Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

coping
The efforts to control, reduce, 
or learn to tolerate the threats that lead 
to stress.
The ability to fi ght off disease is related 
to psychological factors. Here a cell from 
the body’s immune system engulfs and 
destroys disease-producing bacteria.
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Module 43 
Stress and Coping 
481
the source from themselves and others. Defense mechanisms permit people to 
avoid stress by acting as if the stress were not even there. For example, one study 
examined California college students who lived in dormitories close to a geologi-
cal fault (Lehman & Taylor, 1988). Those who lived in dorms that were known to 
be unlikely to withstand an earthquake were signifi cantly more likely to doubt 
experts’ predictions of an impending earthquake than were those who lived in 
safer structures. 
Another defense mechanism used to cope with stress is emotional insulation in 
which a person stops experiencing any emotions at all and thereby remains unaf-
fected and unmoved by both positive and negative experiences. The problem with 
defense mechanisms, of course, is that they merely hide the problem and do not deal 
with reality.
 LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 
Have you ever faced an intolerable situation that you just couldn’t resolve, and you 
fi nally simply gave up and accepted things the way they were? This example illus-
trates one of the possible consequences of being in an environment in which control 
over a situation is not possible—a state that produces learned helplessness.
 Learned 
helplessness 
occurs when people conclude that unpleasant or aversive stimuli cannot 
be controlled—a view of the world that becomes so ingrained that they cease trying 
to remedy the aversive circumstances even if they actually can exert some infl uence 
on the situation (Seligman, 1975, 2007; Aujoulat, Luminet, & Deccache, 2007). 
Victims of learned helplessness have concluded that there is no link between 
the responses they make and the outcomes that occur. People experience more 
physical symptoms and depression when they perceive that they have little or no 
control than they do when they feel a sense of control over a situation (Chou, 2005; 
Bjornstad, 2006).