Between Avoidance and Problem Solving: Resilience, Self-Efficacy, and Social Support Seeking

The authors explored resilience, self-efficacy, and social support seeking as (a) mediators between stress and problem solving and (b) moderators buffering the effect of stress on avoidance. Participants were 220 college students. Structural equation modeling showed that resilience and self-efficacy positively influenced problem solving but could not buffer stress's effect on avoidance. Social support seeking played a more important role than resilience and self-efficacy in reducing avoidance when individuals intentionally used social support seeking as a source for problem solving instead of avoidance.