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Cognitive mediators of stressful experience: Self-efficacy and perceived control

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Abstract

Cognitive strategies for the amelioration of stressful experience have drawn increasing interest in recent years, but the means by which these strategies result in decreasing aversiveness are not well understood. Two cognitive constructs in particular have been proposed as mediators of stressful experience and mediators of behavior in stressful encounters: perceived self-efficacy and perceived control. It has been suggested that cognitive strategies are successful to the extent that perceptions of control or of self-efficacy are enhanced. Both of these constructs have been examined separately in the literature as to their influence on the behavioral, subjective, and physiological outcomes of stressful events, and evidence has been gathered indicating a mediating potential for each. However, neither perception of direct control over an event nor high expectations regarding ability to cope with a given stressor can fully explain the various outcomes that have been reported or the success of cognitive strategies. The present paper reviews the literature regarding these two constructs as they have been applied to the conceptualization of coping with aversive events, and discusses the complexities that have arisen from a variety of clinical and experimental investigations. In the final section of this paper an attempt is made to integrate the constructs of self-efficacy and perceived control into existing models of appraisal and coping.

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  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, 06032, Farmington, Connecticut, USA

    Mark D. Litt

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The author is indebted to Dennis C. Turk and to two anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions in the editing of this paper.

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Litt, M.D. Cognitive mediators of stressful experience: Self-efficacy and perceived control. Cogn Ther Res 12, 241–260 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01176188

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