Abstract
The present study investigated young adolescents' beliefs about the use and effectiveness of their strategies for coping with anger. Our goal was to examine how variations in the event provoking anger (being hit vs. having rumors told about oneself), the level of anger reported in response to the event, and the gender of the subject were related to choices and effectiveness ratings of three types of coping strategies: expressive (hitting, yelling, displacing), avoidant (getting away, doing something fun, doing work), and approach (talking to the offender, talking to someone else, thinking about the problem). Gender, the provoking situation, and the level of reported anger were all found to be related to ratings of both the use and effectiveness of these three types of strategies, and the relationships included interactions among these factors. In the rumor situation, girls endorsed approach strategies more often than boys and expressive strategies less often than boys. In contrast, in the hit situation girls rated the expressive strategies more highly than did boys. Adolescents in the hit situation with high ratings of anger were more likely to endorse expressive strategies than were those who reported minimal anger in this situation, the latter favoring avoidant and approach strategies. These anger level effects were not apparent in the rumor situation. Overall, adolescents reported using the strategies rated effective and not using those they saw as less useful. In addition, when given the option of multiple responses, adolescents favored a sequence in which expressive strategies were selected first, followed later by approach strategies. However, this sequence, like the overall ratings of strategy use and effectiveness, varied with gender, the provoking situation, and the level of reported anger. Our findings highlight the complex nature of anger and anger control in early adolescence and point to the importance of context, both individual and situational, in understanding coping responses.
Published Version
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