Psychological Resilience
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free encyclopedia
Resilience in psychology refers to the idea of an individual's
tendency to cope
with stress
and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a
previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to
adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function better than expected
(much like an inoculation gives one the capacity to cope well with future
exposure to disease).[1] Resilience is most commonly understood
as a process, and not a trait of an individual.[2]
Recently
there has also been evidence that resilience can indicate a capacity to resist
a sharp decline in functioning even though a person temporarily appears to get
worse.[3][4] A child, for example, may do poorly
during critical life transitions (like entering junior high) but experience
problems that are less severe than would be expected given the many risks the
child faces.[clarification needed]
There
is also controversy about the indicators of good psychological and social
development when resilience is studied across different cultures and contexts.[5][6][7] The American Psychological
Association’s Task Force on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and
Adolescents,[8] 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.[9] People who cope may also show “hidden
resilience”[10] 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).[11]
In
all these instances, resilience is best understood as a process. It is often
mistakenly assumed to be a trait of the individual, an idea more typically
referred to as “resiliency”.[12] 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.[13] These processes can be individual
coping strategies, or may be helped along by good families, schools,
communities, and social policies that make resilience more likely to occur.[14] In this sense "resilience"
occurs when there are cumulative "protective factors". These factors
are likely to play a more and more important role the greater the individual’s
exposure to cumulative "risk factors". The phrase "risk and
resilience"' in this area of study is quite common.
Commonly
used terms, which are closely related within psychology, are
"psychological resilience", "emotional resilience", "hardiness",
"resourcefulness", and "mental toughness". The earlier
focus on individual capacity which Anthony[15] described as the “invulnerable child”
has evolved into a more multilevel ecological perspective that builds on theory
developed by Uri Bronfenbrenner (1979), and more recently discussed in the work
of Michael Ungar (2004, 2008), Ann Masten (2001), and Michael Rutter (1987,
2008). The focus in research has shifted from "protective factors"
toward protective "processes"; trying to understand how different
factors are involved in both promoting well-being and protecting against risk.
Resilience
is a dynamic process whereby individuals exhibit positive behavioral adaptation when they encounter significant adversity,[16] trauma,[17] tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress.[18] It is different from strengths or
developmental assets which are a characteristic of an entire population,
regardless of the level of adversity they face. Under adversity, assets
function differently (a good school, or parental monitoring, for example, have
a great deal more influence in the life of a child from a poorly resourced
background than one from a wealthy home with other options for support,
recreation, and self-esteem).[19]
Resilience
is a two-dimensional construct concerning the exposure of adversity and the
positive adjustment outcomes of that adversity.[20] This two-dimensional construct implies
two judgments: one about a "positive adaptation" and the other about
the significance of risk (or adversity).[21] One point of view about adversity
could define it as any risks associated with negative life
conditions that are statistically related to adjustment difficulties, such as
poverty, children of mothers with schizophrenia, or experiences of disasters. Positive
adaptation, on the other hand, is considered in a demonstration of manifested
behaviour on social competence or success at meeting any particular tasks at a
specific life stage, such as the absence of psychiatric distress after the September 11th terrorism attacks on the United
States.[20] Ungar[22] argues that this standard definition
of resilience could be problematic because it does not adequately account for
cultural and contextual differences in how people in other systems express
resilience. Through collaborative mixed methods research in eleven countries,
Ungar and his colleagues at the Resilience Research Centre have shown that
cultural and contextual factors exert a great deal of influence on the factors
that affect resilience among a population of youth-at-risk.[23]
Resilience
has been shown to be more than just the capacity of individuals to cope well
under adversity.[citation needed] Resilience is better understood as the
opportunity and capacity of individuals to navigate their way to psychological,
social, cultural, and physical resources that may sustain their well-being, and
their opportunity and capacity individually and collectively to negotiate for
these resources to be provided and experienced in culturally meaningful ways.[24] Studies of demobilized child soldiers,
high school drop-outs, urban poor, immigrant youth, and other populations at
risk are showing these patterns.[25] Among adults, these same themes
emerge, as detailed in the work of Zautra, Hall and Murray (2010).[13]
Garmezy
(1973) published the first research findings on resilience. He used
epidemiology, which is the study of who gets ill, who doesn't, and why, to
uncover the risks and the protective factors that now help define resilience.[26] Garmezy and Streitman (1974) then
created tools to look at systems that support development of resilience.[27]
Emmy Werner
(1982) 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.[28] Werner noted that of the children who
grew up in these very bad 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'.[29] Resilient children and their families
had traits that made them different from non-resilient children and families.
Resilience
emerged as a major theoretical and research topic from the studies of children
of schizophrenic mothers in the 1980s.[30] In Masten’s (1989) study,[31] the results showed that children with
a schizophrenic
parent may not obtain comforting caregiving compared to children with healthy
parents, and such situations had an impact on children’s development. However,
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.
In
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,[32] catastrophic life events,[33] or urban poverty.[34] The focus of empirical work then has
been shifted to understand the underlying protective processes. Researchers
endeavor to uncover how some factors (e.g. family) may contribute to positive
outcomes.[34]
Resilience
can be described by viewing:
- good outcomes
regardless of high-risk status,
- constant
competence under stress,
- recovery from trauma,[30] and
- using challenges
for growth that makes future hardships more tolerable.
Resilience
describes people who are expected to adapt successfully even though they
experience risk factors that ‘stack the odds’ against them experiencing good
development. Risk factors are related to poor or negative outcomes. For
example, poverty, low socioeconomic status, and mothers with schizophrenia are coupled with lower academic
achievement and more emotional
or behavioral problems. Risk factors may be cumulative, carrying additive and
exponential risks when they co-occur.[30] When these risk factors happen,
according to a study conducted on children,[35] resilient children are capable of
resulting in no behavioural problems and developing well. Additionally, they
are more active and socially responsive. These positive outcomes are attributed
to some protective factors, such as good parenting or positive school
experiences.
Resilience
is also treated as an effective coping mechanism when people are under stress,
such as divorce. In this context, resilience is
relevant with sustained competence exhibited by individuals who experience
challenging conditions. Most research built on this perspective focuses on the
children’s response to parents’ divorce in terms of gender. Boys show more
conduct problems than do girls; girls obtain more support from mothers and are
less exposed to family conflict than boys. Although divorce may have some
negative impacts on children’s development, it may help children in single
households to become more responsible than those in dual-parents households
because of helping with chores. Some protective factors attributing to
resilient children in single-family, for example, are adults caring for
children during or after major stressors (e.g., divorce), or self-efficacy for motivating endeavor at adaptation.
Finally,
resilience can be viewed as the phenomenon of recovery from a prolonged or
severe adversity, or from an immediate danger or stress.[36][37] In this case, resilience is not
related to vulnerability.
People who experience acute trauma, for example, may show extreme anxiety,
sleep problems, and intrusive thoughts. Over time, these symptoms decrease and
recovery is likely. This realm of research shows that age and the supportive
qualities of the family influence the condition of recovery. The Buffalo Creek dam disaster,
for example, had longer effects on older children than on younger.[38] Additionally, children with supportive
families show fewer symptoms (e.g., dreams of personal death) than children
from troubled families, as revealed by a study on victims of the 1976 Chowchilla
bus kidnapping.[39]
Several
factors are found to modify the negative effects of adverse life situations.
Many studies show that the primary factor is to have relationships that provide
care and support, create love and trust,
and offer encouragement, 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.[40]
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, Werner (1995)[41] distinguished three contexts for
protective factors: (1) personal attributes, including outgoing, bright, and
positive self-concepts;
(2) the family, such as having close bonds with at least one family member or
an emotionally stable parent; and (3) the community, like receiving support or
counsel from peers.
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.[42] 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" (Block & Block, 1980, p. 43) 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" (Block &
Block, 1980, p. 48).[43]
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 (Cicchetti et al., 1993). Furthermore,
maltreated children are more likely than nonmaltreated children to demonstrate
disruptive-aggressive, withdraw, and internalized behavior problems (Cicchetti
et al., 1993). Finally, ego-resiliency, and positive self-esteem were predictors of competent
adaptation in the maltreated children (Cicchetti et al., 1993).
Demographic
information (e.g., gender) and resources (e.g., social support) are also used
to predict resilience. Examining people's adaptation after the 9/11 attacks
(Bonanno, Galea Bucciarelli, & Vlahov, 2007)[44] 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. King, King, Fairbank,
Keane, and Adams (1998) studied resilience in Vietnam War veterans and found
social support to be a major factor contributing to resilience.[45]
Schnurr,
Lunney, and Sengupta (2004) found that several protective factors among those
were the following factors protecting against the development of PTSD:
- Japanese-American
ethnicity, high school degree or college education, older age at entry to
war, higher socioeconomic status, and a more positive paternal
relationship as premilitary factors
- Social support
at homecoming and current social support as postmilitary factors[46]
- Native Hawaiian
or Japanese-American ethnicity and college education as premilitary
factors
- Current social
support as postmilitary factor[46]
A
number of other factors that promote resilience have been identified:
- The ability to
cope with stress effectively and in a healthy manner
- Having good
problem-solving skills
- Seeking help
- Holding the
belief that there is something one can do to manage your feelings and cope
- Having social
support
- Being connected
with others, such as family or friends
- Self-disclosure
of the trauma to loved ones
- Spirituality
- Having an
identity as a survivor as opposed to a victim
- Helping others
- Finding positive
meaning in the trauma[47]
Certain
aspects of religions/spirituality may, hypothetically, promote or hinder
certain psychological virtues that increase resiliance. 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".[48] 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.[49] The United States Army has received
criticism for promoting spirituality in its new [Comprehensive Soldier Fitness]
program as a way prevent PTSD, due to the lack of conclusive supporting data.
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.[50] 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.[51]
The
American Psychological Association suggests "10 Ways to Build
Resilience", which are: (1) maintaining good relationships
with close family members, friends and others; (2) to avoid seeing crises or stressful
events as unbearable problems; (3) to accept circumstances that cannot be
changed; (4) to develop realistic goals and move towards them; (5) to take
decisive actions in adverse situations; (6) to look for opportunities of
self-discovery after a struggle with loss; (7) developing self-confidence; (8)
to keep a long-term perspective
and consider the stressful event in a broader context; (9) to maintain a
hopeful outlook, expecting good things and visualizing what is wished; (10) to take care of
one's mind and body, exercising regularly, paying attention to one's
own needs and feelings and engaging in relaxing activities that one enjoys.[52] Learning from the past[53] and maintaining flexibility and
balance in life[54] are also cited.
The
Young Foundation's
work on wellbeing in the UK emphasises 'subjective wellbeing', what people feel
about the quality of their life.
A key element of this is 'resilience', how people bounce back from adversity.
Their work includes:
- Working with
Lord Richard Layard from the London School of Economics, the IDeA and
three leading local authorities, Hertfordshire, Manchester and South
Tyneside, as the lead partner in the Local Wellbeing Project to look at the
different ways in which local government and its local partners can
promote wellbeing. The State of Happiness, the final
Local Wellbeing Project report, brings together three years of groundbreaking
work in the three partner local authority areas as well as other national
and international developments in this field.
- Emotional Resilience
for Gangs
- commissioned by Harrow Metropolitan Police to develop and pilot an
emotional resilience programme targeting 14-19 year olds who are offending
or at risk of offending, and are associated with gang activity. The Young
Foundation is working in collaboration with Dr Ilona Boniwell, one of Europe's
leading positive psychologists, to develop this new programme, training
professionals in Harrow from Youth Services, the Anti-social Behaviour
Unit, Safer Neighbourhoods Team and the Wealdstone Anti-social Behaviour
Partnership. Training of professionals and the delivery of the pilot will
take place in early 2011 with a report to follow.[55]
This section's tone or style may not reflect the formal
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Specific concerns may be found on the talk page.
See Wikipedia's guide to writing better
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Resilience
in children refers to individuals who are doing better than expected, given a
history that includes risk or adverse experience. Simply put, resilience
requires two conditions to be met: (1) the child must have experienced some
sort of risk or adversity that has been linked with poor outcomes, and (2) the
child is generally doing okay despite being exposed to that risk or adversity;
they are not showing that poor outcome.[60]
One
view is that resilience is a description of a group of children. It is not a
trait or something that some children 'just have.' There is no such thing as an
'invulnerable child' who can overcome any obstacle that life throws at her
(although some children may seem that way!). Resilience is not a rare and
magical quality. In fact, it is quite common.[61] Resilience is the product of a large
number of developmental processes over time that has allowed children who
experience some sort of risk to continue to develop competently (while other
children have not).[62] Research on 'protective factors' has
helped developmental scientists to understand what matters most for resilient
children. Protective factors are characteristics of children or situations that
particularly help children in the context of risk. There are many different
protective factors that are important for resilient children. Two that have emerged
time and again in studies of resilient children are good cognitive functioning
(like cognitive self-regulation and IQ) and positive relationships (especially
with competent adults, like parents).[63] 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.
A
separate view is that certain children survive extremely high risk
environments, such as a schizophrenic parent, through personal
invulnerability—a stubborn resistance to being drawn into a maelstrom of mental
illness due to a profound attachment to reality:
“…First, at a conference on risk
research held in Puerto Rico in 1980, Manfred Bleuler presented a striking
clinical vignette. In describing Vreni, a remarkably “sane” offspring of a
severely disturbed, chronic schizophrenic mother, Blueler (1980) commented on
her need for mastery over an otherwise intolerable situation. This was a young
woman who clearly was not a “superkid”, but who managed to cope well, to care
for her ill mother and her siblings, and later to marry and have children of
her own. What comes across in Bleuler’s description, however, is the competent
offspring’s ability to see the disorder or the circumstances as outside of
herself, to seek out ways of understanding her parent’s problems, and to
conceptualize them within a manageable, reality-focused framework.
“Secondly, Anthony (1974) commented in
a similar fashion in reviewing the attributes of the well-functioning offspring
of disturbed parents in his sample. He stated that these offspring ‘had a
stubborn resistance to the process of being engulfed by the illness; a
curiosity in studying the etiology, diagnosis, symptoms and treatment of the
illness…; [and] a capacity to develop an objective, realistic, somewhat distant
and yet distinctly compassionate approach to the parental illness, neither
retreating from it nor being intimidated by it’ (p. 40).
“Finally, Space and Cromwell (1978)
have described what they call the ‘unique personal construct structure’ of the
healthy offspring of a schizophrenic parent. In their view, such an individual
does not accept the conceptual structure of the psychotic parent, but instead
formulates a conceptual structure based on an internal locus of control.
“All three of these sources of data
uniformly point to the capacity of the child to objectify the disturbed parent
and to view her as outside the self. This view also characterizes the child’s
continuing desire to master an understanding of the parent’s pathology – in
essence, to deal with the aberrant behavior or circumstances through learning
and other more objective and reality-based approaches…”
--The Invulnerable Child', Elwyn James
Anthony, p. 226
When
it comes to children, there are still many scientific debates with respect to
resilience. One debate involves differing opinions about what constitutes
'doing okay.' There is considerable agreement that child competence can be
defined and measured in a way that can indicate whether or not the child is
doing well. Called 'age-salient developmental tasks,' these are things that are
generally expected of children of a certain age, in a certain culture, of a
certain time or point in history.[64] Developmental tasks can span all areas
or domains of a person's life. For example, in many cultures (but certainly not
all) 14 month old children are expected to be able to show the beginnings of
spoken language, early motor coordination that allows them to start walking,
able to form an attachment relationship with a primary caregiver, etc. These
tasks certainly change with age; generally children are expected to show
increasingly sophisticated cognitive and social abilities as they grow older: 5
year olds are expected to show a higher degree of independence and
self-regulation skills (for example), compared to a 2 year old. Resilient
children can be thought of as those who show competence in age-salient
developmental tasks even though they have experienced some risk or adversity
that threatened that competence. Others have focused on different criteria for
'doing okay', such as the absence of mental health problems like depression or
conduct problems. Still others have focused on happiness or the experience of
positive emotions.
Resilient
children as described by Garmezy[65] 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. Benard[66] concluded that resilient children have
high expectations, a meaning for life, goals, personal agency, and
inter-personal problem-solving skills. All of these things work together to
prevent the debilitating behaviors that are associated with learned helplessness.
Chess[67] identified “adaptive distancing” as
the psychological process whereby an individual can stand apart from distressed
family members and friends in order to accomplish constructive goals and
advance his or her psychological development. Moving away to college after high
school is a way of practicing adaptive distancing.[68] Classrooms in which students are given
an opportunity to respond, an engaging cooperative learning environment, a
participating role in setting goals, and a high expectation for student
achievement. All of these characteristics help students develop a sense of
belonging and involvement. These two characteristics help to reduce the
feelings of alienation and disengagement. With that kind of connection in the
school, students will have more of a protective shield against the adverse
circumstances that life throws at them.
Communities
play a huge role in fostering resilience. Benard[69] identifies three characteristics of
those types of communities (1) availability of social organizations that
provide an array of resources to residents, (2) consistent expression of social
norms so that community members understand what constitutes desirable behavior,
(3) and opportunities for children and youth to participate in the life of the
community as valued members. The clearest sign of a cohesive and supportive
community is the presence of social organizations that provide healthy human
development.[70] Services are unlikely to be used
unless there is good communication concerning them. Community-school
relationships are very important to give extra resources to meet even basic
psychological needs of students and families.
Fostering
resilience in children requires family environments that are caring and
structured, hold high expectations for children’s behavior, and encourage
participation in the life of the family.[71] 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. Benard[69] found that even though divorce
produces stress, the availability of social support from family and community
can reduce 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.[72]
The Main Street
Missionary Baptist Church prepares to hold service out on Main Street in Biloxi,
Miss. Hurricane Katrina caused extensive damage to buildings all along the
Mississippi gulf coast and caused the evacuation of New Orleans
When
youths from problem neighbourhoods join a church their academic performance
improves. The poorer a neighbourhood is, the more church attendance helps kids
academically. Improving academic performance seems to flow more from attending
church than from merely believing. The church's social life influences youth
from poor communities more than doctrine does. Church attendance also improves
the physical, social, and emotional health of students.[73] According to Glen Elder: "What
you have in the role of the religious community is a selected group of people
who share values and are committed to the success of the child".[73] This pattern is likely the result of
many protective processes that take place inside a religious institution. Ungar
and his colleagues[74] identified seven aspects of resilience
across many different cultures. Each depends on the other. These seven aspects
include:
1. Access to
material resources
|
Availability of
financial, educational, medical and employment assistance and/or
opportunities, as well as access to food, clothing and shelter
|
2. Access to
supportive relationships
|
Relationships with
significant others, peers and adults within one’s family and community
|
3. Development of a
desirable personal identity
|
Desirable sense of
one’s self as having a personal and collective sense of purpose, ability for
self-appraisal of strengths and weaknesses, aspirations, beliefs and values,
including spiritual and religious identification
|
4. Experiences of
power and control
|
Experiences of
caring for one’s self and others, the ability to effect change in one’s
social and physical environment in order to access health resources
|
5. Adherence to
cultural traditions
|
Adherence to, or
knowledge of, one’s local and/or global cultural practices, values and beliefs
|
6. Experiences of
social justice
|
Experiences related
to finding a meaningful role in one’s community that brings with it
acceptance and social equality
|
7. Experiences of a
sense of cohesion with others
|
Balancing one’s
personal interests with a sense of responsibility to the greater good;
feeling a part of something larger than one’s self socially and spiritually
|
For
example, attending a church has been shown to increase a child’s social
network, provide a feeling of cohesion and belonging in her community, even
promote a sense of personal control and sense of social justice when
threatened. It is this complexity and multilevel nature of resilience that
explains how people use the internal and external resources (assets) that are
both available and accessible to overcome adversity.[75]
Some
studies confirmed the association between resilience and positive emotion
(e.g., Ong, Bergeman, Bisconti, & Wallace, 2006;[76] Tugade et al., 2004).[77]
Examining
the role positive emotion plays in resilience, Ong et al. (2006)
found that widows with high levels of resilience experience more positive
(e.g., peaceful) and negative (e.g., anxious) emotions than those with low
levels. The former group shows high emotional complexity which is the capacity
to maintain the differentiation of positive and negative emotional states while
underlying stress.
Ong
et al. (2006) further suggest that the adaptive consequence of resilience is a
function of an increase in emotional complexity while stress is present.
Moreover,
high resilient widows showed the likelihood of controlling their positive
emotional experiences to recover and bounce back from daily stress. Indeed,
positive emotions were found to disrupt the experience of stress and help high
resilient individuals to recover efficiently from daily stress (Fredrickson et
al., 2003).[33] In this case, some studies argue
(e.g., Fredrickson et al., 2003; Tugade et al., 2004) that positive emotion
helps resilient people to construct psychological resources that are necessary
for coping successfully with significant catastrophe, such as the September
11th attacks. As a result, positive emotion experienced by resilient people
functions as a protective factor to moderate the magnitude of adversity to
individuals and assists them to cope well in the future (Tugade et al., 2004).
In
addition to the above findings, a study (Fredrickson et al., 2003) further
suggests that positive emotions are active elements within resilience.
By
examining people’s emotional responses to the September 11th, Fredrickson et
al. (2003) suggests that positive emotions are critical elements in resilience
and as a mediator that buffer people from depression
after the crises. Moreover, high resilient people were more likely to notice
positive meanings within the problems they faced (e.g., felt grateful to be
alive), endured fewer depressive symptoms, and experienced more positive
emotions than low resilient people after terrorism attacks (Fredrickson et al.,
2003). Similar results were obtained in another study regarding the effects of
911 attacks on resilient individuals’ healthy adjustment (Bonanno et al.,
2007).[44]
People
with high levels of resilience are likely to show low levels of depression, and
less likely to smoke cigarettes or use marijuana (Bonanno et al., 2007). Moreover, low
resilient people exhibit the difficulties of regulating negative emotions and
demonstrate sensitive reaction to daily stressful life events (e.g., the loss
of loved one) (Ong et al., 2006). They are likely to believe that there is no
end for the unpleasant experience of daily stressors and may have higher levels
of stress. In general, resilient people are believed to possess positive
emotions, and such emotions in turn influence their responses to adversity.
Psychological
Resilience has been studied in a number of groups. Among those are the children
of European Jews in the United States, the children of the Vietnamese boat people in the United States. Middle class
families in times of the great depression, children of farmers in times of
economical crisis, children of Spanish and Vietnamese immigrants in Germany,
adoptive children, who went through trauma and malnutrition.
Nathan
Caplan studied the children of poor Vietnamese parents in the US. Most of these
parents were refugees. In many cases they did not own anything but the clothes
they were wearing when they arrived. Most did not speak English. Half of the parents
had less than five years of formal schooling. The refugees studied by Caplan
lived in the worst neighborhoods of big cities. Yet their children turned out
to be academically more successful than American middle class children.
Why?
Caplan
et al. found out the Vietnamese stress the value of education. Parents
wanted their children to enjoy a better education than they did themselves. The
Vietnamese children spend an average of 3 hours and 10 minutes per day doing
their homework and reading for school, while American middle class students
just spend an average of 1 hour and 30 minutes per day with these activities.
Nathan
Caplan also found out the older siblings were supposed to help their younger
siblings. That way the younger ones did not only learn facts but also attitudes
towards school and learning from their older siblings. The more siblings a
child of Vietnamese parentage has, the more likely is he or she to achieve in
school.[78]
Germany
is a multi-ethnic society. 8% of the population and 25% of the 15 year olds are
born abroad themselves or have as least one parent born abroad. In Germany
Vietnamese families started arriving as foreign workers during the 1980s and
they are still coming in great numbers to search for a better life. As a rule
children of immigrants are not as successful academically as children of native
Germans. However it is not true for children of Asian parentage. The Vietnamese
are the biggest Asian group in Germany and also one of the poorest ethnic
groups. It has been found that Vietnamese parents value education and that
Vietnamese students spend a lot more time learning than their German
counterparts.[79],[80],[81]
Elder
and Conger examined data from several Iowa counties to see how the farm crisis of
the 1980s and 1990s affected children growing up in rural parts of the state.
They found that a that a large number of those young people were on paths to
successful development and life achievement. Most children of those children
grew up to be academically successful and law-abiding.
Elder
was able to identify five resource mechanisms:
- strong
intergenerational bonds, joint activity between parents and children
- being socialized
into productive roles in work and social leadership; stressing
non-material goals
- a network of
positive engagement in church, school, and community life
- close ties with
grandparents, support from grandparents
- strong family
connections with the community[82]
Elder
studied the life of men who were children during the Great Depression of
1929-1939 and came to maturity at the outset of World War II. When these
children came of age Elder found them to be healthy, law abiding, well adapted
and bright.
One
stunning finding was that poverty had slight positive effects on children from
the middle classes. Once they reached adulthood those men earned a college
degree as often as men from nondeprived middle class homes. In later life they
did a little better in terms of economic success than their nondeprived middle
class peers.[83]
Men
of working class background did not do as well as men from middle class homes.
However many of them were upwardly mobile and on most measures they did do just
as well as men from never-deprived working class backgrounds.
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.[84]
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.[85]
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 < 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.
In
the 1970s, Spain was a dictatorship under the rule of Francisco Franco. Many Spaniards fled to Germany in
search of a better life. Most of those immigrants were poor and only few were
able to speak proper German. Today their children do as well as German children
when it comes to educational success and Spaniard adults do as well as German
adults when it comes to occupational success.[86][87]
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