Analysis of the differences in coping alternatives for college entrance examinees according to psychological distance control

Abstract

Objectives This study was conducted to determine whether there is a difference in the way test takers, who are emotionally vulnerable due to the college entrance examination, create alternatives to cope with conflict situations when they control psychological distance through self-distancing. Methods The subjects of the experimental study were 40 prospective high school seniors who completed their second year of high school and took classes during the winter vacation as a preparation course for their third year, and they would be suitable for the purpose of the experiment because they had the highest academic stress throughout their school years. An experimental design was conducted to verify whether self-distancing had a sig-nificant effect on the generation of coping alternatives. Two scenarios were presented that set the psychological distance far and close according to the construal level theory in the situation commonly occurring among test tak-ers when the mock test was taken in the same form as the college entrance exam. The t-test and multivariate analysis of variance(MANOVA) were used as analysis methods. Results There was a significant difference in coping style between the self-immersion group who accepted as what happened to them and the self-distancing group who accepted as what happened to others. Compared to groups that are psychologically distanced from themselves, they created more alternatives to cope with conflict situations than those who are immersed in their work, and created more flexible and creative alternatives in quality. Looking at each sub-area of coping alternatives, the self-distancing group had a high percentage of pos-itive coping alternatives to solve problems and low percentage of negative coping. In contrast, the self-immersion group had a high response rate with negative copin and a low response rate with problem-oriented alternatives. Conclusions This study suggests that adolescents' use of cognitive methods such as self-distancing in conflict situations is effective in coping effectively.