Hasher & Zachs, 1979; Kahne-
man, 1973), and to the degree that it is compromised by other
422 ASPINWALL AND TAYLOR
demands, it is less available for tasks related to proactive coping.
In particular, the ability to use information correctly and draw
appropriate inferences may be compromised. Gilbert, Pelham,
and Krull (1988) have examined the effect of cognitive load,
or what they term "busyness," on inference processes. To sum-
marize a large and consistent literature, in a busy environment,
inferences are crude: They are based on less information, poor
consideration of the information available, high-probability in-
terpretations that do not have the benefit of correction processes
or updating, premature closure, and heuristic-automatic ways
of processing information that may be unresponsive to the data
(see Fiske & Taylor, 1991, for a review).
The effects of cognitive load or busyness on proactive coping
are potentially important. A busy immediate environment may
compromise people's ability to recognize the warning signs of
an impending stressor. A busy environment may also compro-
mise people's initial appraisals of a potential stressor if they
consider information less thoroughly by relying on a salient,
although not necessarily correct, initial interpretation of a situa-
tion (cf. Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Even if an individual
recognizes a potential stressor and makes an accurate initial
appraisal, a busy environment may make it difficult to enact
initial coping efforts, to detect feedback about the success of
these efforts, and to gather and use new information about the
unfolding stressor. Freedom from daily chronic distraction, then,
may maximize the degree to which proactive efforts may be
undertaken.
As the preceding analysis suggests, proactive coping may
be difficult to accomplish under conditions of low resources
(Hobfoll, 1989). People without financial resources, without a
support network, with little time, or with little opportunity to
learn proactive coping skills will be less able or likely to exert
proactive efforts than their more resource-wealthy counterparts.2
Thus, the ability to accumulate and preserve resources is essen-
tial to effective proactive coping.
Recognition: Attention and Detection
of Potential Stressors
The detection of a potential stressor requires attention to po-
tentially threatening information. Sometimes, this task involves
the interpretation of warning signs that come from the environ-
ment. The tendency to orient to negative or unexpected stimuli
appears to be innate. A large amount of literature shows that
humans and other species orient to negative stimuli with dra-
matic but temporary physiological arousal, attentional en-
gulfment, and expenditure of cognitive and social resources (see
S. E. Taylor, 1991, for a review). At other times, information
about a potential stressor comes from one's internal processes
of reflection. By thinking through the tasks one must accomplish
within a given period of time, one may gain insights about those
demands, such as the realization that one task must be completed
before another can be started or that the amount of time available
may be insufficient, thereby dictating the need to establish prior-
ities. Regardless of whether warning signs are internally or ex-
ternally generated, a number of individual differences may mod-
erate the tendency to detect potential stressors.
The detection of a potential stressor may be facilitated by a
future temporal orientation (Jones, 1994; Zimbardo & Gonza-
lez, 1984). Researchers studying temporal orientation and plan-
ning have indentified individual differences in the degree to
which participants think about and plan for their futures or use
information about future outcomes in judging current outcomes
(e.g., Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger, & Edwards, 1994). Such
distinctions are important in the study of proactive processes
because one must be able to anticipate the future and modify
one's current behavior to behave proactively. Temporal orienta-
tion is a successful predictor of such future-oriented behaviors
as recycling and energy conservation and preventive health be-
haviors, such as safe sex and decreased tobacco and alcohol use
(Rothspan & Read, 1996; Strathman et al., 1994).
Several additional individual differences may facilitate atten-
tion to threatening information, whether internally or externally
generated. Such concepts as vigilance, sensitization, and moni-
toring refer to chronic tendencies to scan the environment for
potentially meaningful threatening information (Davidson &
Bobey, 1970; Goldstein, Jones, Clemens, Flagg, & Alexander,
1965; S. M. Miller, 1987; Neufeld & Davidson, 1971). Individu-
als who respond to the possibility of threat by seeking informa-
tion are more likely to approach and intellectualize threatening
experiences than those who avoid information (Davidson &
Bobey, 1970; Goldstein et al., 1965; Neufeld & Davidson, 1971;
Petrie, Collins, & Solomon, 1960; see S. E. Taylor & Clark,
1986, for a review). In contrast, constructs such as repression
(C. H. Hansen, Hansen, & Shantz, 1992; Weinberger, 1990)
and blunting (S. M. Miller, 1987) refer to tendencies to ignore
threatening information. Whether such individual differences
operate directly at encoding to reduce initial awareness of poten-
tially negative stimuli or operate after information has been
recognized to keep it from awareness or to distort it has yet to
be determined.
Intriguing evidence suggests that repressers may orient more
quickly to threatening information but process it less success-
fully (C. H. Hansen et al., 1992). Specifically, C. H. Hansen et
al. suggested that, for repressers, threatening stimuli constrict
attention, resulting in impoverished memory for negative infor-
mation. If this is the case, then repressers may incompletely
process initial information about a problem or process it in a
way that removes the threatening aspects (cf. Dunning & Story,
1991; Foa & Kozak, 1986). As such, it may be difficult for
chronic repressers or avoiders to act in advance to remediate a
potential stressor. Similarly, as research on coping with extant
stressors suggests, people who cope through avoidance instead
of confrontation or vigilance may not make sufficient cognitive
or emotional efforts to anticipate and manage subsequent prob-
lems (Suls & Fletcher, 1985; S. E. Taylor & Clark, 1986).
The role of dispositional optimism in the recognition of po-
2
More interesting, highly demanding environments may make proac-
tive behavior all the more valuable. The study of psychological resilience
has identified certain key resources that seem to enable people to survive
and to adapt to extraordinarily stressful environments, such as living
with a parent who is abusive, alcoholic, or mentally ill. Some researchers
have suggested that proactive behavior may be especially important
under such demanding conditions. For example, children who have been
abused may acquire knowledge about the situations that are likely to
anger the person who is abusive and make plans to avoid these situations
(Mirazek & Mrazek, 1987).
 A STITCH IN TIME
tentially threatening information has been controversial. Al-
though some have suggested that chronically optimistic beliefs
may compromise attention to negative information because they
decrease worry (Perloff & Fetzer, 1986; Schwarzer, 1994; Ten-
nen & Affleck, 1987; Weinstein, 1982, 1987), some empirical
studies suggest that the opposite may be true. In a study of
attention to threatening health information (Aspinwall & Brun-
hart, 1996 ), young adults who were optimistic about their health
paid more attention than their less optimistic counterparts to
information about risks to their health. Trope and Neter (1994)
found that students who had recently received positive feedback
showed greater interest in negative information about them-
selves than did students who had not previously been given
positive feedback. Taken together, these studies suggest that pos-
itive expectations or experiences may bolster people's ability to
cope with the emotional effects of negative feedback, such that
these expectations enhance rather than reduce attention to nega-
tive information (see also Baumeister & Cairns, 1992).
There may be liabilities associated with scanning the environ-
ment for potential danger as well. One potential risk is hypervig-
ilance. Hypervigilance may lead individuals to perseverate on
imagined problems or attend to so many potential threats that
they are unable to manage any one of them (cf. McGrath &
Beehr, 1990). Moreover, people who are constantly on guard
against threats may pay a toll in emotional wear and tear and
cognitive fatigue (Perloff, 1983; Schonpflug, 1986). The poten-
tial problems raised by hypervigilance suggest that, in addition
to being vigilant to potential signs of danger, people may also
need to learn how to regulate their attention to be vigilant to
some potential threats, but not to all, and to be able to orient
away from negative information (Derryberry & Reed, 1994).
In addition, because people rarely have the luxury of attending
to one threat at a time, understanding how they allocate attention
to multiple sources of negative information may yield insights
into self-regulatory efforts (Carver et al., 1993; McGrath &
Beehr, 1990; Pearlin, 1989).
An area that has been largely ignored in studies of the recog-
nition of negative information is the important role that a social
network can play in the detection of warning signs. A person
may be alerted to the likelihood of a possible stressor by others
in his or her network or the person may use the support network
to try to determine whether a potential stressor exists. Consider,
as an example, the function of rumor in the workplace when
people share information about impending layoffs, possible
takeovers, financial shortfalls, and the like to be better prepared
for these eventualities should they occur. Although the informa-
tion provided by such social interaction may not always be
accurate, it may serve the function of putting a person on notice
so that he or she is vigilant to subsequent information relating
to the potential stressor. Informational support from a social
network, then, can be instrumental both in the detection of a
warning sign and in the determination of the extent of threat an
incipient stressor poses. Note that information from the social
network can impede responsiveness to potential threats as well.
Even in potential emergencies, the mere presence of others and
the degree to which they appear to be responding to a potential
threat influence the amount of time it takes people to notice the
threat and interpret it as dangerous (Latane & Darley, 1970).
423
In the presence of others who do not appear to regard a situation
as threatening, offsetting responses may be delayed.
Initial Appraisals of Emerging Stressors
Once a potential stressor has been detected, it must be ap-
praised. The task of initial appraisal centers around at least two
interrelated tasks: definition of the problem and regulation of
arousal. We consider how processes and factors, such as sche-
mas, mental simulation, individual differences in appraisals, and
the use of social information, affect these tasks.
Definition of the problem. In its incipient stage, a potential
problem is likely to be low in magnitude and ambiguous in
form. Thus, for an initial appraisal to lead to proactive coping,
the individual must make some sense of the nebulous negative
stimulus. Research from social cognition on schemas, especially
on matching data to schemas, may elucidate the processes peo-
ple go through in attempting to make sense of an incipient or
ambiguous negative cue.
Several factors influence what schema will be evoked. Salient
cues—that is, cues that are dramatic, proximal, and personally
relevant—are likely to be noticed and to elicit relevant schemas
(Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Thus, for example, a pink slip delivered
to one's next-door neighbor is more likely to elicit the scenario
of potential job loss than a less proximal but perhaps more
relevant layoff. Strong cues evoke schemas. Reports of a major
layoff are more likely to trigger a job loss scenario than reports
of a minor one. Recently primed or accessible cues are likely
to evoke powerful schemas (e.g., Bargh, Bond, Lombardi, &
Tola, 1986). If one's neighbor's layoff and his family's conse-
quent struggle with loss of income are fresh in one's mind, then
a job loss scenario may loom especially large. Representative-
ness is an important criterion by which a schema or scenario is
judged likely to occur (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982). A repre-
sentative scenario is one that matches the high-probability fea-
tures of a person's pre-existing schemas. For example, if one's
company has a history of closing plants in response to an eco-
nomic downturn, then a plant closure is the representative sce-
nario likely to come to mind when the danger signal of an
impending recession is detected. In contrast, if one's company
has a history of cutting back evenly at all plants, especially in
certain departments, then the scenario of selective layoffs is
most likely to be cued. Differences in the scenario evoked will
lead to consequent differences in the estimation of whether one
will be affected by such cutbacks.
Characteristics of the perceiver also influence what schemas
may be evoked. A match to past experience may cue a schema
(Andersen & Baum, 1994; Andersen & Cole, 1990; Scholnick,
1994). For example, prior experience with a layoff and recogni-
tion that the present situation matches the situation that immedi-
ately preceded the prior layoff may elicit a layoff scenario.
Expert knowledge, or expertise, is also implicated in the match-
ing of data to schemas. Specifically, the more one knows about
layoff situations, the more likely one is to match data to schemas
easily and accurately (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Hammond, 1990;
Scholnick, 1994).
These variables then—salience, strength, accessibility, repre-
sentativeness, past experience, and expertise—influence the
ways in which people interpret potential danger signals and
424 ASPINWALL AND TAYLOR
match them to available schemas or scenarios in long-term mem-
ory in a preliminary effort to understand what a warning sign
may mean.
Use of mental simulation. For an initial appraisal to be use-
ful in proactive coping efforts, it is insufficient to call forth a
static representation of what a warning signal is likely to mean.
It is also essential to understand how it is likely to change.
Essentially, the task facing the would-be proactive coper is to
run the incipient stressful event forward in time to project what
its likely implications or course will be or could be. Individuals
with a future temporal orientation may be more likely to engage
in this process than those with a present or past orientation
(Zimbardo & Gonzalez, 1984). In terms of cognitive skills, such
forward-looking mental activity may take the form of mental
simulation. Mental simulation is the imitative representation of
real or hypothetical events, including rehearsals of likely future
events and fantasies about the future (S. E. Taylor & Pham,
1996; S. E. Taylor & Schneider, 1989). An important character-
istic of mental simulation is that it makes a course of action
seem likely or true (e.g., Anderson & Sechler, 1986; Carroll,
1978; Gregory, Cialdini, & Carpenter, 1982; Hirt & Sherman,
1985). What one initially simulates, then, is likely to be an
important determinant of one's interpretation of the meaning of
a danger cue and how it is likely to unfold.
But what is a person likely to mentally simulate? Although
the ambiguity of a potential stressor would seem to suggest
many possible appraisals and simulations, research suggests that
what is mentally simulated mirrors reality. An individual's per-
ception of reality is formed by a variety of factors, including
personal experience, information from other people, social
norms, and cultural expectations. Taking these factors into con-
sideration, people simulate the most representative scenario,
given the nature of a danger cue (Kahneman & Miller, 1986).
When constructing mental simulations of events, people decide
what is "normal" and tend to exclude what is surprising; rarely,
if ever, do people interject improbable events into their simula-
tions (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). Mental simulations of events
tend to follow the same rules of plausibility that actual behavior
does. To the extent that an individual interprets a danger sign in
a specific way, that is, as indicative of a particular potential
threatening event, the mental simulation or scenario that unfolds
is likely to be the most probable scenario that corresponds to
the individual's representation.3
In addition to their role in the identification of the meaning
of a danger signal, mental simulations may also provide an
incipient plan to deal with the potential stressor. The process
of imagining how events are going to take place provides infor-
mation about those events, such as their sequence or relation
to each other. Consequently, simulations provide information
rudimentary to a plan of action (Hayes-Roth & Hayes-Roth,
1979; G. A. Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960). Mental simu-
lation, then, may not only enable an individual to define what
a danger signal means but simulation may also bridge the gap
between initial appraisals and preliminary coping efforts by
providing information relevant to the plan of action (see John-
son & Sherman, 1990; and S. E. Taylor & Pham, 1996, for
reviews).
Individual differences in the favorability of appraisals. Ini-
tial appraisals of warning signs are also influenced by individual
differences. People vary in the ways in which they appraise
potential stressful events, especially in whether they are predis-
posed to make favorable or unfavorable appraisals. Individuals
who are high in optimism and in perceived self-efficacy appraise
stressful events as less threatening or negative (Jerusalem,
1993). Wiebe (1991) found that participants high in hardiness
(Kobasa, 1977) appraised laboratory stressors as less threaten-
ing than did those low in hardiness (see also Allred & Smith,
1989). Davey, Hampton, Farrell, and Davidson (1992) exposed
participants to accounts of ambiguous situations, such as a
friend waving from the water, and to situations crafted to be
unambiguously threatening or benign. Regardless of the type
of situation, participants high in anxiety interpreted all of the
situations as more threatening than did participants low in anxi-
ety. Amplification of threat appraisals by participants high in
anxiety was also demonstrated for perceptions of their somatic
symptoms (Steptoe & Vogele, 1992). Such results suggest that
some individual differences, such as trait anxiety, are related to
the amplification of threat appraisals, whereas others, such as
hardiness, optimism, and psychological control, are associated
with lower threat appraisals.
One might be concerned that appraisals that dampen threat
would interfere with efforts to remediate potential stressors.
However, factors that result in lower threat appraisals may actu-
ally facilitate proactive efforts. In particular, moderately favor-
able appraisals of potential stressors may allow people to make
use of threatening information, whereas unfavorable appraisals
may lead to avoidance or other deficits in the processing of
threatening information. In support of this interpretation, Aspin-
wall and Brunhart (1997) examined the relation between per-
ceptions of vulnerability to skin cancer and attention to informa-
tion about it. \bung adult women were told that the average
patient with melanoma was either a 25-year-old woman (proxi-
mal threat condition) or a 55-year-old woman (distal threat
condition). Women who believed they were at lower risk than
their peers paid more attention to information about ultraviolet
exposure in the proximal threat condition than in the distal threat
condition. Mediational analyses suggest that decreased worry
about vulnerability to skin cancer accounted for the greater
attention. These results raise the possibility that people with
favorable expectations may be better able to process threatening
information because they are less worried about their personal
vulnerability (Trope & Neter, 1994).
The preceding discussion suggests that the relationship be-
tween threat appraisal and effective action may be curvilinear.
If no threat is perceived, which may be true for chronic avoiders,
then no action will be undertaken. At moderate levels of per-
ceived threat, which may be found among optimists, effective
action may be facilitated. At high levels of perceived threat,
3
As a basic cognitive process, mental simulation is used in a broad
array of tasks, not all of which are necessarily adaptive. For example,
sometimes people's mental simulations are inaccurate. Mental simulation
may also be involved in intrinsically maladaptive activities, such as
cognitive rumination (Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995). Differ-
ent kinds of mental simulation may be more or less adaptive for different
kinds of people (cf. Norem & Illingworth, 1993). The discussion above,
then, should not be taken to mean that mental simulation is inevitably
accurate or productive.
 A STITCH IN TIME
which may be found among people who are highly anxious,
effective action may be impeded. A large literature on the impact
of fear appeals on actions to reduce fear is generally consistent
with this curvilinear hypothesis (Janis, 1967; H. Leventhal,
1970). Such findings also suggest that arousal is implicated in
the relation between perceptions of threat and effective action—
an issue to which we now turn.
Regulation of negative emotional arousal. The favorable
appraisals of potential stressors that are conducive to the effec-
tive structuring of problems may also be conducive to the regula-
tion of negative emotional arousal (cf. Blascovich & Tomaka,
1996; Dienstbier, 1989). Blascovich and Tomaka suggested that
individual differences, such as self-esteem and control beliefs,
may lead people to appraise their coping resources more favor-
ably and lead them to make challenge appraisals rather than
threat appraisals. Challenge appraisals, in turn, may lead to the
effective mobilization of energy to meet the demands of the
task. The results of several studies provide evidence for such a
process (Katz & Epstein, 1991; Tomaka & Blascovich, 1994).
For example, Katz and Epstein found that participants high in
constructive thinking (akin to optimism) were less debilitated
by failure feedback and better able to complete a laboratory test
than were those low in constructive thinking.
Dispositional tendencies to amplify threat appraisals also
have important implications for proactive coping. When initial
appraisals are unfavorable, increased demands for emotional
management may impede both information processing (C. H.
Hansen et al., 1992) and instrumental action (Fblkman, 1984;
Orr & Meyer, 1990).4 For example, in a study of repressers'
eye movements and physiological arousal during exposure to
emotional stimuli, R. D. Hansen and Hansen (1994) found a
pattern of heightened initial attention to the stimuli, followed
by rapid subsequent decreases in responsiveness to them (see
also Foa & Kozak, 1986). They speculated that repressers di-
rected much of their conscious processing capacity toward re-
ducing the threat value of the stimulus rather than processing
the properties of the stimulus itself. Similarly, Baumeister and
Cairns (1992) found that repressers paid considerable attention
to negative information about themselves (under some condi-
tions) but showed low subsequent recall for this negative infor-
mation. Similar findings concerning anxiety have been reported
(see Matthews, 1990, for a review). Thus, although people may
successfully orient toward negative information, early increases
in negative emotional arousal in response to such information
may derail information processing and subsequent proactive ef-
forts. Studies by Carver and Scheier (1994) and by Lyon and
Bugental (1997) make similar points.
In addition to attentional narrowing and insufficient pro-
cessing of threatening stimuli, people's perceptions of high lev-
els of potential threat may prompt defensive processing as a
means to regulate negative emotional arousal. At an extreme,
people may simply deny or distort threatening information, re-
sulting in less serious initial appraisals than may be warranted
(Croyle, 1992; Jemmott, Ditto, & Croyle, 1986).5 Although
denial can be a useful strategy for well-bounded, short-term
stressors, such as dental visits, it is known to interfere with
long-term coping efforts that require one to monitor a situation,
such as cardiac rehabilitation (see S. E. Taylor & Aspinwall,
1990, for a review). Because proactive efforts involve actions
425
taken to offset potential stressors early in their course and re-
quire sustained attention to the potential problem, denial should
be detrimental to proactive coping. Specificially, if individuals
engage in denial, then proactive efforts are unlikely to be under-
taken; if proactive efforts are undertaken, then they may not
correspond well to objective features of the potential stressor.
In contrast, activities undertaken to appraise the potential
problem may simultaneously lend clarity to negative emotional
arousal and, by doing so, actually reduce or moderate it (cf.
Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996). The clarity afforded by success-
ful problem definition may help define nebulous physiological
arousal, yielding a more specific definition, such as fear, anger,
anxiety, or excitement (Fiske, 1982; Gleicher et al., 1990; Ly-
man, Bernardin, & Thomas, 1980; Markman, Gavanski, Sher-
man, & McMullen, 1993; D. T. Miller & McFarland, 1987; D. T.
Miller, Turnbull, & McFarland, 1990). More specific processing
of the meanings of negative emotional arousal may aid in its
regulation.
Appraisal support. As in the case of recognition of a warn-
ing sign, the social network can have profound influences on
the appraisal of emerging stressful events (e.g., Ashford, 1986).
When a potential stressor is nebulous in form, the social network
may be instrumental in lending clarity (Ashford & Cummings,
1983). By talking with or simply observing individuals in simi-
lar circumstances and comparing his or her reactions with theirs,
a person is able to test the appropriateness of his or her initial
judgments and test out initial interpretations and plans for deal-
ing with an incipient stressor. That is, both verbal and nonverbal
forms of affiliation with others provide opportunities to increase
cognitive clarity regarding one's understanding of the situation
and to determine whether one's emotional reactions are appro-
priate (Schachter, 1959; see Kulik & Mahler, in press, for a
discussion). A large literature on social comparison processes
underscores the importance of these functions of the social sup-
port network (see S. E. Taylor, Wayment, & Carrillo, 1995;.and
Wood, 1989).
Additionally, social contacts may act as a sounding board for
initial interpretations and appraisals so that blatantly incorrect
or premature judgments can be moderated and appropriate judg-
ments can be reinforced (Ashford, 1986; S. Cohen & McKay,
1984). This is not to suggest that the social support network
inevitably provides a corrective or accurate influence. Because
individuals tend to draw support from others like themselves,
misinterpretations and biases may sometimes be shared.6 None-
4
An exception to the pattern that high levels of arousal early in the
process of managing a stressor may impair proactive efforts is found in
research on defensive pessimism (Norem & Cantor, 1986; Norem &
Illingworth, 1993; Showers, 1988, 1992; Showers & Ruben, 1990).
Defensive pessimists enter situations expecting the worst and make use
of the high levels of arousal that result from such appraisals to prepare
for an upcoming event, thus decreasing the likelihopd that an adverse
event will occur. However, they do so at the expense of managing affect
effectively. For example, defensive pessimists are less happy and success-
ful over time, despite initial academic success equivalent to their more
optimistic classmates (Cantor & Norem, 1989).
5
See Breznitz (1983b) and Lazarus (1983) for more extended discus-
sions of different kinds of denial.
6
Ironically, however, the degree to which threatening experiences are
shared in one's social network may give people a false sense of security
426 ASPINWALL AND TAYLOR
theless, by exchanging information and appraisals about poten-
tial stressors with one's support network, a person should be
able to acquire new information and interpretations, which may
enable the person to clarify his or her understanding of a nebu-
lous but potentially threatening situation.
From Initial Appraisals to Preliminary Coping Efforts
Preliminary coping efforts depend heavily on the initial defi-
nition of the stressful event. For example, to the extent that
people project the potential stressor and its implications forward
in time through the use of mental simulation, the content of
their projections may ease them into an action plan. Nonetheless,
at least three general questions merit attention: What kinds of
appraisals give rise to active coping efforts?, what factors predict
whether offsetting efforts will be undertaken?, and what specific
actions will be undertaken?
What kinds of appraisals give rise to active coping efforts?
In general, to regard situations as amenable to change leads to
favorable problem-solving appraisals and corresponding action.
The beliefs that one is capable of enacting, required behaviors
and that those behaviors will be successful in averting stress
may have critical and distinct effects on efforts to offset a poten-
tial stressor (Bandura, 1986; Weisz, 1983; see Skinner, in press,
for a review). Skinner argued that people with high-perceived
control see the world as a structured system; they see more
means-end relations in a given situation and, therefore, see
more opportunities for action. In contrast, if people's appraisals
of controllability are unfavorable, their problem-solving efforts
may be compromised. For example, Sansone and Berg (1993)
asked children and adults about the degree to which they had
been able to anticipate negative events in the past 6 months.
Although adults had correctly anticipated specific negative
events, 60% reported having done nothing to prevent them. The
most common reason for respondents' lack of proactive effort
was an underestimation of the severity of the consequences and
perceptions of low personal control over the event. Appraisals
then did not prompt offsetting actions because the events were
not perceived as controllable (see also Vitaliano, Russo, & Mai-
uro, 1987).
What factors predict appraisals conducive to action? Con-
sistent links between individual differences and appraisals of
controllability have been uncovered. Depression has been linked
to unfavorable appraisals of one's problem-solving ability
(Blankenstein, Flett, & Johnston, 1992; C. J. Taylor & Scogin,
1992); that is, participants with depression or dysphoria tended
to respond to danger signs with the perception that they could
do nothing about them. Optimism, in contrast, has been linked
to favorable appraisals in a variety of populations, including
patients who have had coronary artery bypass surgery (Fitzger-
ald, Tennen, Affleck, & Prantsky, 1993) or a heart attack (De-
sharnais, Godin, Jobin, Valois, & Ross, 1990), women awaiting
about what they are facing or will face. Several experimental studies
show that participants who are told that others in their group share a
similar threatening diagnosis rate their condition as less serious than
those who are told their diagnosis is unique to them (see Croyle, 1992,
for a review).
an abortion (Cozzarelli, 1993), and men at risk for AIDS (S.
E. Taylor et al., 1992).
Several provocative questions remain about the exact role
of optimism and control-related individual differences in such
appraisals. The more favorable appraisals reported by partici-
pants with high levels of optimism or perceived control may
reflect (a) greater coping resources (Schwarzer, 1994); (b)
response bias, positivity bias, or shared method variance; (c)
greater experience with the successful management of prior po-
tential stressors; (d) differences in the cognitive processes un-
dertaken, such as the content of mental simulations that may
lead a person to perceive events as controllable; (e) a general
propensity to take action; or ( f ) the presence of more domain-
specific self-efficacy beliefs. Which of these alternatives ac-
counts for the role of these individual differences in appraisals
is not yet known.
Understanding appraisals of uncontrollability. We have
noted that appraisals conducive to action should favor successful
proactive coping in many cases. However, an understudied but
critical aspect of proactive coping is the ability to determine
early (and correctly) that some incipient stressors are not ame-
nable to preliminary coping efforts. The research evidence on
participants' ability to do this is scant but intriguing. When a
stressor is clearly insurmountable, participants seem to make
such determinations easily and to moderate their efforts
accordingly.
In a series of experiments by Brehm and his colleagues
(Brehm, Wright, Solomon, Silka, & Greenberg, 1983; Wright,
Brehm, Crutcher, Evans, & Jones, 1990), participants were told
that they must memorize 2, 6, or 20 pairs of nonsense words to
avoid a burst of aversive noise. Participants in the 6-pairs condi-
tion showed the highest levels of arousal and reported the task
to be most unpleasant, whereas participants in the 20-pairs con-
dition showed lower levels of physiologic activity and did not
rate the task as especially unpleasant. Apparently, participants
in the 20-pairs condition readily identified the situation as un-
controllable, did not mobilize efforts to manage the experimen-
tal task, and did not perceive this failure to be aversive. More
interesting, these effects occurred on the first trial; that is, parti-
cipants did not need to try to memorize the 20 pairs to realize
that their efforts would be unsuccessful.
These results suggest that timely perceptions of lack of con-
tingency between potential actions and outcomes may save a
person from expending resources to manage tasks that are im-
possible. However, few naturalistic situations offer such unam-
biguous and readily available information about their amenabil-
ity to effort. Instead, one must usually engage in some problem
solving to gain preliminary information about whether the situa-
tion is amenable to one's efforts. The information generated by
such preliminary efforts may inform subsequent appraisals and
efforts, an issue addressed in Elicitation and Use of Feedback.
Influences on strategy selection: What specific actions will
be taken? Assuming that appraisals conducive to action have
been made, what specific actions will be undertaken? Obviously,
an answer to this question depends heavily on the particular
nature of the problem, but there are also some general rules that
may determine the kinds of action sequences that people will
undertake with respect to problems in their preliminary stage.
People are likely to invest time, effort, and other resources to
 A STITCH IN TIME
solve problems only to the degree that a problem is actually
perceived to exist, and they are likely to conserve resources as
much and as long as possible (Hobfoll, 1989). Thus, on the
whole, incipient or small problems should first be met with
small and convenient actions.
Consider the example of a child who has shown a small but
discernible drop in grades. There are several actions a parent
could take. The parent could ignore the lower grades, provide
help with homework, arrange for a conference with the teacher,
or arrange for tutoring or counseling. After encountering three
or four disappointing quiz grades, most parents would hesitate
to employ an expensive tutor when extra attention to homework
in the evening might suffice. If a scheduled parent-teacher con-
ference were coming up, then the parent could discuss the recent
grades with the teacher, but the parent might not make a special
appointment unless the problem were determined to be a stable
or deteriorating one.
Representativeness criteria dictate the moving of one's efforts
from smaller steps to bigger ones: One deals with a small prob-
lem with a small amount of effort and expends a greater amount
of effort when a problem is greater (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).
Literature from attribution research, for example, suggests that
participants tend to see causes and effects in these terms, judging
a small (or preliminary) effect to have been produced by a
small cause and needing remediation by a small solution and a
large problem to have been caused by a major factor and needing
remediation by a strong intervention (see Einhorn & Hogarth,
1986; Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Kassin & Pryor, 1985; Kelley &
Michela, 1980; and S. E. Taylor, 1982). To the extent that incipi-
ent stressors are still small problems, the idea that people start
small derives viability from this related literature. Although this
point may seem obvious, it has considerable significance with
respect to the potential liabilities of proactive coping discussed
earlier. If people typically respond to signs of danger with small
initial steps, then the risk that proactive efforts may deplete their
coping resources may be modest.
Another set of predictors of strategy selection consists of
individual differences linked to active or avoidant forms of cop-
ing. In the literature on coping with extant stressors, control
beliefs and optimism have been found to be robust predictors
of active versus avoidant forms of coping (see S. E. Taylor &
Aspinwall, 1996, for a review). Dispositional optimism, for
example, predicts greater active coping with stressors as diverse
as coronary artery bypass surgery (Scheier et al., 1989) and
emigration from East to West Germany (Jerusalem, 1993). At
least some of the benefits of optimism are mediated by opti-
mists' greater use of active coping and lower use of avoidant
coping (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1992; Carver et al., 1993; see S. E.
Taylor & Aspinwall, 1996, for a review). These results are
supported by studies in which researchers have randomly as-
signed participants to engage in active coping (cf. E. A. Leven-
thal, Leventhal, Shacham, & Easterling, 1989). In contrast, indi-
vidual differences, such as neuroticism, have been linked to
more avoidant forms of coping, such as self-blame and wishful
thinking (Bolger, 1990). Avoidant coping, in turn, has been
linked to adverse outcomes in longitudinal studies. Specifically,
participants who coped using chronic avoidance appeared to be
at greater risk for the occurrence of major life events (Holahan &
Moos, 1986, 1987). This may occur because avoidant copers
427
do not take the proactive measures that would have offset those
events in advance or at least muted them before they occurred.
In our review of the appraisals and individual differences that
foster active coping, we suggest that there may be two advan-
tages of active coping for proaction. As in studies of extant
stressors, active coping may be more likely than avoidant coping
to eliminate or change the form of an incipient or potentially
stressful event. Moreover, active coping efforts are more likely
to yield information about the potential stressor that may pro-
vide useful feedback. To the extent that such information is used
to revise appraisals and to modify coping efforts, an individual
may be more successful in subsequent efforts to prevent the
stressor or reduce its effects. We discuss these processes in
greater detail in the next section.
Elicitation and Use of Feedback: Modification of
Preliminary Coping Efforts
Initial coping efforts reflect an educated guess about the na-
ture of a potential stressor and the strategies that will offset it.
Many factors, however, contribute to the need to revise apprais-
als and efforts over time. By definition, a potentially stressful
situation is a situation that has the potential to deteriorate. More-
over, if initial appraisals are based on incomplete early informa-
tion or motives that lead to a distortion of the potential stressor,
then they may be incorrect. Even if initial appraisals are reason-
ably accurate, initial attempts to manage the stressor or to check
its development may be unsuccessful and may even aggravate
the problem (see Schonpflug, 1986, for a discussion). Finally,
the potential stressor may prove to be intractable. Thus, the
elicitation and use of feedback regarding how successful prelim-
inary coping efforts have been are critical to both the effective
ongoing management of the potential stressor and the conserva-
tion of resources.
Role of active and proactive coping to elicit feedback. A
critical proposition of the proactive coping model is that active
forms of coping yield more information about a potential stres-
sor than avoidant forms of coping. Simply put, even if prelimi-
nary coping efforts are unsuccessful or aggravate the problem,
they should yield information about the problem that may be
used in subsequent efforts to manage it. What evidence is there
for this hypothesis? In a study by Knudson, Sommers, and Gol-
ding (1980), married couples were asked to discuss three differ-
ent topics that had been previously identified as sources of con-
flict for the couple. The discussions were then coded as to
whether the partners had confronted the issues or avoided them.
Individual members of the couple were then shown a videotape
of the interaction and asked to complete questionnaires concern-
ing their beliefs about their partner's motives and how they
believed their partner perceived their own behavior at several
different points in the interaction. Over the course of the interac-
tion, couples who addressed the conflictual issue moved in the
direction of greater shared agreement about each other's per-
spectives and motives, whereas couples who avoided the issue
grew further apart in their assessments of the same interaction.
These findings suggest that active coping strategies are not only
more effective than avoidant ones for proactive coping but may
also be more effective because they provide feedback that peo-
ple must gain about the unfolding situation.
428 ASPINWALL AND TAYLOR
Researchers who study psychological control have made a
similar point. People with high levels of perceived control may
attempt to exert control more often and more forcefully than
would those with low levels of perceived control. As people
experiment with ways to exert control, they gain information
about the kinds of situation that are amenable to change as well
as. important procedural knowledge about how and when to
exert control in different situations (Skinner, in press; S. E.
Taylor, 1989). Such information may have general use for subse-
quent coping with a wide range of stressors.
Temporal factors in coping and the elicitation of feedback.
The preceding analysis suggests that the temporal pattern of
initial coping efforts and the degree to which these early efforts
yield information about the stressor are ripe areas for future
research. Although no researcher of proactive coping has ex-
plored this issue, there is some suggestive evidence from re-
search on coping with extant stressors. For example, studies of
adaptation to chronic illness suggest that patients hold differenti-
ated perceptions of control over different aspects of their illness,
depending on how advanced their illness is (Affleck, Tennen,
Pfeiffer, & Fifield, 1987; Collins, Taylor, & Skokan, 1990; S. E.
Taylor, Helgeson, Reed, & Skokan, 1991; Thompson, Nanni, &
Levine, 1994; Thompson, Sobolew-Shubin, Galbraith, Schwan-
kovsky, & Cruzen, 1993). Specifically, it appears that patients
initially attempted to exert control over the course of their ill-
ness, discovered that such attempts were largely unsuccessful,
and then transferred their coping efforts to more controllable
domains, such as the experience of daily symptoms and the
establishment of personal priorities.
Typically, coping inventories are not sensitive to this pattern
of coping efforts because the inventories require participants to
report all of the coping strategies they used without regard to
the order. Thus, little is known about which strategies were
tried first and what information was gained from these attempts.
Similarly, studies of laboratory stressors rarely provide enough
trials to examine patterns of coping over time. (Studies by Ban-
dura and his colleagues [e.g., Bandura & Jourden, 1991] are
elegant exceptions.) Therefore, although there is some intriguing
evidence that people develop differentiated beliefs about stress-
ful events and their management, the role of early coping efforts
in this process merits additional investigation (cf. Carver &
Scheier, 1994; Ptacek, Smith, & Zanas, 1992).
Cognitive and motivational factors in the use of feedback.
After information about the nature of the potential stressor has
been elicited, people must be able and willing to process such
information and to revise their appraisals and coping efforts
accordingly (cf. Ashford & Cummings, 1983). In cases where
the stressor proves intractable or at least very difficult, people
must also be able to withstand the cognitive and motivational
consequences of having tried to exert control and failed, at least
initially.
The preservation of cognitive and motivational resources in
the face of initial failure can be difficult. Researchers who have
exposed participants to insoluble tasks have uncovered debilitat-
ing effects of exposure to a lack of contingency, which may have
implications for subsequent self-regulatory efforts. For example,
Sedek, Kofta, and Tyszka (1993) exposed participants to five
trials of an insoluble task and then asked them to participate
in an unrelated decision task that required attention to several
different types of information. Compared with controls, partici-
pants exposed to the insoluble task showed impaired problem-
solving skills: They did not gather information that would allow
them to distinguish among alternatives and did not gather the
most important information first. Although Sedek et al. interpre-
ted these results as evidence of cognitive exhaustion, the litera-
ture on helplessness suggests that such deficits in the acquisition
and use of information may result from motivational deficits,
cognitive deficits, or both (Maier & Seligman, 1976; Seligman,
1975). Thus, a person's unsuccessful attempts to offset or pre-
vent stress may compromise his or her subsequent efforts to use
feedback as the situation unfolds.
Do individual differences linked to active coping facilitate or
impede the use of feedback? Researchers are divided on the
question of whether such individual difference as optimism,
perceived control, and self-esteem facilitate or impede respon-
siveness to feedback. Baumeister (1989) hypothesized that peo-
ple with extremely favorable beliefs in their abilities do not
recognize their limits, enter situations for which they are unpre-
pared, and—ultimately—fail (e.g., Baumeister, Heatherton, &
Tice, 1993). Consistent with this point, in several experimental
studies, researchers have linked self-esteem (Janoff-Bulman &
Brickmah, 1982; McFarlin, Baumeister, & Blascovich, 1984)
and perceived control (Sieber et al., 1992) to increased persis-
tence on insoluble tasks. These studies suggest that the very
beliefs that foster active coping may make people somewhat
resistant to the new information yielded by such attempts.
A caveat must be raised about the literature on responses to
insoluble tasks, however. An experimental paradigm in which
the tasks are rigged can make a strategy that is usually successful
appear to be a liability. If active copers gain better knowledge
of situations that are amenable to control, then they may persist
in an experimental situation because the parameters of the situa-
tion (e.g., an experiment on learning or a test of performance)
match the contingencies of situations in which they know the
exercise of control is usually successful. They may persist at
insoluble tasks, not because they are more vulnerable to the
adverse effects of insolubility or impervious to unfavorable situ-
ational contingencies but because the contingency information
that they are trying to use effectively is at odds with the structure
of the experimental paradigm (cf. Alloy, Albright, Abramson, &
Dykman, 1990).
A strikingly different relation of favorable beliefs to coping
with intractable stressors has been found in field research among
participants coping with adverse conditions (Epstein & Meier,
1989; Scheier & Carver, 1992; S. E. Taylor, 1989). Specifically,
participants with high levels of personal resources seemed to
be able to moderate their appraisals and coping efforts to match
the characteristics of the stressor (Wiebe & Williams, 1992).
For example, Vitaliano et al. (1987) found that medical students
with an internal locus of control were more likely to report
having accepted relatively unchangeable stressors, such as hos-
tile professors and an impersonal work environment, than would
students with an external locus of control. Scheier, Weintraub,
and Carver (1986) found that optimists reported working ac-
tively to fix problems appraised as controllable but reported
using strategies to manage their emotions in the face of problems
appraised as uncontrollable. Neter, Taylor, and Kemeny (1997)
found that initially optimistic men with HIV infection whose
 A STITCH IN TIME
condition subsequently deteriorated over the following year re-
mained lower in psychological distress than their less optimistic
counterparts whose situation also deteriorated.
Taken together, these findings suggest that individual differ-
ences, such as control beliefs and optimism, do not necessarily
produce psychological distress or lead people to persist in efforts
to remediate stressors that are not amenable to their efforts. How
can these findings be reconciled with the findings of laboratory
studies of nonproductive persistence? Our review suggests that
people who hold optimistic or control beliefs may be better
able to recognize the contingencies that influence which coping
strategies will be effective than would individuals who do not
make use of active coping strategies.7 In this vein, Pittman
(1993) suggested that, because initial failure to exert control
may cause people to question their understanding of the situa-
tion, people with a high level of desire for control may respond
to difficult situations with increased and careful information
processing. Systematic processing, in turn, may serve to identify
situational contingencies that would influence subsequent ac-
tions with respect to the potential stressor. In contrast, as sug-
gested earlier, individual differences that result in poor subse-
quent information processing, such as repression and anxiety,
may make it difficult for people to respond to subsequent feed-
back and to changes in the nature of the task or problem (Jerusa-
lem, 1990; Matthews, 1990).8
Social factors in the provision and interpretation of feedback.
As in the recognition and appraisal stages of proactive coping,
the social support network can be very important in the provi-
sion and interpretation of feedback gained from preliminary
coping efforts. When people attempt to cope with a stressor that
is nebulous in form, the meaning and impact of their preliminary
coping efforts are likely to be at least somewhat unclear. An-
swers to such questions as "How did I do?" and "Did I over-
react?" can often only be provided by members of one's social
network because the feedback one obtains in response to prelim-
inary efforts may be ambiguous. People may seek information
from others about the effects of their actions or how their actions
may have appeared to others (Ashford & Cummings, 1983).
Such information may be used to further interpret a potential
stressor or to come up with new strategies to deal with an
identified threatening event. Thus, the social support network
has an important role to play in clarifying the nature of feedback
in response to preliminary coping efforts (Ashford, 1986).
Summary and Implications
We have argued that an important addition to stress and cop-
ing research is an understanding of how people cope proactively
to offset or eliminate stressors before they have a chance to
develop. We proposed five interrelated tasks of proactive self-
regulation, beginning with the accumulation of resources as a
preventive measure and ending with the use of feedback from
preliminary coping efforts to discern whether an incipient stres-
sor has emerged and whether preliminary efforts to avert it or
change its form have been successful. We have detailed the
role of individual differences, personal resources, and social
resources at each stage. We suggest that several implications
for the stress and coping literature may be derived from this
analysis.
429
1. Many stressors are or can be avoided. An understanding
of self-regulatory skills from social cognition, the functions of
personal and social resources, and proclivities to use certain
kinds of coping strategies illustrates how people may gain a
proactive edge in many situations.
The realization that many stressors are or can be avoided or
minimized by effective proactive coping is important for several
reasons. First, it reverses the usual direction of causality in the
stress-coping relationship, giving a primary and central status
to coping. The emphasis on proaction encompasses events in
which the stress component is minimal but the coping compo-
nent, potentially substantial. Although models of stress and cop-
ing processes recognize the complex feedback relationships
among these processes (e.g., Lazarus & Fblkman, 1984), most
researchers have examined the occurrence of a stressful event
and its subsequent moderation by coping strategies. To give
coping a central status illustrates how proactive efforts set the
stage for the arrival of stressful events, substantially affecting
whether they occur and what form they will take if they do.
The analysis of proactive coping also highlights the important
role that individual and social resources play in effective self-
regulation. In many stress and coping models, resources are
regarded as moderators, such that less stress is experienced by
people with more time, money, and friends. Insofar as resource
accumulation precedes the recognition of any particular stressor
and proactive coping is virtually impossible in the absence of
resources, our analysis gives resources a more central and tem-
porally prior status than is assumed within traditional stress and
coping frameworks (cf. Hobfoll, 1989). It suggests that, rather
than playing a moderating role, resources play a critical role in
whether one experiences a stressor at all, what form it will take,
and how fully developed it is at the time one must deal with it.
People who have few resources, such as those on the lower end
of the sbcioeconomic scale, may experience more difficult and
more severe stressors. For these reasons, the degree to which
reactive rather than proactive strategies must be used in the
management of stress becomes evident.
This point leads to a third insight, namely, the recognition
that chronic and acute stress are integrally related (Brown &
Harris, 1978). Freedom from chronic stress acts as a proactive
7
Researchers of coping have examined participants' reactions to
strongly disconfirmatory evidence about their ability to manage stressful
events. How people respond to lesser indications of uncontrollability
remains unclear. Such individual differences as the ability to tolerate
ambiguity (Andersen & Schwartz, 1992; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996)
may promote more favorable assessments in the face of early evidence
of a lack of control. Future research may address this issue.
8
The discussion above assumes that there are situational contingencies
to detect. In the typical study of nonproductive persistence, participants
are presented with an insoluble task for which no variation of effort or
strategy is successful. In such cases, positive beliefs may foster nonpro-
ductive persistence because there are no alternative ways to meet the
goal. In contrast, in naturalistic situations, such as the adjustment to
chronic illness, some aspects of one's situation may be intractable,
whereas other aspects may be amenable to change. We suggest that the
latter set of circumstances presents the better test of whether individual
differences linked to active coping predispose people to nonproductive
persistence or are associated with greater ability to detect and respond
to situational contingencies.
430 ASPINWALL AND TAYLOR
resource, enabling people to engage in the task of anticipating
or recognizing stressful events before they occur. To the extent
that an individual can accomplish this task, proactive efforts
may be undertaken. In an environment characterized by chronic
stress, proactive efforts are unlikely and often impossible, with
acute stressors reaching a serious stage before they are dealt
with at all. When chronic burden reduces the degree to which
proactive coping can take place, the likelihood that acute stres-
sors will be exacerbated increases, thereby increasing the
amount of chronic stress that an individual experiences.
The question arises as to whether proactive coping is always
adaptive. Because it involves the mustering and allocation of
resources to offset potential future losses, the possibility that
such efforts will be more costly than the problems they address
must be considered (Schonpflug, 1986). If a stressor does not
occur or the wrong kinds of resources and actions are brought
to bear on it, then one may drain coping efforts and resources
so that, when the stressful event becomes full blown, one has
fewer resources with which to manage it. A propensity for proac-
tive coping may leave people constantly on guard or hypervigi-
lant about risks. To the extent that proactive coping efforts fail,
cognitive and motivational resources may be further depleted.
Certainly these are legitimate risks, and they highlight the
possibility that proactive coping may not always be effective or
adaptive (cf. Schonpflug, 1986). However, if individuals typi-
cally start small, then the initial actions undertaken in anticipa-
tion of a stressful event may be modest experimental efforts to
see if the stressor will be tractable in response. A major expendi-
ture of resources may not be undertaken until a stressful event
seems more likely. There may also be a trade-off for upfront
costs and vigilance because such resource expenditures often
provide information about a stressful event. Moreover, such
feedback may enable people to further hone their proactive cop-
ing skills by providing general information about the kinds of
situations that may be tractable to proactive efforts. Finally, as
just noted, to the extent that proactive efforts are successful, the
total volume of stress to which an individual is exposed may
be lower than that experienced by an individual who does not
engage in proactive coping efforts. On balance, then, we suggest
that proactive coping efforts are typically more likely to be
beneficial than counterproductive.
2. The proactive coping framework generates unique predic-
tions that have not been generated by stress and coping models.
First, we consider the effectiveness of emotion-focused cop-
ing techniques, such as positive reappraisal from a proactive
perspective. Past analyses of stress and coping have often found
positive emotion-focused strategies to be beneficial ways of
coping with stressful events (e.g., Dunkel-Schetter et al., 1992).
Because we believe that effective proactive coping is virtually
always active, we maintain that positive reappraisal can often
be an ineffective coping strategy at the stage of proaction. There
is some suggestive evidence for this hypothesis. Mattlin, Weth-
ington, and Kessler (1990) found that positive reappraisal re-
duced the distress of extant stressors, such as the death of a
loved one, but actually interfered with the management of low-
level practical problems. They suggested that positive reap-
praisal in practical situations may be maladaptive because it
inhibits active resolution of a problem. To the extent that the
management of low-level practical problems occurs proactively
or early on in the stress and coping process, these findings are
consistent with the prediction that usually beneficial emotion-
focused coping strategies, such as positive reappraisal, may be
maladaptive for proactive coping.
The proactive coping framework also implicitly predicts that
cognitive coping is ineffective unless accompanied by specific
actions. Mattlin et al. (1990) revealed support for this prediction
as well. They found that active cognitive coping was associated
with poor emotional adjustment when a participant thought
about ways to make the situation better instead of acting. Active
behavioral coping was consistently associated with positive
emotional adjustment. Passive coping was associated with posi-
tive emotional adjustment only when stressors were chronic.
These findings make explicit the need for such cognitive activi-
ties as mental simulation, planning, and organization to be un-
dertaken to assist behavioral coping and other self-regulatory
activities rather than undertaken for their own sake (see also
Billings & Moos, 1984; Davey et al., 1992; and Lyubomirsky &
Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995).
The proactive framework also provides some insight into the
question of why certain individual differences bear an inconsis-
tent relation to coping and adaptational outcomes. Specifically,
we have identified some individual differences that facilitate
some stages of proactive coping but inhibit others. A specific
example that we have highlighted in our review is the ironic
relation between such concepts as anxiety and repression and
the different stages of proactive coping. Although such factors
are associated with more rapid orientation to threatening stimuli
and a tendency to impute threat to ambiguous stimuli, they are
also linked to incomplete processing of threatening information
(C. H. Hansen et al., 1992; Matthews, 1990) and to avoidant
coping (Davey et al., 1992). That is, the factors that make
people most likely to detect or perceive threats may also make
them the least likely to respond effectively.
This analysis highlights the distinction between proactive
coping and related activities, such as worrying and hypervigi-
lance. Specifically, the distinction rests on the observation that
the detection of potential problems is not sufficient to ensure
proactive management of them. In addition to the detection of
potential threats, proactive coping involves the interrelated activ-
ities of maintaining attention to potential stressors, acting on
them, and using feedback from such actions to modify one's
appraisals and actions. Activities, such as worry, may involve
the identification of potential stressors and the simulation of
different negative outcomes, but worry bears a consistent posi-
tive relation to avoidant coping and a negative relation to active
coping. Our analysis suggests then that people who worry, are
anxious, or are high in repression may be less successful at
appraising potential stressors and may be less able to elicit new
information about them than would individuals low in these
qualities.
The proactive coping framework explicitly predicts that active
coping is superior to avoidant coping. Some reviews of the
coping literature have argued that active and avoidant coping
are merely different categories of coping strategies, each suited
to different types of stressors (Suls & Fletcher, 1985; S. E.
Taylor & Clark, 1986). In such a viewpoint, active copers deal
well with stressors amenable to action and avoidant copers deal
well with stressful situations that must be tolerated. We suggest
 A STITCH IN TIME
that, by virtue of ignoring proactive coping, the stress and coping
researchers have systematically underestimated the degree to
which active coping is adaptive. To the extent that proactive
coping enables individuals to prevent, offset, eliminate, reduce,
or modify impending stressful events, proactive copers eliminate
much stress before it occurs. These successful efforts go largely
unrecognized if extant stressors are the main focus of research.
This analysis leads to the testable prediction that avoidant copers
should typically experience more stress at any given point in
time than active copers, a position for which there is emerging
evidence. For example, neuroticism (Aldwin, Levenson,
Spiro, & Bosse, 1989; Bolger & Schilling, 1991; Headey &
Wearing, 1989; Magnus, Diener, Fujita, & Pavot, 1993), lack
of hardiness (Rhodewalt & Zone, 1989), and depression (Ham-
men, 1992) have been linked to increased reports of the occur-
rence of both major and minor stressors.9 Active coping, then,
may be more beneficial than previous analyses have implied.10
The proactive coping framework also highlights the potential
value of conceptualizing active coping as a set of skills, not just
as a stylistic preference. This view of active coping renders
certain anomalies in the coping literature comprehensible. Spe-
cifically, individual differences that predispose people toward
active coping efforts in controllable situations also appear to
promote emotion-focused coping for uncontrollable stressors.
When active coping is viewed as a set of skills, this paradox
becomes more comprehensible. When people learn any skill,
they learn both how to use the skill and when to use it. Thus,
individuals with active coping skills should understand when
those skills are likely to serve effectively but also ineffectively
and thus shift to emotion-focused or more passive coping strate-
gies at this point.
The focus on active coping as a set of skills alerts us to two
additional parameters that merit additional investigation. First,
it suggests the need to move beyond general terminology, such
as problem solving, to focus on the specific skills of which such
problem solving may be composed. Such skills may include
goal setting, organization, planning, parsing problems into their
components, and mental simulation. Second, such a focus sug-
gests that researchers might seek to identify environments that
foster the development of proactive coping skills and to study
the characteristics of those environments. As our analysis of
resources has suggested, such characteristics may include an
emphasis on personal responsibility and control, opportunities
for reflection and the practice of specific skills, and the like.
Knowledge of the characteristics of environments that foster
proactivity may be useful in the design of interventions that
impart active coping skills in general or foster them with respect
to specific problems.11
This analysis suggests a range of human tasks on which re-
searchers might profitably focus to further understand proactive
coping skills. These include such widespread problems as per-
sonal retirement saving, disability or life insurance purchases,
or borrowing and spending reductions. Similarly, standardized
proactive efforts undertaken by individuals or families, such as
shopping with a list, keeping a checkbook, maintaining a car, and
using a calendar effectively, merit consideration (Scholnick &
Friedman, 1993). These topics have been largely ignored by
psychologists in the past but have intriguing potential for future
study.
431
Finally, the proactive coping framework generates specific
predictions with respect to the benefits of social support. Re-
searchers have suggested that the emotional benefits provided
by a social support network constitute the main way in which
social support is beneficial to people; the role of social support
in providing information or helping an individual appraise
stressful events has received less empirical attention. We suggest
that the importance of information and appraisal support may
be underestimated to the degree that researchers have ignored
proactive coping. Although people surely benefit greatly from
emotional support when they face extant stressors, at the stage
of proactive coping, they are especially likely to find information
and appraisal support to be useful. Information may aid in the
recognition stage of proactive coping, and appraisal support may
help an individual to make preliminary appraisals of potential
stressors. Both information and appraisal support may enable
people to undertake effective preliminary coping strategies, and
an individual may turn to others for help in interpreting the
feedback gained from preliminary coping efforts. To the extent
that stress and coping researchers broaden their investigations
to include proactive coping, the important benefits of informa-
tion and appraisal support from others should increasingly
emerge.
Conclusion
The perceptual, cognitive, and social processes that get people
through the day also enable them to avoid or head off potentially
stressful events. As such, basic processes of self-regulation and
social interaction, as well as the more exceptional coping strate-
gies that people evolve for dealing with stress, come together
in the stages of proactive coping. Continued examination of the
considerable efforts people undertake to avoid, detect, or man-
9
As is the case with research on appraisals, an interpretational diffi-
culty of these studies concerns whether individual differences are con-
founded with differences in the perception, memory, or reporting of
negative events. Researchers who have reduced this bias by considering
only "objective" events, such as marriage, promotion, death (cf.
Headey & Wearing, 1989; Magnus et al., 1993), or arguments reported
by both spouses (Bolger & Schilling, 1991), have in general found
evidence supporting the link between individual differences and reported
numbers of negative and positive life events.
10
Note that most researchers of personality, coping, and life events
have not examined the severity of the stressors in question, either because
of space limitations in the assessment instruments or to avoid confound-
ing reported stress with appraisal processes. For example, Norris and
Murrell (1984), who found no relation between personal resources and
the occurrence of stressors, did not assess the intensity or severity of
the stressors (see also Ensel & Lin, 1991). It is possible that a focus
solely on the occurrence of events may further underestimate the contri-
bution of proactive coping to the reduction of stress over time. That is,
although people may not always be able to prevent the occurrence of
undesirable events, they may be able to reduce the severity of those
events if they attempt to cope with them early in their development.
11
An excellent example of this approach is provided by relapse pre-
vention interventions (Brownell, Marlatt, Lichtenstein, & Wilson,
1986), in which participants are taught to recognize situations that may
prompt relapse, appraise them as controllable, develop specific skills
and responses to avoid or control the situations, and use feedback to
evaluate if these efforts were successful.
432 ASPINWALL AND TAYLOR
age potential sources of stress in their environment may provide
a window to a wide range of social, cognitive, and behavioral
processes previously overlooked in stress and coping research
and may also point the way to interventions to identify and
remediate potential sources of stress.
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