preventive coping
a stress-management strategy in which one prepares for possible events in the long term by building up resources to help minimize the severity of their impact. Examples of such events that may or may not occur in the distant future include job loss, forced retirement, crime, illness, or poverty. The perceived ambiguity stimulates a broad range of behaviors intended to accentuate one’s psychological strengths and accumulate wealth, social bonds, and skills “just in case” (e.g., maintaining a savings account, locking the doors when away from home, carrying health insurance). Preventive coping is not born out of an acute stress situation but rather from reasonable concern about the inherent hazards of daily living and is one of four types of coping proposed by German psychologists Ralf Schwarzer (1943– ) and Nina Knoll. See also anticipatory coping; proactive coping; reactive coping.