Personality and situational coping: exploring the relationship between neuroticism and coping in the context of university examinations and two laboratory-stressors

[Truncated abstract] A substantial body of research has revealed that neuroticism and extraversion are associated with coping responses. Neuroticism is positively correlated with emotion-focused and avoidant coping strategies, whilst extraversion is negatively correlated with these strategies. However, findings have been limited by a reliance on dispositional and retrospective coping measures, which may overestimate the relationship between personality and coping strategy use in a given situation. It has been argued that examining the relationship between personality and coping, in the context of situation-specific stressors would allow firmer conclusions to be made. The aim of this thesis was to explore relationships between personality and coping with situation-specific stressors, in which limitations of dispositional/retrospective coping measurement are minimised. In Study 1, participants were assigned to either a dispositional condition (completed a dispositional coping measure) or a situational condition (completed a coping measure with regard to approaching university examinations). Results offered support for the contention that correlations between personality and coping may be overestimated when coping is measured dispositionally. In the situational condition only neuroticism was systematically related to coping. Based on this, neuroticism became the focus of the remainder of the thesis. Limitations of using examinations as a stressor were noted, and it was concluded that relationships between neuroticism and coping should be explored in the context of laboratorystressors. Studies 2- 4 explored the utility of a ball-throwing game (Cyberball), during which the participant is included or excluded, as a laboratory-stressor to examine relationships between neuroticism and coping. These experiments confirmed that 1) Cyberball is a promising laboratory-stressor for exploring individual differences in coping, and 2) neuroticism is consistently associated wi