When you're experiencing a stressful event, how do you cope?
Do you distract yourself, or do you tell yourself the event is not that bad after all?
This article describes a study that tracked people's preferred coping strategies.
- This is a factorial design. What are its independent and dependent variables? For each IV, indicate whether it is between-subjects or within-subjects.
- Sketch a graph of the study's results (remember to put the DV on the y-axis). Depending on when you're reading this, you may be able to look up the published paper in your university's library. Do the authors graph their results the same way you did?
- What do you think: Is there an interaction in these data, or not? (How can you tell?)
Participants in the study sometimes viewed stressful images like the attacking snake on the top. The garden snake below is an example of a less stressful condition. How would you cope with images like these? (Photo: Shutterstock)