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This study examined the effects of different writing interventions on late middle-aged and older adults' positive affect (PA) and meaning in life (MIL) and explored the mediating role of MIL in the relationship between PA and physical health. A total of 162 participants from China who were over 55 years old participated in this 3 × 3 mixed experimental design. The between-subjects variable constituted the participant group, including the expressive writing intervention (EWI) group, neutral task writing intervention (NTWI) group, and blank control group. The within-subject variable was time, including pre-intervention, post-intervention, and follow-up. PA, MIL, physical health, and perceived benefits were measured at each time point. We used a mixed linear model from SPSS on the entire sample data to examine the effects of writing interventions. To determine the mediation effect, we conducted structural equation model analysis using the "lavaan" package in R. MIL showed significant interaction with time and group, but PA showed no significant interaction. Compared with the blank control group, EWI buffered the decline of MIL and had no significant intervention effect on PA. NTWI had no significant intervention effect on MIL and PA. Considering the entire sample, MIL mediated the relationship between PA and physical health. This study is the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of EWI on healthy late middle-aged and older adults' MIL. The mediating effect of MIL facilitated a better understanding of the relationship between PA and physical health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of the present study were to conceptualize interpersonal coping flexibility and to explore how it influences personal adaptation. Two hundred sixty two university students were classified based on their responses to prompts about their degree of prioritizing harmony and the number of coping strategies they employed when dealing with interpersonal conflicts. Four different types of interpersonal coping flexibility were identified: harmonious flexible, discordant flexible, harmonious inflexible, and discordant inflexible. Subsequently, 72 of the participants were randomly assigned to two groups primed by an interpersonally accepting or an interpersonally ostracizing situation. The type of interpersonal coping flexibility and priming had an interactive effect on implicit self-esteem. In the ostracizing priming condition, participants in the discordant inflexible group displayed lower implicit self-esteem. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Using a sample of Chinese college students (n = 216), the present study showed that future-oriented coping negatively correlated with perceived pressure and positively correlated with successful job hunting. The relationship between proactive coping and preventive coping was also explored. Structural equation modeling suggested that a sequence model was better than a parallel model; that is, proactive coping mediated the effect of preventive coping on perceived pressure and successful job hunting. They are sequential stages of one process rather than two separate processes. Students' appraisal of job hunting and their preparing and hunting behaviors were also investigated. (Contains 6 figures and 4 tables.)

The current study compared the relative importance of proactive coping and preventive coping in the adjustment to university life among 403 freshmen at a Chinese university and evaluated the function of proactive coping in the stress process. Participants completed the Future-Oriented Coping Inventory (Gan, Yang, Zhou, & Zhang, 2007), the Student-Life Stress Inventory (Gadzella, 1994), and the College Maladjustment Scale (Kleinmuntz, 1960). Bolger and Zuckerman's (1995) differential exposure model of personality was borrowed to examine whether the students were exposed to different levels of current stress and to explore the impact of stress on maladjustment. The results suggest that stress has a mediating effect between proactive coping and maladjustment but not between preventive coping and maladjustment. The results also suggest that only proactive coping plays an important role in university adjustment, and proactive coping is a dispositional trait rather than a coping strategy. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

To explore the curvilinear relationship between early stressful life events and future-oriented coping and whether the HOMER1 (rs7713917) polymorphism can moderate the relationship between early life stress and two types of future-oriented coping, 14,675 Han Chinese people were surveyed. The relationship between the number of early stressful life events and future-oriented coping adhered to a quadratic curve. HOMER1 polymorphisms moderated the relationship between the impact of early life stress and preventive coping (β = −0.02, 95% CI [−0.03, −0.01], p = 0.010), which was different from that of proactive coping (β = −0.01, 95% CI [−0.02, 0.01], p = 0.073). Individuals with the AA genotype who experienced a high impact of early life stress were more likely to use preventive coping compared with those who experienced a low level of early life stress, but they showed no difference in their proactive coping strategies. In contrast, individuals with the GA/GG genotype displayed higher vulnerability to environmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]