Stress, Appraisal, And Coping Case Study

Clarity. The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping clearly defines major constructs of the theory, which including stress, individual-environment transaction, coping process and coping outcomes, both short-term and long-term. The textbook, Stress, Appraisal, and Coping, by theorists addressed each construct, provided general assumptions and definitions from previous works by other researchers and/scientists, and proposed their own definitions and assumptions as comparisons (Richard S. Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The content and constructs generally are validated through citations of scientific literature that justify the proposed constructs. Further, the framework also provides real-life experiences as examples to support its constructs and

The TMSC theory in its original publication in 1984 did not provide visual representation (Richard S. Lazarus & Folkman), thus, it was challenging to visualize the constructs and their relationship to each other. In the later work, the theory was presented into a conceptual table as show above in Figure 2 (Richard S. Lazarus & Folkman, 1987). The graphic represents all major constructs but the stress. The graphic also shows the subsystems of person and environment that are essentials in the transaction process for an individual to attribute meaning of an event. In general, the texts illustrated in the table accurately represent the concepts of two cognitive appraisals, coping processes, and short- and long-term outcomes. It seems that the table was developed as a substitute for words and explanation, yet it was difficult to understand the model without reading and understanding the main textbook. Furthermore, the connections between the table headings and the texts in the main cell are not clear, which requires further readings on the theory to gain clear

The TMSC was developed by the collaboration of two professors in psychology, Richard S. Lazarus and Susan Folkman, who were both residents of the San Francisco Bay Area. After exploring human behavior extensively, both theorists started ambitious projects in studying stress and coping through the establishment of the University of California, Berkeley Stress and Coping Project. In 1984, the project resulted in the publication of the TMSC as an academic book, which then became “one of the most read and cited academic book in psychology” (Hyman, 2002). In fact, the publication of the model shaped and advanced our understanding of human behavior, specifically about stress and