Culture’s Consequences on Coping

While the influence of culture on coping has been implicated conceptually in the stress-coping literature for sometime, empirical research on cross-cultural coping has gained momentum only recently. The past two decades witnessed a significant growth in the research and the knowledge base of culture and coping, as well as an increased call by scholars for more culturally and contextually informed stress-coping paradigms. In view of this critical development, the present article intends to systematically review and take stock of the theoretical and empirical knowledge that has emerged from the cumulative cultural coping research. Specifically, this corpus of literature was summarized and analyzed in terms of (a) theoretical propositions, (b) empirical studies on cross-cultural coping variations, (c) cultural dimensions of coping, and (d) implications for future research. The results evidenced culture’s consequences on coping with respect to the identification of conceptual pathways through which culture affects stresscoping; cultural differences and specificities in coping patterns across national, ethnic, and racial groups; and the differential effects of acculturation, self-construals, and individualism-collectivism on coping. Conceptual and methodological recommendations are offered for future research.