Active Coping Is Associated With an Increased Capacity for Resilience

This study investigated the impact of various coping styles on emotional resilience in college students. Coping styles refer to the ways people respond to everyday stress or challenges. This study focused on five major coping styles: wishful thinking (hoping problems will get better on their own), goal-oriented coping (implementing action to overcome challenges), seeking support (asking peers for help), thinking-coping (analyzing situations and developing solutions), and avoidance (ignoring or escaping problems). It was hypothesized that goal-oriented, seeking, and thinking-coping styles would positively correlate with resilience, while wishful and avoidance coping styles would negatively correlate with resilience. Preliminary results show that wishful thinking is negatively associated with resilience, whereas goal-oriented coping is positively associated with resilience. The implications of this data could help inform the development of programs to teach college students healthy coping strategies for managing the challenges of their everyday lives.