Adolescent Coping with Peer Exclusion: A Person-Centered Analog Approach

Peer exclusion is a significant stressor that can have detrimental effects on adolescents, depending on how they cope with such exclusion. As adolescents rarely rely on one strategy when coping with exclusion, the present study relied upon a person-oriented approach in order to identify clusters of adolescents that share their pattern of coping with peer exclusion. Thereby, we focused on their coping responses to standardized situations of peer exclusion. Further, we examined between-cluster differences in their psychosocial adjustment and perceived parenting. Swiss adolescents (N = 338) completed self-report questionnaires, where coping responses were assessed using an analog methodology with standardized vignettes. A cluster-analytic procedure yielded four coping clusters: a self-reliant cluster, an active cluster, a helpless-avoidant cluster, and a cluster of low copers. Adolescents from the helpless-avoidant cluster generally reported the lowest scores for psychosocial adjustment, less parental autonomy-support and more psychological control, whereas the opposite was the case for the self-reliant cluster.