Glossary

Benefit Finding: Identification of positive life changes that have resulted from major stressors.

Coping Efforts: Actual strategies used to mediate primary and secondary appraisals.

Coping Outcomes: Emotional well-being, functional status, health behaviors.

Coping Styles: Generalized ways of behaving that can affect a person's emotional or functional reaction to a stressor.

John Henryism: A strong behavioral predisposition to cope actively with psychosocial and environmental stressors.

Meaning-Based Coping: Coping processes which induce positive emotion, which in turn sustains the coping process by allowing reenactment of problem- or emotion-focused coping.

Positive Psychology: Examines how people develop and sustain characteristics, such as hope, wisdom, future mindedness, courage, spirituality, and perseverance in the face of significant stress.

Primary Appraisal: Evaluation of the significance of a stressor or threatening event.

Secondary Appraisal: Evaluation of the controllability of the stressor and a person's coping resources.

Social Support: Availability of confidants; feelings of interconnectedness.

Transactional Model of Stress and Coping: A framework for evaluating processes of coping with stressful events.