REACTIVE AND PROACTIVE COPING WITH STRESS IN RELATION TO PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS IN ADOLESCENTS

The study focuses on the analysis of relations between personality dimensions of adolescents and the preference for reactive and proactive coping strategies, and indicates the differences between these two types of strategies. Personality dimensions were studied with NEO-FFI (Costa, McCrae, 1992), reactive coping strategies were studied with COPE inventory (Carver et al., 1989) and proactive coping strategies with Proactive Coping Inventory (PCI; Greenglass et al., 1999). The results are discussed in terms of the differences between boys and girls. In comparison with boys, the girls showed significantly higher neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and no significantly higher conscientiousness. The boys more often preferred problem- focused strategies and among their avoidance strategies are behavioural disengagement and humor. The girls more often apply emotion-focused strategies, seeking instrumental and emotional support especially, but also avoidance strategies of denial, mental disengagement, use of alcohol or drug.