Which of the following personality characteristics are associated with resilience to stressors?

Original articleResilience matters: Explaining the association between personality and psychological functioning during the COVID-19 pandemicLa resiliencia importa: explicación de la asociación entre personalidad y funcionamiento psicológico durante la pandemia de COVID-19

Under a Creative Commons license

Open access

Abstract

Background/Objective

The objective of the study was to elucidate the underlying mechanism through which basic personality dimensions predict indicators of psychological functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic, including subjective well-being and perceived stress. As a personality characteristic highly contextualized in stressful circumstances, resilience was expected to have a mediating role in this relationship. Method: A sample of 2,722 Slovene adults, aged from 18 to 82 years filled in the Big Five Inventory, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Mental Health Continuum. A path analysis with the Bootstrap estimation procedure was performed to evaluate the mediating effect of resilience in the relationship between personality and psychological functioning. Results: Resilience fully or partially mediated the relationships between all the Big Five but extraversion with subjective well-being and stress experienced at the beginning of the COVID-19 outburst. Neuroticism was the strongest predictor of less adaptive psychological functioning both directly and through diminished resilience. Conclusions: Resilience may be a major protective factor required for an adaptive response of an individual in stressful situations such as pandemic and the associated lockdown.

Resumen

Antecedentes/Objetivo

El objetivo fue dilucidar el mecanismo subyacente a través del cual las dimensiones básicas de la personalidad predicen indicadores del funcionamiento psicológico durante la pandemia de COVID-19, incluido el bienestar subjetivo y el estrés percibido. Como característica de la personalidad altamente contextualizada en circunstancias estresantes, se esperaba que la resiliencia tuviera un papel mediador en esta relación.

Método

Una muestra de 2.722 adultos eslovenos (18-82 años), completó el Big Five Inventory, la Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, la Perceived Stress Scale y el Mental Health Continuum. Se realizó un análisis de ruta con el procedimiento de estimación Bootstrap para evaluar el efecto mediador de la resiliencia en la relación entre la personalidad y el funcionamiento psicológico.

Resultados

La resiliencia medió total o parcialmente las relaciones entre los Cinco Grandes, y la extraversión con bienestar subjetivo y el estrés experimentado, al comienzo del estallido de COVID-19. El neuroticismo fue el predictor más fuerte de un funcionamiento psicológico menos adaptativo, tanto directamente como a través de la disminución de la capacidad de resiliencia.

Conclusiones

La resiliencia puede ser un factor de protección importante y requerido para una respuesta adaptativa de un individuo en situaciones estresantes como la pandemia y el confinamiento asociado.

Keywords

Resilience

Big five

Psychological functioning

COVID-19 pandemic

Ex post facto study

Palabras clave

Resiliencia

Cinco Grandes

Funcionamiento psicológico

Pandemia de COVID-19

Estudio ex post facto

© 2020 Asociación Española de Psicología Conductual. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U.

Under a Creative Commons license

Open access

Highlights

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Different conceptualizations have confused what psychological resilience is (not).

Resisting, bouncing back, or growing from stressors reflect dominant concepts.

Knowledge from physics helps to distinguish these fundamentally different concepts.

Resilience should be conceptualized and measured as bouncing back from stressors.

Conceptual clarity leads to better-targeted resilience measures and interventions.

Abstract

The number of resilience conceptualizations in psychology has rapidly grown, which confuses what resilience actually means. This is problematic, because the conceptualization typically guides the measurements, analyses, and practical interventions employed. The most popular conceptualizations of psychological resilience equate it with the ability to (1) resist negative effects of stressors, (2) “bounce back” from stressors, and/or (3) grow from stressors. In this paper, we review these three conceptualizations and argue that they reflect different concepts. This is supported by important lessons from engineering physics, where such concepts are clearly differentiated with precise mathematical underpinnings. Against this background, we outline why psychological resilience should be conceptualized and measured in terms of the process of returning to the previous state following a stressor (i.e., bouncing back). By establishing a clearer language of resilience and related processes, measurements and interventions in psychological research and practice can be targeted more precisely.

Keywords

Area under the curve

Critical slowing down

Growth

Phenotypic plasticity

Resistance

Robustness

Stress-strain relationship

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.