ABSTRACT
How we cope is essentially socioculturally determined in the course of everyday life. Because coping is a complex phenomenon, no single study has to date empirically determined how we acquire coping skills. Nevertheless, we can start piecing together the jigsaw from diverse theories and approaches to human development such as social learning theory and modelling (e.g., Bandura, 1977b; Bandura & Walters, 1963); identity formation (e.g., Erikson, 1985); the sociocultural context of learning of Vygotsky (Newman & Holzman, 1993); and apprenticeship (e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1993). There is also an emergent interest in the development of optimism as a means for ‘stress inoculation’ (Seligman, 1995) and the importance of humour and metaphors as mechanisms to assist in both the process of coping and the acquisition of coping skills.
