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The Sense of Coherence
Optimal human performance - at home, in school, in the community or at work - requires that a person experience themselves as having a sense of coherence. This experience also determines how you will respond and whether you can cope with stress.
Beyond the specific stress factors that one might encounter in life, and beyond your perception and response to those events, what determines whether stress will cause you harm is whether or not the stress violates your sense of coherence.
The sense of coherence is comprised of three factors:
• a sense of comprehensibility:
Do you feel that you can understand things, that things make sense and are not confusing?
• a sense of manageability:
Do you feel that things are predictable or can be expected? In other words, do you feel like you know what’s going to happen next, or that you know what’s coming?Do you feel that things are manageable or within your control, that things can be handled or taken care of?
Do you feel you have the skills or ability, the support, the help, or the resources necessary to take care of things?
• a sense of meaningfulness:Do you feel that things are interesting or fascinating, a source of pleasure or satisfaction?
Do you feel that things are really worth it, that there is good reason or purpose to care about what happens?
The third factor is the most important. If you don’t understand what’s going on, but you know you can handle it, that’s not such a problem. If you understand things but can’t deal with them, at least you know where you stand and you’ll probably be able to get through it. If you don’t understand stuff and you don’t know what to do, you can still hold out hope that things will get better, as long as it is really worth it to hold on.
But when there is no pleasure or satisfaction to be found, when it doesn’t really seem worth it, and there is no good reason to care about what happens, that is when people are genuinely in trouble. That is when stress will do you in or do you harm.
Copyright, Paul G. Mattiuzzi, Ph.D.
4 comments:
thank you for posting this...great blog, please keep up the good work.
nice it helps a lot.
Hi Paul, currently starting out on a PhD study here in Scotland, hoping to focus on an SOC. One thing that is confusing me from the literature is the question of trait v state. SOC is something that develops in life, rather than a born personality trait? Saw some research that found that SOc results were affected in short periods of time under state stress etc, rather than the stable core stress level? I am not from a psychology background so any help would be appreciated. I am from a health inequalities strand of work.
Karen:
There is one study I know of that specifically addressed whether it is a state or a trait. It found that the sense of coherence is a relatively stable "world view," but that it can be altered in response to stress or traumatic events.
Antonovsky described it as something that develops and grows through experience, and in terms of general psychological theory about personality development, that makes perfect sense.
So the answers are: no, probably not given at birth; yes, basically enduring and stable in the manner of a trait; and yes, responsive to events in the manner of a "state" of being.
Send me an email about your interests. I might have some ideas for your research.
pgm.
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