Background
Resilience is generally thought of as a "positive adaptation" after a stressful or adverse situation. When a person is "bombarded by daily stress,
it disrupts their internal and external sense of balance, presenting
challenges as well as opportunities." However, the routine stressors of
daily life can have positive impacts which promote resilience. It is
still unknown what the correct level of stress is for each individual.
Some people can handle greater amounts of stress than others.
Resilience is the integrated adaptation of physical, mental and
spiritual aspects in a set of "good or bad" circumstances, a coherent
sense of self that is able to maintain normative developmental tasks
that occur at various stages of life.
The Children's Institute of the University of Rochester
explains that "resilience research is focused on studying those who
engage in life with hope and humor despite devastating losses".
It is important to note that resilience is not only about overcoming a
deeply stressful situation, but also coming out of the said situation
with "competent functioning". Resiliency allows a person to rebound from
adversity as a strengthened and more resourceful person.
History
The first research on resilience was published in 1973. The study used epidemiology, which is the study of disease prevalence, to uncover the risks and the protective factors that now help define resilience. A year later, the same group of researchers created tools to look at systems that support development of resilience.
Emmy Werner was one of the early scientists to use the term resilience in the 1970s. She studied a cohort of children from Kauai, Hawaii.
Kauai was quite poor and many of the children in the study grew up with
alcoholic or mentally ill parents. Many of the parents were also out of
work.
Werner noted that of the children who grew up in these detrimental
situations, two-thirds exhibited destructive behaviors in their later
teen years, such as chronic unemployment, substance abuse, and out-of-wedlock
births (in case of teenage girls). However, one-third of these
youngsters did not exhibit destructive behaviours. Werner called the
latter group 'resilient'.
Thus, resilient children and their families were those who, by
definition, demonstrated traits that allowed them to be more successful
than non-resilient children and families.
Resilience also emerged as a major theoretical and research topic
from the studies of children with mothers diagnosed with schizophrenia
in the 1980s. In a 1989 study, the results showed that children with a schizophrenic
parent may not obtain an appropriate level of comforting
caregiving—compared to children with healthy parents—and that such
situations often had a detrimental impact on children's development. On
the other hand, some children of ill parents thrived well and were
competent in academic achievement, and therefore led researchers to make
efforts to understand such responses to adversity.
Since the onset of the research on resilience, researchers have
been devoted to discovering the protective factors that explain people's
adaptation to adverse conditions, such as maltreatment, catastrophic life events, or urban poverty.
The focus of empirical work then has been shifted to understand the
underlying protective processes. Researchers endeavor to uncover how
some factors (e.g. connection to family) may contribute to positive
outcomes.
Process
In all
these instances, resilience is best understood as a process. However, it
is often mistakenly assumed to be a trait of the individual, an idea
more typically referred to as "resiliency".
Most research now shows that resilience is the result of individuals
being able to interact with their environments and the processes that
either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming
influence of risk factors.
It is essential to understand the process or this cycle of resiliency.
When people are faced with an adverse condition, there are three ways in
which they may approach the situation.
- Erupt with anger
- Implode with overwhelming negative emotions, go numb, and become unable to react
- Simply become upset about the disruptive change
Only the third approach promotes well-being. It is employed by
resilient people, who become upset about the disruptive state and thus
change their current pattern to cope with the issue. The first and
second approaches lead people to adopt the victim role by blaming others
and rejecting any coping methods even after the crisis is over. These
people prefer to instinctively react, rather than respond to the
situation. Those who respond to the adverse conditions by adapting
themselves tend to cope, spring back, and halt the crisis. Negative
emotions involve fear, anger, anxiety, distress, helplessness, and
hopelessness which decrease a person's ability to solve the problems
they face and weaken a person's resiliency. Constant fears and worries
weaken people's immune system and increase their vulnerability to
illnesses.
These processes include individual continuous coping strategies, or may be helped by a protective environment like good families, schools, communities, and social policies that make resilience more likely to occur.
In this sense "resilience" occurs when there are cumulative "protective
factors". These factors are likely to play a more important role, the
greater the individual's exposure to cumulative risk factors.
Biological models
Three notable bases for resilience—self-confidence, self-esteem and self-concept—all have roots in three different nervous systems—respectively, the somatic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system and the central nervous system.
An emerging field in the study of resilience is the neurobiological basis of resilience to stress.
For example, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone (5-DHEA)
are thought to limit the stress response by reducing sympathetic
nervous system activation and protecting the brain from the potentially
harmful effects of chronically elevated cortisol levels respectively.
In addition, the relationship between social support and stress
resilience is thought to be mediated by the oxytocin system's impact on
the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.
"Resilience, conceptualized as a positive bio-psychological adaptation,
has proven to be a useful theoretical context for understanding
variables for predicting long-term health and well-being".
There is some limited research that, like trauma, resilience is epigenetic—that is, it may be inherited—but the science behind this finding is preliminary.
Related factors
Studies show that there are several factors which develop and sustain a person's resilience:
- The ability to make realistic plans and being capable of taking the steps necessary to follow through with them
- Confidence in one's strengths and abilities
- Communication and problem-solving skills
- The ability to manage strong impulses and feelings
Resilience is negatively correlated with personality traits of
neuroticism and negative emotionality, which represents tendencies to
see and react to the world as threatening, problematic, and distressing,
and to view oneself as vulnerable. Positive correlations stands with
personality traits of openness and positive emotionality, that
represents tendencies to engage and confront the world with confidence
in success and a fair value to self-directedness.
Positive emotions
There is significant research found in scientific literature on the relationship between positive emotions
and resilience. Studies show that maintaining positive emotions whilst
facing adversity promote flexibility in thinking and problem solving.
Positive emotions serve an important function in their ability to help
an individual recover from stressful experiences and encounters. That
being said, maintaining a positive emotionality aids in counteracting
the physiological effects of negative emotions. It also facilitates
adaptive coping, builds enduring social resources, and increases
personal well-being.
Formation of conscious perception and monitoring one's own
socioemotional factors is considered as a stability aspect of positive
emotions.
This is not to say that positive emotions are merely a by-product of
resilience, but rather that feeling positive emotions during stressful
experiences may have adaptive benefits in the coping process of the
individual.
Empirical evidence for this prediction arises from research on
resilient individuals who have a propensity for coping strategies that
concretely elicit positive emotions, such as benefit-finding and
cognitive reappraisal, humor, optimism, and goal-directed
problem-focused coping. Individuals who tend to approach problems with
these methods of coping may strengthen their resistance to stress by
allocating more access to these positive emotional resources.
Social support from caring adults encouraged resilience among
participants by providing them with access to conventional activities.
Positive emotions not only have physical outcomes but also
physiological ones. Some physiological outcomes caused by humor include
improvements in immune system functioning and increases in levels of
salivary immunoglobulin A, a vital system antibody, which serves as the body's first line of defense in respiratory illnesses.
Moreover, other health outcomes include faster injury recovery rate and
lower readmission rates to hospitals for the elderly, and reductions in
a patient's stay in the hospital, among many other benefits. A study
was done on positive emotions in trait-resilient individuals and the
cardiovascular recovery rate following negative emotions felt by those
individuals. The results of the study showed that trait-resilient
individuals experiencing positive emotions had an acceleration in the
speed in rebounding from cardiovascular activation initially generated
by negative emotional arousal, i.e. heart rate and the like.
Grit
Grit refers to the perseverance and passion for long-term goals.
This is characterized as working persistently towards challenges,
maintained effort and interest over years despite negative feedback,
adversity, plateaus in progress, or failure.
High grit people view accomplishments as a marathon rather than an
immediate goal. High grit individuals display a sustained and focused
application of self in problematic situations than less gritty
individuals.
Grit affects the effort a person contributes by acting on the
importance pathway. When people value a goal as more valuable,
meaningful, or relevant to their self-concept they are willing to expend
more effort on it when necessary. The influence of individual
differences in grit results in different levels of effort-related
cardiac activity when gritty and less gritty individuals performed the
same task. Grit is associated with differences in potential motivation,
one pathway in motivational intensity theory. Grit may also influence an
individual's perception of task difficulty.
Grit was highly correlated with the Big Five conscientiousness trait.
Although grit and conscientiousness highly overlap in their achievement
aspects, they differ in their emphasis. Grit emphasizes long-term
stamina, whereas conscientiousness focuses on short-term intensity.
Grit varies with level of education and age. More educated adults
tend to be higher in grit than less educated individuals of the same
age. Post college graduates report higher grit levels than most other education level groups. Grit increases with age when education level is controlled for.
In life achievements, grit may be as important as talent. College
students at an elite university who scored high in grit also earned
higher GPAs than their classmates, despite having lower SAT scores.
In a study at the West Point military academy it was found that grit
was a more reliable predictor of first summer retention than
self-control or a summary measure of cadet quality.
Gritty competitors at the Scripps National Spelling Bee outranked other
competitors who scored lower in grit, at least partially due to
accumulated practice.
Grit may also serve as a protective factor against suicide. A study at Stanford University found that grit was predictive of psychological health and well-being in medical residents.
Gritty individuals possess self-control and regular commitment to goals
that allows them to resist impulses, such as to engage in self-harm.
Individuals high in grit also focus on future goals, which may stop
them from attempting suicide. It is believed that because grit
encourages individuals to create and sustain life goals, these goals
provide meaning and purpose in life. Grit alone does not seem to be
sufficient, however. Only individuals with high gratitude and grit have
decreased suicidal ideation over long periods of time. Gratitude and
grit work together to enhance meaning in life, offering protection
against death and suicidal thoughts or plans.
Other factors
A
study was conducted among high achieving professionals who seek
challenging situations that require resilience. Research has examined 13
high achievers from various professions, all of whom had experienced
challenges in the workplace and negative life events over the course of
their careers but who had also been recognized for their great
achievements in their respective fields. Participants were interviewed
about everyday life in the workplace as well as their experiences with
resilience and thriving. The study found six main predictors of
resilience: positive and proactive personality, experience and learning,
sense of control, flexibility and adaptability, balance and
perspective, and perceived social support. High achievers were also
found to engage in many activities unrelated to their work such as
engaging in hobbies, exercising, and organizing meetups with friends and
loved ones.
Several factors are found to modify the negative effects of
adverse life situations. Many studies show that the primary factor for
the development of resilience is social support.
While many competing definitions of social support exist, most can be
thought of as the degree of access to, and use of, strong ties to other
individuals who are similar to one's self.
Social support requires not only that you have relationships with
others, but that these relationships involve the presence of solidarity
and trust, intimate communication, and mutual obligation both within and outside the family. Additional factors are also associated with resilience, like the capacity to make realistic plans, having self-confidence and a positive self image, developing communications skills, and the capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses.
Temperamental and constitutional disposition is considered as a
major factor in resilience. It is one of the necessary precursors of
resilience along with warmth in family cohesion and accessibility of
prosocial support systems.
There are three kinds of temperamental systems that play part in
resilience, they are the appetitive system, defensive system and
attentional system.
Another protective factor is related to moderating the negative
effects of environmental hazards or a stressful situation in order to
direct vulnerable individuals to optimistic paths, such as external
social support. More specifically a 1995 study distinguished three
contexts for protective factors:
- personal attributes, including outgoing, bright, and positive self-concepts;
- the family, such as having close bonds with at least one family member or an emotionally stable parent; and
- the community, such as receiving support or counsel from peers.
Furthermore, a study of the elderly in Zurich, Switzerland,
illuminated the role humor plays as a coping mechanism to maintain a
state of happiness in the face of age-related adversity.
Besides the above distinction on resilience, research has also
been devoted to discovering the individual differences in resilience. Self-esteem, ego-control, and ego-resiliency are related to behavioral adaptation.
For example, maltreated children who feel good about themselves may
process risk situations differently by attributing different reasons to
the environments they experience and, thereby, avoid producing negative internalized self-perceptions. Ego-control is "the threshold or operating characteristics of an individual with regard to the expression or containment"
of their impulses, feelings, and desires. Ego-resilience refers to
"dynamic capacity, to modify his or her model level of ego-control, in
either direction, as a function of the demand characteristics of the
environmental context"
Maltreated children who experienced some risk factors (e.g.,
single parenting, limited maternal education, or family unemployment),
showed lower ego-resilience and intelligence than nonmaltreated
children. Furthermore, maltreated children are more likely than
nonmaltreated children to demonstrate disruptive-aggressive, withdraw,
and internalized behavior problems. Finally, ego-resiliency, and
positive self-esteem were predictors of competent adaptation in the
maltreated children.
Demographic information (e.g., gender) and resources (e.g.,
social support) are also used to predict resilience. Examining people's
adaptation after disaster showed women were associated with less
likelihood of resilience than men. Also, individuals who were less
involved in affinity groups and organisations showed less resilience.
Certain aspects of religions, spirituality, or mindfulness may,
hypothetically, promote or hinder certain psychological virtues that
increase resilience. Research has not established connection between
spirituality and resilience. According to the 4th edition of Psychology of Religion
by Hood, et al., the "study of positive psychology is a relatively new
development...there has not yet been much direct empirical research
looking specifically at the association of religion and ordinary
strengths and virtues".
In a review of the literature on the relationship between
religiosity/spirituality and PTSD, amongst the significant findings,
about half of the studies showed a positive relationship and half showed
a negative relationship between measures of religiosity/spirituality
and resilience.
The United States Army has received criticism for promoting
spirituality in its new [Comprehensive Soldier Fitness] program as a way
to prevent PTSD, due to the lack of conclusive supporting data.
In military studies it has been found that resilience is also
dependent on group support: unit cohesion and morale is the best
predictor of combat resiliency within a unit or organization. Resilience
is highly correlated to peer support and group cohesion. Units with
high cohesion tend to experience a lower rate of psychological
breakdowns than units with low cohesion and morale. High cohesion and
morale enhance adaptive stress reactions.
Building
In cognitive behavioral therapy, building resilience is a matter of mindfully changing basic behaviors and thought patterns.
The first step is to change the nature of self-talk. Self-talk is the
internal monologue people have that reinforce beliefs about the person's
self-efficacy and self-value. To build resilience, the person needs to
eliminate negative self-talk, such as "I can't do this" and "I can't
handle this", and to replace it with positive self-talk, such as "I can
do this" and "I can handle this". This small change in thought patterns
helps to reduce psychological stress when a person is faced with a
difficult challenge. The second step a person can take to build
resilience is to be prepared for challenges, crises, and emergencies.
In business, preparedness is created by creating emergency response
plans, business continuity plans, and contingency plans. For personal
preparedness, the individual can create a financial cushion to help with
economic crises, he/she can develop social networks to help him/her
through trying personal crises, and he/she can develop emergency
response plans for his/her household.
Resilience is also enhanced by developing effective coping skills for stress.
Coping skills help the individual to reduce stress levels, so they
remain functional. Coping skills include using meditation, exercise,
socialization, and self-care practices to maintain a healthy level of
stress, but there are many other lists associated with psychological
resilience.
The American Psychological Association suggests "10 Ways to Build Resilience", which are:
- to maintain good relationships with close family members, friends and others;
- to avoid seeing crises or stressful events as unbearable problems;
- to accept circumstances that cannot be changed;
- to develop realistic goals and move towards them;
- to take decisive actions in adverse situations;
- to look for opportunities of self-discovery after a struggle with loss;
- to develop self-confidence;
- to keep a long-term perspective and consider the stressful event in a broader context;
- to maintain a hopeful outlook, expecting good things and visualizing what is wished;
- to take care of one's mind and body, exercising regularly, paying attention to one's own needs and feelings.
The Besht model of natural resilience building in an ideal family
with positive access and support from family and friends, through
parenting illustrates four key markers. They are:
- Realistic upbringing
- Effective risk communications
- Positivity and restructuring of demanding situations
- Building self efficacy and hardiness
In this model, self-efficacy
is the belief in one's ability to organize and execute the courses of
action required to achieve necessary and desired goals and hardiness is a composite of interrelated attitudes of commitment, control, and challenge.
A number of self-help approaches to resilience-building have been developed, drawing mainly on the theory and practice of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT).
For example, a group cognitive-behavioral intervention, called the Penn
Resiliency Program (PRP), has been shown to foster various aspects of
resilience. A meta-analysis of 17 PRP studies showed that the
intervention significantly reduces depressive symptoms over time.
The idea of 'resilience building' is debatably at odds with the concept of resilience as a process, since it is used to imply that it is a developable characteristic of oneself.
Those who view resilience as a description of doing well despite
adversity, view efforts of 'resilience building' as method to encourage
resilience. Bibliotherapy,
positive tracking of events, and enhancing psychosocial protective
factors with positive psychological resources are other methods for
resilience building.
In this way, increasing an individual's resources to cope with or
otherwise address the negative aspects of risk or adversity is promoted,
or builds, resilience.
Contrasting research finds that strategies to regulate and
control emotions, in order to enhance resilience, allows for better
outcomes in the event of mental illness.
While initial studies of resilience originated with developmental
scientists studying children in high-risk environments, a study on 230
adults diagnosed with depression and anxiety that emphasized emotional
regulation, showed that it contributed to resilience in patients. These
strategies focused on planning, positively reappraising events, and
reducing rumination helped in maintaining a healthy continuity.
Patients with improved resilience were found to yield better treatment
outcomes than patients with non-resilience focused treatment plans,
providing potential information for supporting evidence based
psychotherapeutic interventions that may better handle mental disorders
by focusing on the aspect of psychological resilience.
Other development programs
The Head Start program was shown to promote resilience. So was the Big Brothers Big Sisters Programme, the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project, and social programs for youth with emotional or behavioral difficulties.
Tuesday's Children,
a family service organization that made a long-term commitment to the
individuals that have lost loved ones to 9/11 and terrorism around the
world, works to build psychological resilience through programs such as
Mentoring and Project COMMON BOND, an 8-day peace-building and
leadership initiative for teens, ages 15–20, from around the world who
have been directly impacted by terrorism.
Military organizations test personnel for the ability to function
under stressful circumstances by deliberately subjecting them to stress
during training. Those students who do not exhibit the necessary
resilience can be screened out of the training. Those who remain can be
given stress inoculation training. The process is repeated as personnel
apply for increasingly demanding positions, such as special forces.
Children
Resilience
in children refers to individuals who are doing better than expected,
given a history that includes risk or adverse experience. Once again, it
is not a trait or something that some children simply possess. There is
no such thing as an 'invulnerable child' that can overcome any obstacle
or adversity that he or she encounters in life—and in fact, the trait
is quite common.
Resilience is the product of a number of developmental processes over
time, that has allowed children experience small exposures to adversity
or some sort of age appropriate challenges to develop mastery and
continue to develop competently. This gives children a sense of personal pride and self-worth.
Research on 'protective factors', which are characteristics of
children or situations that particularly help children in the context of
risk has helped developmental scientists to understand what matters
most for resilient children. Two of these that have emerged repeatedly
in studies of resilient children are good cognitive functioning (like
cognitive self-regulation and IQ) and positive relationships (especially
with competent adults, like parents).
Children who have protective factors in their lives tend to do better
in some risky contexts when compared to children without protective
factors in the same contexts. However, this is not a justification to
expose any child to risk. Children do better when not exposed to high
levels of risk or adversity.
Building in the classroom
Resilient
children within classroom environments have been described as working
and playing well and holding high expectations, have often been
characterized using constructs such as locus of control, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and autonomy. All of these things work together to prevent the debilitating behaviors that are associated with learned helplessness.
Role of the community
Communities
play a huge role in fostering resilience. The clearest sign of a
cohesive and supportive community is the presence of social
organizations that provide healthy human development. Services are unlikely to be used unless there is good communication concerning them. Children who are repeatedly relocated
do not benefit from these resources, as their opportunities for
resilience-building, meaningful community participation are removed with
every relocation.
Role of the family
Fostering
resilience in children requires family environments that are caring and
stable, hold high expectations for children's behavior and encourage
participation in the life of the family.
Most resilient children have a strong relationship with at least one
adult, not always a parent, and this relationship helps to diminish risk
associated with family discord. The definition of parental resilience,
as the capacity of parents to deliver a competent and quality level of
parenting to children, despite the presence of risk factors, has proven
to be a very important role in children's resilience. Understanding the
characteristics of quality parenting is critical to the idea of parental
resilience.
Even if divorce produces stress, the availability of social support
from family and community can reduce this stress and yield positive
outcomes.
Any family that emphasizes the value of assigned chores, caring for
brothers or sisters, and the contribution of part-time work in
supporting the family helps to foster resilience.
Resilience research has traditionally focused on the well being of
children, with limited academic attention paid to factors that may
contribute to the resilience of parents.
Families in poverty
Numerous
studies have shown that some practices that poor parents utilize help
promote resilience within families. These include frequent displays of
warmth, affection, emotional support; reasonable expectations for
children combined with straightforward, not overly harsh discipline;
family routines and celebrations; and the maintenance of common values
regarding money and leisure.
According to sociologist Christopher B. Doob, "Poor children growing up
in resilient families have received significant support for doing well
as they enter the social world—starting in daycare programs and then in
schooling."
Bullying
Beyond preventing bullying,
it is also important to consider how interventions based on emotional
intelligence (EI) are important in the case that bullying does occur.
Increasing EI may be an important step in trying to foster resilience
among victims. When a person faces stress and adversity, especially of a
repetitive nature, their ability to adapt is an important factor in
whether they have a more positive or negative outcome.
A 2013 study examined adolescents who illustrated resilience to
bullying and found some interesting gendered differences, with higher
behavioral resilience found among girls and higher emotional resilience
found among boys. Despite these differences, they still implicated
internal resources and negative emotionality in either encouraging or
being negatively associated with resilience to bullying respectively and
urged for the targeting of psychosocial skills as a form of
intervention. Emotional intelligence has been illustrated to promote resilience to stress
and as mentioned previously, the ability to manage stress and other
negative emotions can be preventative of a victim going on to perpetuate
aggression. One factor that is important in resilience is the regulation of one's own emotions.
Schneider et al. (2013) found that emotional perception was significant
in facilitating lower negative emotionality during stress and Emotional
Understanding facilitated resilience and has a positive correlation
with positive affect.
Studies in specific populations and causal situations
Affected populations
Among transgender youth
Transgender
youth experience a wide range of abuse and lack of understanding from
the people in their environment and are better off with a high
resilience to deal with their lives. A study was done looking at 55
transgender youths studying their sense of personal mastery, perceived
social support, emotion-oriented coping and self-esteem. It was seen
that around 50% of the variation in the resilience aspects accounted for
the problematic issues of the teens. This means that transgender youths
with lower resilience were more prone to mental health issues,
including depression and trauma symptoms. Emotion-oriented coping was a
strong aspect of resilience in determining how depressed the individuals
were.
Among pregnant adolescents and depressive symptoms
Pregnancies
among adolescents are considered as a complication, as they favour
education interruption, poor present and future health, higher rates of
poverty, problems for present and future children, among other negative
outcomes.
Investigators from the Ecuadorian Catholic University (Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil) (Guayaquil) and the Spanish University of Zaragoza
(Zaragoza), performed a comparative study at the Enrique C. Sotomayor
Obstetric and Gynecology Hospital (Guayaquil) assessing resilience
differences between pregnant adolescents and adults.
A 56.6% of gravids presented total CESD-10 scores 10 or more
indicating depressed mood. Despite this, total CESD-10 scores and
depressed mood rate did not differ among studied groups. Adolescents
did, however, display lower resilience reflected by lower total
resilience scores and a higher rate of scores below the calculated
median (P less than 0.05). Logistic regression analysis could not establish
any risk factor for depressed mood among studied subjects; however,
having an adolescent partner and a preterm delivery related to a higher
risk for lower resilience.
Causal situations
Divorce
Oftentimes
divorce is viewed as detrimental to one's emotional health, but studies
have shown that cultivating resilience may be beneficial to all parties
involved. The level of resilience a child will experience after their
parents have split is dependent on both internal and external variables.
Some of these variables include their psychological and physical state
and the level of support they receive from their schools, friends, and
family friends.
The ability to deal with these situations also stems from the child's
age, gender, and temperament. Children will experience divorce
differently and thus their ability to cope with divorce will differ too.
About 20–25% of children will "demonstrate severe emotional and
behavioral problems" when going through a divorce. This percentage is notably higher than the 10% of children exhibiting similar problems in married families.
Despite having divorces parents of approximately 75–80% of these
children will "develop into well-adjusted adults with no lasting
psychological or behavioral problems". This comes to show that most
children have the tools necessary to allow them to exhibit the
resilience needed to overcome their parents' divorce.
The effects of the divorce extend past the separation of both
parents. The remaining conflict between parents, financial problems, and
the re-partnering or remarriage of parents can cause lasting stress.
Studies conducted by Booth and Amato (2001) have shown that there is no
correlation between post-divorce conflict and the child's ability to
adjust to their life circumstance. On the other hand, Hetherington (1999) completed research on this same topic and did find adverse effects in children.
In regards to the financial standing of a family, divorce does have the
potential to reduce the children's style of living. Child support is
often given to help cover basic needs such as schooling. If the parents'
finances are already scarce then their children may not be able to
participate in extracurricular activities such as sports and music
lessons, which can be detrimental to their social lives.
Repartnering or remarrying can bring in additional levels of
conflict and anger into their home environment. One of the reasons that
re-partnering causes additional stress is because of the lack of clarity
in roles and relationships; the child may not know how to react and
behave with this new "parent" figure in their life. In most cases,
bringing in a new partner/spouse will be the most stressful when done
shortly after the divorce. In the past, divorce had been viewed as a
"single event", but now research shows that divorce encompasses multiple
changes and challenges.
It is not only internal factors that allow for resiliency, but the
external factors in the environment are critical for responding to the
situation and adapting. Certain programs such as the 14-week Children's
Support Group and the Children of Divorce Intervention Program may help a
child cope with the changes that occur from a divorce.
Natural disasters
Resilience
after a natural disaster can be gauged in a number of different ways.
It can be gauged on an individual level, a community level, and on a
physical level. The first level, the individual level, can be defined as
each independent person in the community. The second level, the
community level, can be defined as all those inhabiting the locality
affected. Lastly, the physical level can be defined as the
infrastructure of the locality affected.
UNESCAP funded research on how communities show resiliency in the wake of natural disasters.
They found that, physically, communities were more resilient if they
banded together and made resiliency an effort of the whole community. Social support is key in resilient behavior, and especially the ability to pool resources.
In pooling social, natural, and economic resources, they found that
communities were more resilient and able to over come disasters much
faster than communities with an individualistic mindset.
The World Economic Forum met in 2014 to discuss resiliency after
natural disasters. They conclude that countries that are more
economically sound, and have more individuals with the ability to
diversify their livelihoods, will show higher levels of resiliency.
This has not been studied in depth yet, but the ideas brought about
through this forum appear to be fairly consistent with already existing
research.
Death of a family member
Little research has been done on the topic of family resilience in the wake of the death of a family member.
Traditionally, clinical attention to bereavement has focused on the
individual mourning process rather than on those of the family unit as a
whole. Resiliency is distinguished from recovery as the "ability to
maintain a stable equilibrium"
which is conducive to balance, harmony, and recovery. Families must
learn to manage familial distortions caused by the death of the family
member, which can be done by reorganizing relationships and changing
patterns of functioning to adapt to their new situation.
Exhibiting resilience in the wake of trauma can successfully traverse
the bereavement process without long-term negative consequences.
One of the healthiest behaviors displayed by resilient families
in the wake of a death is honest and open communication. This
facilitates an understanding of the crisis. Sharing the experience of
the death can promote immediate and long-term adaptation to the recent
loss of a loved one. Empathy is a crucial component in resilience
because it allows mourners to understand other positions, tolerate
conflict, and be ready to grapple with differences that may arise.
Another crucial component to resilience is the maintenance of a routine
that helps to bind the family together through regular contact and
order. The continuation of education and a connection with peers and
teachers at school is an important support for children struggling with
the death of a family member.
Failure and setbacks in professional settings
Resilience has also been examined in the context of failure and setbacks in workplace settings. Representing one of the core constructs of positive organizational behavior
(Luthans, 2002), and given increasingly disruptive and demanding work
environments, scholars’ and practitioners’ attention to psychological
resilience in organizations has greatly increased.
This research has highlighted certain personality traits, personal
resources (e.g., self-efficacy, work-life balance, social competencies),
personal attitudes (e.g., sense of purpose, job commitment), positive
emotions, and work resources (e.g., social support, positive
organizational context) as potential facilitators of workplace
resilience.
Beyond studies on general workplace reslience, attention has been directed to the role of resilience in innovative contexts. Due to high degrees of uncertainty and complexity in the innovation process, failure and setbacks are naturally happening frequently in this context.
As such failure and setbacks can have strong and harmful effects on
affected individuals’ motivation and willingness to take risks, their
resilience is essential to productively engage in future innovative
activities. To account for the peculiarities of the innovation context, a
resilience construct specifically aligned to this unique context was
needed to address the need to diagnose and develop innovators’
resilience to minimize the human cost of failure and setbacks in
innovation. As a context-specific conceptualization of resilience,
Innovator Resilience Potential (IRP) serves this purpose and captures
the potential for innovative functioning after the experience of failure
or setbacks in the innovation process and for handling future setbacks. Based on Bandura’s social cognitive theory,
IRP is proposed to consist of six components: self-efficacy, outcome
expectancy, optimism, hope, self-esteem, and risk propensity.
The concept of IRP thus reflects a process perspective on resilience.
On the one hand, in this process, IRP can be seen as an antecedent of
how a setback affects an innovator. On the other hand, IRP can be seen
as an outcome of the process that, in turn, is influenced by the setback
situation. Recently, a measurement scale of IRP was developed and validated.
Criticism
Brad Evans and Julian Reid criticize resilience discourse and its rising popularity in their book, Resilient Life.
The authors assert that policies of resilience can put the onus of
disaster response on individuals rather than publicly coordinated
efforts. Tied to the emergence of neoliberalism, climate change
theory, third-world development, and other discourses, Evans and Reid
argue that promoting resilience draws attention away from governmental
responsibility and towards self-responsibility and healthy psychological
affects such as "posttraumatic growth".
Another criticism regarding resilience is its definition. Like
other psychological phenomena, by defining specific psychological and
affective states in certain ways, controversy over meaning will always
ensue. How the term resilience is defined affects research focuses;
different or insufficient definitions of resilience will lead to
inconsistent research about the same concepts. Research on resilience
has become more heterogeneous in its outcomes and measures, convincing
some researchers to abandon the term altogether due to it being
attributed to all outcomes of research where results were more positive
than expected.
There is also controversy about the indicators of good
psychological and social development when resilience is studied across
different cultures and contexts. The American Psychological Association's Task Force on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents,
for example, notes that there may be special skills that these young
people and families have that help them cope, including the ability to
resist racial prejudice.
Researchers of indigenous health have shown the impact of culture,
history, community values, and geographical settings on resilience in
indigenous communities. People who cope may also show "hidden resilience"
when they don't conform with society's expectations for how someone is
supposed to behave (in some contexts, aggression may be required to
cope, or less emotional engagement may be protective in situations of
abuse).
Recently there has also been evidence that resilience can indicate a
capacity to resist a sharp decline in other harm even though a person
temporarily appears to get worse.
