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Psychophysiology of Resilience to Stress 125

This study is important because it indicates that confidence in coping is not

merely a reflection or secondary effect of current physiological resources,
but rather a psychological perspective or strategy that can be employed to
improve coping with anticipation of stress.

An important effect of confidence in coping ability is that it promotes
improved coping in response to the anticipated stressor (Taylor & Brown,
1988). In the previously described Israeli army recruits study (Florian et al.,
1995), high perceived control predicted fewer symptoms of mental distress.
Interestingly, the recruits’ confidence in their ability to cope with combat

training also mediated the relationship between perceived control and men-

tal health (Florian et al., 1995). That is, soldiers who were identified as resil-
ient at the outset of combat training also had a greater sense of control, which
in turn was associated with greater confidence in coping ability and subse-

quently fewer symptoms of mental distress after training. Th ese fi ndings pro-

vide additional support for the notion that anticipatory confidence in coping

can, indeed, lead to improved coping with stress when it occurs.
Conclusions
In this section, we have argued that the anticipation of stress is an important
phenomenon to consider in the more general context of resilience to stress and

further that the effects of anticipation are influenced by specifi c individual

personality traits and situational variables. When stress is certain to occur,
preemptory emotional reactions tend to mimic (predict) those that will subse-
quently occur in response to the expected stressor (Nitschke et al., 2006).
A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that preemptory emotional
reactions are a means to enhance coping by preparing for or limiting the
potentially damaging emotional impact of stress. Another possibility is that
by promoting early physiological response, preemptory emotional reactions

represent an effort to “prime” or otherwise prepare the body for action, per-
formance, and physiological deprivation under demanding circumstances.
The available evidence suggests that these explanations may not be mutually

exclusive, but rather that they represent different phenomena associated with

confidence in ability to cope with stress. That is, greater confidence will tend

to promote an orientation to challenge (versus threat), which is in turn associ-
ated with physiological reactivity patterns that are associated with high per-
formance and low stress (Tomaka et al., 1993). Thus, an orientation toward

challenge may correspond to physical preparation for an action. By contrast,

low confidence in coping ability leads to threat (versus challenge) orientation
and subsequent physiological reactivity associated with poor performance

and more pronounced feelings of stress (Tomaka et al., 1993). Thus, it may
be the case that when threatened, people generate preemptory emotional
responses as an eff ort to manage the emotional eff ects of stress rather than

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