Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman are known in stress research for which contribution?
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Psychology · Foundations
Coping
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coping The mental and behavioral efforts a person makes to manage the demands of stress and the emotions those demands create. Full entry → is the effort to manage stress: the mental and behavioral moves people use to handle a situation's demands and the feelings those demands create. Psychologists sort coping into two families, a distinction introduced by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman: problem-focused coping A stress-management approach that aims to change, reduce, or remove the source of the stress itself, such as fixing, negotiating, or planning around the problem. Full entry → changes the problem, emotion-focused coping A stress-management approach that aims to regulate the emotional response to stress rather than changing the stressor that triggered it. Full entry → changes the feeling. Planning, seeking support, reframing An emotion-focused strategy that changes how a stressor is interpreted — its meaning — without changing the stressor itself. Full entry →, distraction An emotion-focused strategy that temporarily turns attention away from the stressor to give the person a mental break from it. Full entry →, and avoidance A coping strategy that disengages from the stressor and turns attention away from it, giving short-term relief without addressing the underlying problem. Full entry → are familiar moves, and avoidance helps only in the short term. What works depends on the fit between the move and the situation. Coping manages stress — it does not eliminate it.
Why this matters
Coping is where the science of stress meets ordinary life. Everyone faces deadlines, losses, conflicts, and changes, and the strategies people reach for shape how those demands land. Academically, the problem-focused and emotion-focused distinction is one of the most influential ideas in stress research, and it reappears across psychology courses, from health psychology to clinical foundations. Practically, knowing the difference between changing a problem and changing a feeling gives you a clearer read on your own habits — and more options when a strategy stops working. The honest notes matter too: there is no one right way, and coping manages stress rather than erasing it. Other people are part of the toolkit: social support The practical help, advice, and emotional comfort that people receive from family, friends, and other members of their social network. Full entry → helps people cope.
The college version
What coping is
Coping is what people do about stress. The working definition used in this lesson: coping is the mental and behavioral efforts a person uses to manage stress and its demands. OpenStax Psychology 2e puts it as mental and behavioral efforts we use to deal with problems relating to stress, and the APA Dictionary of Psychology describes coping as the use of cognitive and behavioral strategies to manage the demands of a situation when these are appraised as taxing or exceeding one's resources — or to reduce the negative emotions and conflict caused by stress. Two parts of that definition do the work. First, coping is effort: it is something a person does, not something that happens to them. Second, coping targets both the demand itself and the feelings it creates. Original example: when the repair bill for his van arrives, Tomás calls three garages for quotes and sets up a payment plan — efforts aimed at the demand. He also tells himself the van is safe and the bill is a one-time hit — an effort aimed at the feeling. Both are coping.
The two families: problem-focused and emotion-focused
Psychologists usually sort coping into two families, a distinction Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman introduced in 1984. Problem-focused coping attempts to manage or alter the problem that is causing the stress — the stressor An event, condition, or demand that a person appraises as taxing or exceeding their resources and that triggers the stress response. Full entry → itself. Emotion-focused coping attempts to change or reduce the negative emotions associated with stress. The difference is the target: change the problem, or change the feeling. Original example: Priya's landlord raises her rent. Problem-focused moves: she researches comparable apartments, writes a polite letter asking for a smaller increase, and tours cheaper units. Emotion-focused moves: she vents to her sister, reminds herself the family has managed tighter years, and cooks a favorite meal to settle her nerves. She is coping either way — the two families just aim at different targets. As OpenStax notes, many stressors elicit both kinds, often at the same time.
Five familiar strategies
Within those two families sit the moves people actually make. Planning is problem-focused: mapping concrete steps to change the situation. Original example: a graduate student facing a thesis deadline breaks the remaining work into a week-by-week plan with a daily writing target. Seeking support means turning to other people for practical help, advice, or comfort. Original example: a new parent asks their sibling to cover one night shift and talks through feeding worries with a friend. Reframing is emotion-focused: construing the stressor differently without changing its objective level of threat. Original example: a nurse assigned to a less convenient shift tells herself the new hours let her attend her daughter's evening matches — the schedule is unchanged, the meaning is different. Distraction is emotion-focused: temporarily turning attention away from the stressor. Original example: a firefighter awaiting the result of a certification appeal spends the evening rewatching a favorite series instead of refreshing the email. Avoidance means disengaging from the stressor and averting attention from it — skipping the exam, ignoring the bill, withdrawing from the argument. The honest note: avoidance can reduce stress in the short term and keep anxiety from becoming overwhelming, but it does not address the problem, so the stressor tends to return, often bigger.
What makes coping work: the fit
Coping is not a menu where some items are always right. What makes a strategy work is the fit between the strategy and the situation. Lazarus and Folkman proposed that problem-focused coping is used primarily when a person appraises the stressor as within their capacity to change, while emotion-focused coping predominates when the stressor is appraised as beyond their control — and OpenStax adds that emotion-focused coping is more effective for uncontrollable stressors. Original example: a burst pipe under the sink is changeable — a call to a plumber fits, and telling yourself the water is fine does not. A loved one's serious illness is not changeable by effort — accepting help and regulating grief fits, and insisting on fixing it does not. Neither family is good or bad in general. The situation decides.
Social support: people help people cope
Social support is the help and comfort people get from their social network — family, friends, neighbors, colleagues. It takes three common forms: practical help like chores or money, advice and guidance, and emotional support that makes a person feel valued, accepted, and understood. The one-line summary: people help people cope. Support is both a coping strategy people reach for and a resource that cushions stress in general; Noba's health psychologists count social relationships among the factors that protect health. Original example: when Mei's mother is hospitalized, her neighbor mows the lawn, her cousin sends a meal, and her best friend calls every evening just to listen — three different kinds of support, all lightening the load.
The honest note: no one right way — coping manages, not eliminates
Two honest notes close the lesson. First, there is no one right way to cope. Strategies that fit one person's situation may not fit another's, and what works can change as the situation changes. The fit between strategy and situation is the closest thing to a rule. Second, coping is stress management, not stress elimination. It reduces the weight of demands and regulates emotions; it does not make stressors vanish. A student who plans, seeks support, and reframes an exam still has to take the exam. That is not a failure of coping — it is what coping is.
Eli explains
The same idea, in plain words
Explain it like I’m 10
Coping is anything you do, on purpose, to carry stress better. Picture stress as weight on your shoulders. Problem-focused coping takes some of the weight off — you fix the leak, finish the task, ask for the raise. Emotion-focused coping changes how the weight feels — you slow your breathing, tell yourself a different story about it, or let someone help you carry it. Planning, seeking support, reframing, and distraction are all ways people lighten the load, and each fits some moments better than others. Avoidance is the odd one: it feels like relief for an hour, then the weight comes back exactly where it was. The rule of thumb: if you can change the thing, change it; if you cannot, change how you carry it. And no single strategy is right for everyone — fit matters more than fashion. Coping does not make the weight disappear. It makes the weight carryable.
Picture it like this
Think of coping as steering a kayak through rough water. The waves are the stressors: you cannot make the water calm, but you can paddle to change your course, brace and lean to keep from capsizing, or angle toward shore to rest. Problem-focused coping is the paddling that changes where the boat goes. Emotion-focused coping is the bracing and steady breathing that keeps you upright while the waves hit. A paddler who only braces gets nowhere; a paddler who only charges into every wave wears out. Skilled paddling is mostly matching the move to the water.
Where the picture stops working
The kayak image leaves three things out. Waves are impersonal and predictable in a way stressors are not: people can often change the source of stress itself — negotiate, fix, quit, apologize — which no paddler can do to weather. Coping is also usually social, and the kayak is a solo boat: other people help carry the load in ways the image cannot show. And a kayaker wants to leave the water entirely, but the goal of coping is not a stress-free life; it is managing the stress that remains.
Worked example
Nadia runs a small catering kitchen. A week before her biggest wedding order, her walk-in cooler fails and the supplier says the replacement part takes ten days. The stress is immediate and physical. Her problem-focused moves: she calls two refrigeration companies for emergency repair quotes, rents a backup cold-storage unit for the week, and rearranges her prep schedule around the delivery. Her emotion-focused moves: she calls her sister to vent and to ask for help covering the Saturday shift, and she reframes the situation — a cooler failure now, she tells herself, is better than one discovered the morning of the event. She briefly considers canceling the wedding order — pure avoidance, tempting for an hour — and rejects it because the problem would return with interest. The mix works because the failure is fixable, so action fits, and the feelings needed handling too.
Key takeaway
Coping is the effort to manage stress: change what can be changed, regulate what cannot, and let other people help — and no single strategy fits every situation.
Quick check
3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.
Marcus's car breaks down a week before an important road trip. He calls three mechanics for quotes, books the cheapest repair, and rearranges his schedule around the workshop. Which coping approach is Marcus using?
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Lena learns her application for a dream job was rejected. She cannot change the decision, so she tells herself the rejection frees her to apply for a better-matched role next cycle, and she books a long-planned hiking weekend to lift her mood. Which pair of strategies is Lena using?
Choose an answer, then check it.
Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related
You’ll learn to
- Define coping as the mental and behavioral efforts people use to manage stress and its demands, and attribute the problem-focused versus emotion-focused distinction to Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman.
- Distinguish problem-focused coping from emotion-focused coping — changing the problem versus changing the feeling — with an original example of each.
- Identify and explain five common coping strategies — planning, seeking support, reframing, distraction, and avoidance — and explain why avoidance helps only in the short term.
- Explain how the fit between a coping strategy and the situation affects whether coping works, using an original example.
- Describe how social support helps people cope, and evaluate the honest framing that coping manages stress rather than eliminating it.
Common mistakes
Coping means making the problem go away.
Coping manages the demands and the emotions; many stressors — illness, loss, a decision already made — cannot be eliminated, and coping still happens there.
Emotion-focused coping is the weak option; problem-focused is the real coping.
For stressors a person cannot change, emotion-focused coping is the effective choice. The fit between strategy and situation decides, not the family.
Avoidance is never useful.
Avoidance can reduce stress in the short term and keep anxiety from becoming overwhelming, but it leaves the problem untouched, so it fails as a long-term strategy.
There is one best way to cope.
No single strategy fits every person or situation; what works depends on the stressor, the person, and the context, and it can change over time.
Easily confused
Problem-focused coping vs. Emotion-focused coping
Both are coping, but they target different things: problem-focused coping aims to change or remove the stressor itself, while emotion-focused coping aims to regulate the emotional reaction to it. Lazarus and Folkman drew the line in 1984.
Reframing vs. Avoidance
Both belong to the emotion-focused family, but reframing stays engaged with the stressor and changes its meaning, while avoidance disengages from the stressor and turns attention away without changing its meaning.
Seeking support vs. Coping alone
Support adds other people's resources — practical help, advice, emotional comfort — to a person's own efforts; coping alone relies only on what the individual can muster. Support is a strategy and a resource at once.
Key vocabulary
- coping
- The mental and behavioral efforts a person makes to manage the demands of stress and the emotions those demands create.
- problem-focused coping
- A stress-management approach that aims to change, reduce, or remove the source of the stress itself, such as fixing, negotiating, or planning around the problem.
- emotion-focused coping
- A stress-management approach that aims to regulate the emotional response to stress rather than changing the stressor that triggered it.
- reframing
- An emotion-focused strategy that changes how a stressor is interpreted — its meaning — without changing the stressor itself.
- avoidance
- A coping strategy that disengages from the stressor and turns attention away from it, giving short-term relief without addressing the underlying problem.
- social support
- The practical help, advice, and emotional comfort that people receive from family, friends, and other members of their social network.
- perceived control
- A person's belief about how much influence they have over a stressful situation, which helps determine which coping approach fits.
- stressor
- An event, condition, or demand that a person appraises as taxing or exceeding their resources and that triggers the stress response.
- distraction
- An emotion-focused strategy that temporarily turns attention away from the stressor to give the person a mental break from it.
Sources & references
- Psychology 2e, 14.4 Regulation of Stress — OpenStax, Rice University
- APA Dictionary of Psychology: coping — American Psychological Association
- APA Dictionary of Psychology: problem-focused coping — American Psychological Association
- APA Dictionary of Psychology: emotion-focused coping — American Psychological Association
- APA Dictionary of Psychology: social support — American Psychological Association
- APA Dictionary of Psychology: avoidance coping — American Psychological Association
- The Healthy Life — Noba Project (Diener Education Fund)
EliExplains lessons are original prose written from the open, credible references above. See Copyright & Licensing.
Researched 2026-08-22
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