Lazarus and Folkman's Psychological Stress and Coping Theory

The influence of Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) transactional theory of stress and coping is remarkable and remains the cornerstone of psychological stress and coping research across multiple fields. In this chapter we review the key components of this theory, focusing specifically on the effectiveness of the problem-focused and emotion-focused coping taxonomy. We describe the three criteria required for the accurate classification of research concepts: that factors should be conceptually clear, mutually exclusive, and exhaustive, and discuss how well (or not) the problem-focused and emotion-focused coping taxonomy meets these criteria. We also review two alternative coping taxonomies: Edwards and Baglioni's…