Repressive coping and the use of passive and active coping strategies

The present experiment investigated whether coping strategies employed by individuals who possess a repressive coping style depend on the intensity of the encountered threat. We expected repressors to employ passive coping strategies (e.g. attentional avoidance) when the intensity of threatening stimuli is low and to shift to more active coping strategies (e.g. thinking positive thoughts) when confronted with strong threats. Individuals classified as repressors and non-repressors worked on a visual-spatial task under either low threat of failure or high threat of failure. Lexical decisions to failure-related words (as compared to neutral words) served as a measure of attentional avoidance. Success imagery generated in response to picture cues served as an indicator of active coping. As expected, repressors showed signs of attentional avoidance in the low threat condition, but not in the high threat condition. Conversely, repressors were more likely to generate success imagery than non-repressors in the high threat condition, but not in the low threat condition.