A comparison of the moderating effects of personal coping resources on the impact of exposure to stress in two groups

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in recent years in identifying coping resources which moderate the effects of stress. The evidence to date has not adequately supported the notion that social support is the primary contingency one must consider in understanding differential vulnerability to stress. Following the suggestions of Kohn (1972, 1977), an alternative approach to the so-called "stress-buffering" issue is to investigate the role of personal coping resources. Two such related resources are considered here: (the relative absence of) fatalism and inflexibility. In this paper I compare the relative efficacy of fatalism and inflexibility in changing the impact of stress on depression in two groups: Anglos and Mexican-Americans in southwestern Texas. The question is whether the impact of personal resources depends on the relative predominance of those resources in different cultural groups. The findings here suggest that lower fatalism and less inflexibility have the same moderating impact on stress among Mexican-Americans as they do among Anglos. However, Mexican-Americans are less vulnerable overall to the impact of chronic stressors. These findings are interpreted in terms of two themes. First, the reason that personal resources are effective has less to do with their culturally defined appropriateness as personal characteristics than with the fact that they have consequences for the willingness to expend effort, as well as the range of strategies used, in coping situations. Second, the decreased vulnerability of Mexican-Americans to chronic stress may be due to the higher relevance of social support in ameliorating chronic stress.