Problem-Focused Coping: Acting on the Cause of Stress

Problem-focused coping: act first, feel later

Problem-focused coping is one of the two major functions of coping described by psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman: faced with a difficulty, the first move is to act directly on its cause, not to regulate how it makes you feel.

It’s one of the four styles measured by our stress coping quiz. The quiz identifies which one dominates in your answers; it isn’t a clinical scale or a diagnosis.

Where it comes from: the Lazarus and Folkman model

For Lazarus and Folkman, stress doesn’t depend only on what happens, but on how it’s appraised. First we assess whether a situation threatens us (primary appraisal), and then what resources we have to deal with it (secondary appraisal). Coping is what we do from there.

They distinguished two functions: changing the situation that causes the distress (problem-focused) and regulating the emotional response that situation triggers (emotion-focused). In a 1980 study with middle-aged adults, Folkman and Lazarus found that almost everyone used both at once in the same stressful episode. Speaking of a “problem-focused” style therefore means that this function carries more weight, not that the other one disappears.

Someone with this dominant style tends to assess quickly what they can do and to put it into motion before dwelling too much on how they feel along the way.

What exactly it includes

The questionnaires used in research break this style down into specific strategies. In the COPE, published in 1989 by Charles Carver, Michael Scheier and Jagdish Weintraub, the problem-focused scales are:

• Active coping: taking direct steps to remove or reduce the stressor.
• Planning: thinking about how to tackle it and in what order.
• Suppression of competing activities: setting other tasks aside to concentrate on the problem.
• Restraint coping: waiting for the right moment instead of acting hastily.
• Seeking instrumental support: asking for advice, information or practical help.

The last point shows something interesting: asking for help isn’t exclusive to social support coping. When what you’re looking for is a solution rather than comfort, research counts it as problem-focused.

How it shows up day to day

• Immediate search for solutions: faced with a problem, the first instinct is to ask what can be done, not how you feel about it.
• Active planning: breaking a big problem down into concrete, manageable steps.
• Need to feel in control: the sense of doing something, even something small, brings more relief than talking about how you feel.
• Impatience with inaction: it’s hard to just wait or “let things happen.”

When it works best (and when it doesn’t)

Overall, research gives it good marks. A meta-analysis by Amelia Aldao, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and Susanne Schweizer (2010), covering 114 studies, found that problem solving is associated with fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression, with a medium to large effect size.

But that average hides an important nuance, known as the goodness-of-fit hypothesis: problem-focused coping works above all when the stressor is controllable (an exam, a work project, a paperwork issue with a practical solution). Kathleen Forsythe and Bruce Compas put it to the test in 1987 with college students. Faced with major life events, those who matched their strategy to the situation (acting on what was controllable, regulating emotion in the face of what wasn’t) had fewer psychological symptoms, and those who tried to change something they saw as uncontrollable had more. With everyday hassles, that effect didn’t appear.

The blind spot, then, shows up when what’s happening doesn’t depend on your own actions: a loss, an illness, someone else’s decision. There, insisting on “doing something” when there’s nothing to do can generate more frustration than relief.

More recent research sums this up with the idea of coping flexibility. A meta-analysis by Cecilia Cheng and her team (2014), with 329 samples and nearly 59,000 people, found that matching the strategy to the situation is associated with better psychological adjustment. The overall effect is small to moderate, but it’s clearer precisely when that fit between strategy and situation is measured. In other words: this style’s strength doesn’t lie in using it all the time, but in knowing when to use it and when to combine it with processing the emotion or leaning on the people around you.

An everyday example

Two coworkers find out on the same day that their project has been cancelled by a management decision that’s out of their hands.

Marta, with this dominant style, spends the afternoon rewriting her resume and calling former clients; only days later does she notice she still hasn’t digested her initial anger. Her action didn’t replace the emotion, it just postponed it. Andrés, more emotion-focused, spends the afternoon talking it over with his partner and takes a week to make a move.

Neither of them is doing it “wrong.” Marta has gained time on what she could control, her job search, and Andrés has dealt sooner with what he couldn’t change, the management decision. What’s useful for each of them is to borrow something from the other’s style.

When there’s nothing left to do: Viktor Frankl and meaning

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a survivor of several Nazi concentration camps and the founder of logotherapy, argued in Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) that even in the most extreme circumstances a person retains one freedom no one can take away: the freedom to choose their attitude toward what happens to them.

Frankl is often cited as an example of problem-focused coping, but he fits better in another category. What he describes isn’t acting on the cause of stress, which in a concentration camp was impossible, but finding meaning in the experience. Susan Folkman, the model’s co-author, added precisely that third route in 1997: meaning-focused coping. She observed it in caregivers of partners with AIDS, who couldn’t change the illness but could reinterpret their situation, focus on goals within reach and draw on their values.

The connection with this style is a different one, and a useful one: when an action-oriented person runs out of real room to act, meaning is what lets them keep going without falling into the frustration of trying to change what can’t be changed.

Sources

• Lazarus, R. S. and Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer.
• Folkman, S. and Lazarus, R. S. (1980). An analysis of coping in a middle-aged community sample. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 21(3), 219-239.
• Forsythe, C. J. and Compas, B. E. (1987). Interaction of cognitive appraisals of stressful events and coping: Testing the goodness of fit hypothesis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 11(4), 473-485. doi:10.1007/BF01175357
• Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F. and Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(2), 267-283. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.56.2.267
• Folkman, S. (1997). Positive psychological states and coping with severe stress. Social Science & Medicine, 45(8), 1207-1221. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(97)00040-3
• Aldao, A., Nolen-Hoeksema, S. and Schweizer, S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(2), 217-237. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004
• Cheng, C., Lau, H.-P. B. and Chan, M.-P. S. (2014). Coping flexibility and psychological adjustment to stressful life changes: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1582-1607. doi:10.1037/a0037913
• Frankl, V. E. (1946). Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager. Verlag für Jugend und Volk.