The discovery of benefits from living with adversity has been implicated in psychological well-being in numerous investigations, is pivotal to several prominent theories of cognitive adaptation to threat, and can be predicted by personality differences. This article summarizes the prevalence and adaptive significance of finding benefits from major medical problems, locates the place of benefit-finding in stress and coping theories, and examines how it may be shaped by specific psychological dispositions such as optimism and hope and by broader personality traits such as Extraversion and Openness to Experience. The distinction between beliefs about benefits from adversity (benefit-finding) and the use of such knowledge as a deliberate strategy of coping with the problem (benefit-reminding) is underscored and illustrated by daily process research on coping with chronic pain.

One hundred and sixty-eight patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knees participated in this study. Of the participants, 72 were men and 96 were women. All participants completed the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales (AIMS), underwent a 10 min standardized observation session to assess their pain behavior, and completed the Catastrophizing Scale of the Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CSQ) and the Depression Scale of the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised (SCL-90R). The study found that there were significant differences in pain, pain behavior, and physical disability in men and women having OA. Women had significantly higher levels of pain and physical disability, and exhibited more pain behavior during an observation session than men. Further analyses revealed that catastrophizing mediated the relationship between gender and pain-related outcomes. Once catastrophizing was entered into the analyses, the previously significant effects of gender were no longer found. Interestingly, catastrophizing still mediated the gender-pain relationship even after controlling for depression. These findings underscore the importance of both gender and catastrophizing in understanding the OA pain experience and may have important implications for pain assessment and treatment.

In a sample of 287 heart attack victims who were interviewed 7 weeks and 8 years after their attack or who were known to have died during follow-up, interrelations among causal attributions for the attack, perceived benefits of the attack, survivor morbidity, and heart attack recurrence were explored. Analyses focused on early cognitive predictors of heart attack recurrence and 8-year morbidity and on the effects of surviving another heart attack on cognitive appraisals. Independently of sociodemographic characteristics and physicians' ratings of initial prognosis, patients who cited benefits from their misfortune 7 weeks after the first attack were less likely to have another attack and had lower levels of morbidity 8 years later. Attributing the initial attack to stress responses (e.g., worrying, nervousness) was also predictive of greater morbidity in 8-year survivors and blaming the initial attack on other people was predictive of reinfarctions. Men who survived a subsequent heart attack were more likely than men who did not have additional attacks to cite benefits and made more attributions 8 years after the initial attack.The search for meaning is a central theme in theories of coping with serious illness and other aversive life experiences (e.g., Janoif-Bulman & Frieze, 1983; Silver &Wortman, 1980; Taylor, 1983). This literature has drawn attention to the psychological significance of causal attributions and appraisals of benefit or gain, which are two ways to find meaning in illness and in other misfortune.Whereas contributors to the popular literature speculate that people's appraisals of their illness can affect its course (e.g., Cousins, 1979;Pelletier, 1977), investigators have usually limited their inquiries to the concurrent association between illness cognitions and psychological adaptation. We examined relations between cause and benefit appraisals and health outcomes in a large sample of men who were followed for 8 years after suffering a first myocardial infarction. Two major questions were addressed: Are early cause and benefit appraisals predictive of long-term health outcomes, including the recurrence of heart attacks? Are cause and benefit appraisals affected by subsequent heart attacks?Causal attributions for a heart attack could affect recovery by enhancing victims' perceptions of control and predictability Data for this analysis were collected in connection with the study "Social Factors in Recovery of Heart Patients," UPHS Grant HS 00268, formerly located in the

For decades, coping researchers have used between-person designs to address inherently within-person questions derived from theory and clinical practice. The authors describe recent developments in the use of within-person, process-oriented methods that examine individuals intensively over time. Ongoing studies of stress and alcohol consumption, the effects of depression on adaptational processes, and the temporal dynamics of coping with chronic pain demonstrate that by tracking rapidly fluctuating processes such as mood and coping close to their real-time occurrence, daily process designs offer unique insights into conceptually and clinically challenging questions. Such designs also provide new opportunities to examine the purported mechanisms of therapeutic interventions. Despite its demands on participants and investigators, daily process research offers fresh opportunities to link psychological theory, research, and practice.

A decade ago, Bolger and Zuckerman (1995) incorporated personality into the study of daily life events and psychological distress. Their approach put an entirely new cast on research and theorizing in this area. In their work, they focused on the predominantly negative personality trait of Neuroticism. In this article we extend their work to include theory and measurement of positive events and indicators of well-being. Integrating these research strands offers the possibility of a comprehensive yet highly sensitive and dynamic approach to the study of emotions, stress, and health in everyday life.