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Emotional approach coping is a psychological construct that involves the use of emotional processing and emotional expression in response to a stressful situation. As opposed to emotional avoidance, in which emotions are experienced as a negative, undesired reaction to a stressful situation. Emotional approach coping involves the conscious use of emotional expression and processing to better deal with a stressful situation. The construct was developed to explain an inconsistency in the stress and coping literature: emotion-focused coping was associated with largely maladaptive outcomes while emotional processing and expression was demonstrated to be beneficial.〔 == History of the construct == Coping is a conscious attempt to address and alleviate demands perceived as stressful. Research examining coping has suggested two broad categories of coping: emotion-focused and problem-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping involves attempts to regulate the negative emotional response to stress. Whereas problem-focused coping involves attempts to directly modify the stressor.〔 Coping processes have also been defined instead on whether they involve approaching the stressful situation or avoiding it.〔Allport, G. W. (1948). The Genius of Kurt Lewin. ‘’Journal of Social Issues, 4,’’ 14-21.〕〔Lewin, K (1935). ‘’A Dynamic Theory of Personality.’’ New York: McGraw-Hill.〕 The experience of powerful emotions has been characterized by researchers as disruptive and dysfunctional, particularly for cognitive processes. Moreover, research also suggests links between emotion-focused coping and poor psychological outcomes. A review of over 100 studies found associations between emotion-focused coping and negative outcomes such as poor life satisfaction, greater depressive and anxious symptoms and neuroticism.〔 However, there is some evidence in the empirical literature that emotional expression can be functional and adaptive. Experimental research on expressive writing, involving emotional disclosure, has been shown to have benefits for performance on cognitive tasks and for psychological outcomes, such as depressive symptoms. Emotion regulation has also illustrated the importance of emotional processing and expression for well-being. Therapeutic approaches have also demonstrated the important role of emotions in coping with difficult situations. Emotion-focused therapy is a clinical psychology approach that emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and tolerating negative emotions and enjoying positive emotions for healthy psychological adjustment. Researchers have attempted to disentangle the maladaptive and functional aspects of emotion-focused coping by examining the measurements of emotion-focused coping. Several studies have found that emotion-focused measurements of coping often aggregate approach and avoidance strategies.〔〔 A second reason emotion-focused coping has been construed as maladaptive is that measures of emotion-focused coping are confounded with measures of distress. In an attempt to rectify these difficulties with the operationalization of emotion-focused coping, a new scale for assessing emotional approach coping was proposed.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Emotional approach coping」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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