Acceptance-Based Coping and the Psychological Adjustment of Asian and Caucasian Americans (Report‪)‬

Coping with unwanted psychological experiences is important to mental health. Adjustment strategies can be control-focused or acceptance-based (Hayes, 2004). Control-focused coping involves direct manipulation of private stimuli such as unwanted thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations; an acceptance-based approach involves the deliberate taking in or actively contacting psychological experiences without needless defense. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that acceptance-based coping is predictive of more positive outcomes across a broad array of human problems (e.g., Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006; Hayes, Strosahl, et al., 2004). There is a need for culturally relevant information on these strategies, and Asian Americans are a particularly important group to study for two reasons. First, studies repeatedly have shown that Asian Americans are at risk for developing mental health problems (Abe & Zane, 1990; Hurh & Kim, 1990) and yet tend to underutilize mental health services (e.g., Sue, Fujino, Hu, Takeuchi, & Zane, 1991). The lack of culturally-responsive care is generally pointed to as a possible source of such findings (Sue & Sue, 1990), but to be more specific about this idea it is necessary to understand some of the specific factors that might influence the therapeutic process in different cultural groups. Secondly, the distinction between these control and acceptance strategies relates to two strong Asian cultural and religious traditions. Some have argued that Asian Americans, influenced by Buddhism and Taoism, tend to employ more acceptance-based strategies (Ho, 1984), while others have pointed to the role of Confucian philosophy and argued that Asian Americans try to control their psychological events through personal will power and discipline (Sue & Sue, 1990).