이화여자대학교 교육대학원
Graduate School of Education, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between the Big Five personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) and stress coping styles (active, passive, aggressive, avoidant or social support seeking) in elementary school students. NEO Personality Assessment System and Daily Hassles Coping Scale were administered to 326 fourth, fifth and sixth graders (male 158, female 168) who consented to the study. Factor analysis results showed that five coping styles were categorized into Factor 1(active, avoidant, social support seeking) and Factor 2(passive, aggressive). Neuroticism positively correlated with passive and aggressive coping styles which were included in the factor 2, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness significantly correlated with active and social support seeking ones which were classified into the factor 1, and Openness correlated positively with both factor 2 and a part of factor 1 (avoidant). Additional discriminant analysis was conducted to discover that children high in Neuroticism primarily used the passive and aggressive stress coping behaviors, while children high in Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness preferred to use active, avoidant, and social support seeking. Such results indicate that children of elementary school age show different stress coping behaviors from adults according to their Big Five personality traits. (Korean J Str Res 2008;16:69∼77)