Regulatory Foci And Well-Being: Coping Flexibility And Stressor Appraisal As Explanatory Mechanisms

Well-being research focuses on how and why individuals experience their lives in positive ways. Specifically, well-being outcomes were positively associated with individual promotion focus and negatively associated with individual prevention focus. Linking stress and regulatory focus theories, we suggest a model that explains the dual effects of regulatory foci on well-being outcomes (vitality and emotional exhaustion), with coping flexibility (i.e., the capacity of an individual to match coping strategies to the specific demands of stressful situations) and stressor appraisal (i.e., the assessment of a stressful event as a potential threat vs. challenge). Results of 2 studies supported the indirect sequential effects of having a dispositional promotion focus on vitality through increasing coping flexibility and challenge appraisal. However, dispositional prevention focus was associated with emotional exhaustion via threat appraisal, but not through the path of coping flexibility, as hypothesized. The novel insights into the relationship between personality and well-being outcomes and implications for stress intervention programs are discussed.