Appraisal of control and coping with air-raids

This study investigated the appraisal of control (secondary appraisal) and coping as reactions to the air‐raids in the city of Zagreb. Coping was assessed with the Croatian version of Ways of Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and secondary appraisal was operationalized as control over the occurrence and over the outcome/consequences of the air‐raid. The hypotheses that appraisal of low control would yield more emotion‐focused and passive coping, and that appraisal of high control would be linked with problem‐focused and active coping, were not confirmed. The results were interpreted in terms of so‐called emotional habituation. Additionally, some unique characteristics of the air‐raid were identified and explained as the key variables in the interpretation of the obtained results: an air‐raid is a very specific stressful situation, it is homogeneous in content, and it is a chronic and repeated stressor. The problems with generalization of these data to all stressful events were pointed out.