1. Paul Jose
Victoria Univ. of Wellington
Paper presented at NZPS conference,
Wellington, April 21, 2012

2.  In psychiatric theory and research, there is a
long-standing interest in identifying risk
factors in development
 Risk factors are influences that heighten the odds
of greater maladaptation, i.e., an alcoholic
parent is predictive of poorer outcomes in
children
 Similarly,research has tried to identify
factors that protect against maladaptation
 Resilience factors lessen the odds of greater
maladaptation, i.e., social resources like intact
families as well as internal characteristics such
as a sense of humour

3.  Norman Garmezy originated the study of
resilient children in the early 1970s, using an
epidemiological approach: who gets sick and
who doesn’t?
 Emmy Werner in the early 1980s wrote a
book on poor children growing up in
Kauai, an island in Hawai’i. Some children at
risk did not do poorly = “resilient children”.
 Anthony, E.J. (1987). Risk, vulnerability, and
resilience: An overview. In E.J. Anthony &
B.J. Cohler (Eds.), The invulnerable child
(pp.3-48). New York: Guilford Press.

4.  Initialformulations of resilience located the
“good stuff” in the person, i.e., “the
invulnerable child”
 But following Bronfenbrenner’s emphasis on
the interactions between person and their
multiple contexts, resilience research has
evolved to be more process-oriented
 Today, we believe that resilient children and
adolescents possess certain qualities that
allow them to interact with their contexts
well

5.  Resilience is imputed when one sees:
 good outcomes regardless of high-risk status,
 constant competence under stress,
 recovery from trauma, and
 using challenges for growth that makes future
hardships more tolerable (post-traumatic growth).
 The emphasis, you will note, is on doing well in
the face of hardship.
 Growing consensus that resilient individuals are
successful because of:
 Adaptive coping strategies and
 Social resources

6.  Previously it was thought that resilience was
primarily genetically based, but research
does not support the view that it is mostly
determined in this way;
 And Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory
would argue that social influences should
account for a significant proportion.
 Focus of the present study: Does a sense of
greater well-being or positive affect foster or
increase resilient tendencies one year later?
 B. Fredrickson’s “broaden-and-build” theory
states that higher positive affect fosters great
competence and striving (resilience?)

7. Imeasured three constructs that I thought
would be related to each other over time:
 Resilient cognitions about the self;
 Positive affect; and
 Well-being (aspirations; pos relations with
others; and confidence)
Isought to test the particular process model
presented on the next page

8. Well- Resilient
being cognitions
Positive
Affect

9.  We proposed that positive affect and positive
adjustment would lead to greater resilience
over time
 But these three variables are likely to be
related to each other in interesting and
complicated ways. We also thought it
possible that:
 Resilience Well-being
 Resilience Positive affect
 Secondary hypothesis: there may be
supportive bi-directional relationships among
these three variables over time

10.  Jan Pryor and I received financial support
from the FRST Foundation to study
adolescent development over three years
 Focus of this research endeavour was to
study the function of social connectedness in
promoting better adjustment in adolescents
 It was a large scale longitudinal (once a year
for three years) study largely representative
of NZ youth

11.  1,774 New Zealand adolescents (10-15 years
at Y1) participated in a self-report study
annually for three years
 Recruited from about 100 schools scattered
around the North Island
 Almost a nationally representative sample:
fewer rural kids, overrepresentation of
Maori, no South Island participants
 All measures yielded Cronbach’s alphas > .80.

12.  Wagnild and Young’s Resilience Scale (1993). The
four items were:
 “I keep myself busy and interested in things”,
 “I try not to take things too seriously”,
 “My belief in myself gets me through hard times” and
 “I can find a way to fix my problems”.
 Well-being consisted of three subscales of 3 or 4
items each adapted from the Ryff Wellbeing
Scales (Ryff & Keyes, 1995):
 aspirations,
 positive relations with others, and
 confidence.

13.  Positive
Affect: 3 items from the CES-D
(Radloff, 1977):
I enjoyed life.
 I was happy.
 I felt hopeful about the future.

14.  Lap-top computers were used to present the
questionnaires in an interactive fashion to
adolescents
 Quiet room at school, up to 30 computers
 Teacher and researcher always present
 About 350 questions were asked but we used
skips and branches to minimise the amount
of time involved

15. A repeated-measures MANOVA showed that:
 Positive affect and well-being decreased slightly
over 3 years, but
 Resilience did not change much
 Theseresults are generally supportive of the
views that:
 resilience is trait-like, and
 that adolescent positive affect decreases during
middle adolescence
 Butthis doesn’t tell us how these variables
are related to each other

16. Positive Positive Positive
Affect Affect Affect T3
T1 T2
Well-being Well-being Well-being
T1 T2 T3
Resilience Resilience Resilience
T1 T2 T3

17. Positive Positive Positive
Affect Affect Affect
T1 T2 T3
.16*** .13****
Well-being Well-being Well-being
T1 T2 T3
.20***
.24***
.15*** .07*
Resilience Resilience Resilience
T1 T2 T3

18.  Well-being predicted increases in resilience
over time, however
 Positive affect did not predict increases in
resilience over time
 Resilience and well-being manifested a bi-
directional relationship with each other over
time

19.  Itseems that we obtained some support for
Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory in
that an adolescent with higher well-being at
a given point in time is likely to report higher
resilience at a later point in time
(residualised: change in resilience).
 Positive affect (being happy) seems to be an
outcome, not a driver of later states
 Resilience fosters greater well-being, and
well-being in turn fosters greater resilience

20.  SEM is a good method for examining
mediational relationships across time
 Did we find any mediational relationships?
Positive Positive Positive
Affect T1 Affect T2 Affect T3
.16*** .13****
Well-being Well-being Well-being
T1 T2 T3
.20*** .24***
.15*** .07*
Resilience Resilience Resilience
T1 T2 T3

21.  We would like to know how well-being leads
to greater resilience: what is the
“mechanism”?
 And we would like to know how resilience
leads to greater well-being

22. Well-being
T1
??????
T2
One can examine these relationships in SEM
(longitudinal mediation), but there is another Resilience
technique which I think is more flexible and powerful: T3
mediation with latent growth curve modeling (LGCMs),
described by David MacKinnon.

24. Resilience Well-
slope being
slope
Mediator
slope
“Slope” refers to change in the variable over the three times
of measurement.

25.  Two basic relationships, given our previous
findings, were probed:
 Well-being Resilience, and
 Resilience Well-being
Iexamined numerous potential mediators,
and some proved to yield significant
mediation and some did not

26. IV Mediator Indirect/ DV
Direct
ratio
Reliable Alliance (+) .54**
Guidance (+) .38**
Resilience Reassurance of .65** Well-being
Worth (+)
Lack of self- .09*
confidence (-)
Avoidance (-) .30**

27. IV Mediator Indirect/ DV
Direct
ratio
Lack of self- .07*
confidence (-)
Well-being Rumination (-) .30** Resilience
Avoidance (-) .79**

28.  Resilience seems to lead to both increased
positive attributes AND decreased negative
attributes, which in turn lead to greater well-
being
 Higher social provisions (Cutrona & Russell)
 Lower lack of self-confidence, avoidance
 Well-being seems to lead to greater resilience
only through reductions in negative dynamics
 Lower lack of self-confidence, rumination, and
avoidance
 The bi-directional relationship may be due to the
reduction in negative processes

29.  We need to separate the hedonic (being
happy) from the eudaimonic (meaning of
life) better so that we can identify how each
contributes to resilience separately
 How do these variables relate to coping
strategies (problem-solving, reframing, etc.),
social support, and social connectedness?
 We intend to investigate moderators as well:
age, gender, ethnicity, rural/urban, etc.

30.  Resilience may be at least partly promoted
by experiencing well-being
 Resilience and well-being seem to support
each other
 Perhaps we can teach strategies that will
support or promote resilience and well-
being?

31.  For more information, please write
me at:
paul.jose@vuw.ac.nz