Statistical analyses of the resilience function

The extent to which distracting information influences decisions can be informative about the nature of the underlying cognitive and perceptual processes. In a recent paper, a response time-based measure for quantifying the degree of interference (or facilitation) from distracting information termed resilience was introduced. Despite using a statistical measure, the analysis was limited to qualitative comparisons between different model predictions. In this paper, we demonstrate how statistical procedures from workload capacity analysis can be applied to the new resilience functions. In particular, we present an approach to null-hypothesis testing of resilience functions and a method based on functional principal components analysis for analyzing differences in the functional form of the resilience functions across participants and conditions.     

How resilience is strengthened by exposure to stressors: the systematic self-reflection model of resilience strengthening

Background: Exposure to demands is normally considered to drain resources and threaten wellbeing. However, studies have indicated a resilience-strengthening role for stressors.

Objectives: This paper introduces a unifying model, including five testable hypotheses regarding how resilience can be strengthened progressively via exposure to life-stressors.

Methods: We review and synthesize relevant scholarship that underpins the Systematic Self-Reflection model of resilience-strengthening.

Results: The model highlights the importance of a specific meta-cognitive skill (self-reflection on one’s initial stressor response) as a mechanism for strengthening resilience. The Systematic Self-Reflection model uniquely proposes five self-reflective practices critical in the on-going adaptation of three resilient capacities: (1) coping resources, (2) usage of coping and emotional regulatory repertoire, and (3) resilient beliefs. The self-reflective process is proposed to strengthen a person’s resilience by developing insight into their already-present capacities, the limitations of these capacities, and by stimulating the search for person-driven alternative approaches.

Conclusion: This model extends the existing scholarship by proposing how the experience of stressors and adversity may have resilience-strengthening opportunities. The implication of this model is that engaging with stressors can have positive consequences for longer-term healthy emotional development if scaffolded in adaptive reflective practices.     

Loss and human resilience

In this article we argue that humans are more resilient in the face of loss than has been previously believed. We begin by showing that historically the bereavement literature has tended to pathologize what are otherwise normal and natural reactions to loss. We then introduce a characterization of resilience during bereavement as the ability to maintain continuity in identity from pre- to postloss. We review various types of evidence consistent with this proposal, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between resilience and continuity in social identity. We then explore four possible mechanisms by which resilient individuals achieve identity continuity. We also attempt to extend the resilience-as-continuity link to the recent literature on continued bonds with the deceased and explore how this link manifests across different cultures. Finally, we review some implications of these formulations for psychotherapy with bereaved individuals.     

Emotional intelligence and resilience

This study examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and the stress process. Participants (N = 126) completed an ability-based measure of EI and then engaged with two stressors. We assessed stressor appraisals, emotions, and physiological stress responses over time. We expected that higher EI would facilitate stress responses in the direction of challenge, rather than threat. As expected, EI facets were related to lower threat appraisals, more modest declines in positive affect, less negative affect and challenge physiological responses to stress. However, findings differed for men and women. This study provides predictive validity that EI facilitates stress resilience.     

Degrees of resilience: profiling psychological resilience and prospective academic achievement in university inductees

University inductees may be increasingly vulnerable to stressors during transition into higher education (HE), requiring psychological resilience to achieve academic success. This study aimed to profile inductees' resilience and to investigate links to prospective end of year academic outcomes. Scores for resilience were based on a validated Connor Davison Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) drawn from 1534 inductees in a single UK university. A four-stage analysis revealed that incremental resilience was more facilitative of females' prospective academic attainment, but less functional and more convoluted for males. This large, distinctive study has implications for student support practices and highlights that the relationship between resilience and academic achievement requires further consideration in HE.     

心理韧性及其神经机制：来自非人类动物模型的证据

心理韧性是指个体对不幸、逆境或挫折等压力情形的有效适应。以非人类动物为模型的心理韧性研究一般改称心理韧性为“抗逆力”, 本文也将沿用“抗逆力”来区分不同物种的韧性研究。近年来采用非人类动物模型对抗逆力神经机制的探索取得了重要进展, 内侧前额叶、海马、奖赏环路等脑区及其投射均参与调控抗逆力的表现, 操控其神经环路的影响与所面对的压力形式有关, 并且高抗动物拥有特异性适应机制。鉴于人类研究的伦理及实验手段等原因, 抗逆力的研究将为人类的韧性研究提供重要参考。     

Sociocultural factors, resilience, and coping: Support for a culturally sensitive measure of resilience

This investigation presents 1) a literature review concerning how adversity and resilience influence the development of youth from diverse cultural backgrounds; 2) an examination of measures of resilience with regard to cultural factors that relate to the nature of coping and resilience among young adults from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds; and 3) the exploration of aspects of cultural resilience: childhood stressors, global coping, adaptive coping, maladaptive coping, and sociocultural support. Results for 305 college age women indicated that cultural factors were related to measures of these five aspects of resilience. Childhood stressors were experienced differentially by individuals from different racial/ethnic and social class status backgrounds, supporting proposals that ecological aspects, notably cultural background and experiences, influence the development of resilience. A conceptual framework illustrating how culture contributes to resilience and coping is presented. Implications for the development of a measure of cultural resilience and its usefulness for developmental community interventions are discussed.     

Using portfolios to enhance career resilience

Two groups of government workers were involved in career portfolio development workshops that were designed to expand the workers' thinking about their career accomplishments, enhance their sense of career resilience, and create portfolios. Focus groups conducted after the workshops indicated that participants began to engage in “portfolio thinking” and to think of an expanded range of career options, which were reflective of increased levels of career resilience.     

Pastoral leadership as creativity and resilience

Contemporary trends in American culture like the de-centering of the church from public consciousness and the weakening of institutions in general provide an occasion to reflect on a new theology of pastoral leadership. This article proposes that pastors function best as community leaders when they are maximally creative in seeing possibilities, rather than functioning as spokespersons for an institution. God's creative activity involves both foresight and improvisation, and therefore a pastoral theology modeled on God's creative work must also include those elements.     

The transgenerational trauma and resilience genogram

The understanding of trauma within counseling has expanded to include the salience of ecosystemic factors and to acknowledge the importance of multicultural and social justice considerations. Transgenerational trauma and resilience offers a framework that examines trauma across generations, attends to ecosystemic concerns, and adheres to a strengths-based perspective. However, given the complexity of trauma counseling and attending to the multitude of ecosystemic factors, counselors and psychologists may struggle to conduct comprehensive assessments and interventions with their clients. Genograms have long been used to clarify complex family and psychological patterns through visual representations, and are, therefore, a promising tool to meet this need. The Transgenerational Trauma and Resilience Genogram (TTRG) was created as a dynamic tool that can assist practitioners in conducting compressive trauma assessment and intervention from a transgenerational trauma and resilience framework. The TTRG emphasizes an ecosystemic view of trauma, culturally relevant and strength-based interventions, and attention to sociopolitical concerns that may impact trauma and recovery. The author explicates the use of the TTRG in trauma counseling, including the theoretical foundations and implications for trauma and recovery. A case example of the use of the TTRG and implications for counseling practice using the TTRG and its guiding principles are provided.     

Flexible emotional responsiveness in trait resilience

Field studies and laboratory experiments have documented that a key component of resilience is emotional flexibility--the ability to respond flexibly to changing emotional circumstances. In the present study we tested the hypotheses that resilient people exhibit emotional flexibility: (a) in response to frequently changing emotional stimuli and (b) across multiple modalities of emotional responding. As participants viewed a series of emotional pictures, we assessed their self-reported affect, facial muscle activity, and startle reflexes. Higher trait resilience predicted more divergent affective and facial responses (corrugator and zygomatic) to positive versus negative pictures. Thus, compared with their low-resilient counterparts, resilient people appear to be able to more flexibly match their emotional responses to the frequently changing emotional stimuli. Moreover, whereas high-trait-resilient participants exhibited divergent startle responses to positive versus negative pictures regardless of the valence of the preceding trial, low-trait-resilient participants did not exhibit divergent startle responses when the preceding picture was negative. High-trait-resilient individuals, therefore, appear to be better able than are their low-resilient counterparts to either switch or maintain their emotional responses depending on whether the emotional context changes. The present findings broaden our understanding of the mechanisms underlying resilience by demonstrating that resilient people are able to flexibly change their affective and physiological responses to match the demands of frequently changing environmental circumstances.     

Unique pathways to resilience across cultures

An international mixed methods study of resilience of 14 sites in eleven countries identified seven tensions that youth resolve in culturally specific ways. Resolution of these tensions is foundational to experiences of resilience. This paper reports on the qualitative findings from interviews with 89 youth. Results support a culturally embedded understanding of positive youth development that better accounts for young people's resilience in western and non-western countries. Specifically, the seven tensions identified include: access to material resources, relationships, identity, cohesion, power and control, social justice, and cultural adherence. Findings show that no one pattern in the resolution of these tensions predicts resilience better than another. A case study of a Palestinian boy demonstrates the intersection of the seven tensions and the uniqueness of their resolution. The implications of this work for interventions is discussed.     

Master resilience training in the U.S. Army

The U.S. Army Master Resilience Trainer (MRT) course, which provides face-to-face resilience training, is one of the foundational pillars of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. The 10-day MRT course is the foundation for training resilience skills to sergeants and for teaching sergeants how to teach these skills to their soldiers. The curriculum is based on materials developed by the University of Pennsylvania, the Penn Resilience Program (PRP), and other empirically validated work in the field of positive psychology. This "train the trainer model" is the main vehicle for the dissemination of MRT concepts to the entire force.     

How resilient are resilience scales? The Big Five scales outperform resilience scales in predicting adjustment in adolescents

Waaktaar, T. & Torgersen, S. (2009). How resilient are resilience scales? The Big Five scales outperform resilience scales in predicting adjustment in adolescents. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 157–163. This study’s aim was to determine whether resilience scales could predict adjustment over and above that predicted by the five‐factor model (FFM). A sample of 1,345 adolescents completed paper‐and‐pencil scales on FFM personality (Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children), resilience (Ego‐Resiliency Scale [ER89] by Block & Kremen, the Resilience Scale [RS] by Wagnild & Young) and adaptive behaviors (California Healthy Kids Survey, UCLA Loneliness Scale and three measures of school adaptation). The results showed that the FFM scales accounted for the highest proportion of variance in disturbance. For adaptation, the resilience scales contributed as much as the FFM. In no case did the resilience scales outperform the FFM by increasing the explained variance. The results challenge the validity of the resilience concept as an indicator of human adaptation and avoidance of disturbance, although the concept may have heuristic value in combining favorable aspects of a person’s personality endowment.     

Couple resilience and life wellbeing in firefighters

The validity of the Couple Resilience Inventory was tested using 102 married or cohabiting firefighters. This instrument measures types of relationship behavior that often occur during stressful life events and that are expected to be associated with an ability to cope with employment in a stressful occupation. It includes scales measuring two nearly orthogonal dimensions, with one dimension pertaining to positive behavior and the other to negative. Firefighters completed an online questionnaire that included the Couple Resilience Inventory and measures of relationship satisfaction, exposure to traumatic events, and life wellbeing. In line with hypotheses, scales measuring positive and negative couple resilience were nearly orthogonal to each other, and distinct from a measure of relationship satisfaction, but both scales correlated positively with exposure to traumatic events, and both correlated in opposite directions with relationship satisfaction and life wellbeing. Results were consistent with the theoretical model and they supported instrument validity.