Both behavioral and cognitive coping strategies are determined by an individual's perception of the stressful stimuli. To investigate the relationship of an individual's usual coping style to differential responses to a behavioral or cognitive stressor in four response systems (heart rate, muscle tension, galvanic skin response, and subjective reports of anxiety), 90 male college students completed a questionnaire assessing their usual behavioral and cognitive coping strategies. They were then exposed to two stressors (white noise tones randomly delivered over a 5-minute period), one requiring a behavioral coping strategy (pressing a bar) and one requiring a cognitive coping strategy (imagining a tree). Physiological and subjective arousal were monitored. The Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory was administered before and after each stress period. Finally, the coping styles of the subjects were assessed by the Repression/Sensitization Scale, the Internal/External Scale, the Miller Coping Scale, and the Tanck-Robbins Scale. An analysis of the results showed that in both conditions, highly behavioral copers exhibited lower heart rate, muscle tension, and anxiety than did highly cognitive copers. However, the reverse was true for galvanic skin response (GSR) with highly cognitive copers exhibiting lower GSR in both conditions. Congruity between usual coping style and stressors did result in less stress as measured by GSR and anxiety. The results indicate that different coping styles may be differentially effective in ameliorating response to stress in different systems. (BL)