ABSTRACT
It has become almost a truism that a systematic understanding of stress and coping begins with the realization that how people cope depends on subjective encoding (Lazarus, 1991; Leventhal, Diefenbach, & Leventhal, 1992). “Stress” is whatever the perceiver, rather than the clinician or researcher, construes as stressful. Furthermore, the evidence shows that individuals differ greatly not just in what they see and define as stressful, but also in how attentively and pervasively they look for threat, how readily they find it, how tenaciously they maintain and relive it, and how-in style and in process, as well as in duration and intensity-they ultimately deal with it (Miller, Shoda, & Hurley, 1996). Consider, for example, the following two children:
When Sarah and her mother arrived at the pediatrician’s office for her yearly physical, they were warmly greeted by the nurse, who informed them that Sarah would be getting the first of a series of Hepatitis B immunization shots. Sarah’s eyes immediately widened. As she scanned the room, focusing on the strange smells, the nurse’s unfamiliar face, and the stark surroundings, Sarah became tense. She grasped her mother’s hand and started to cry, envisioning that the injection was going to be a horrible experience. Sarah then began to ask numerous questions about the injection, including how much it would hurt, if it would hurt for a long time, if it would bleed, and when it would be over. Her mother tried to distract her with a picture book, but Sarah was unable to pay attention to it. Instead, she wriggled in her chair, tried to pull her arm away, and pleaded
with her mother to take her home. As the shot was being administered, Sarah could not get her mind off of the needle, the pain she felt when it pricked her arm, and the sensation of the fluid as it was being injected.
