Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T15:38:52.496Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Advancing empirical resilience research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2015

Raffael Kalisch
Affiliation:
Neuroimaging Center Mainz (NIC), Focus Program Translational Neuroscience (FTN), Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany.rkalisch@uni-mainz.dehttp://www.ftn.nic.uni-mainz.de/en/ Deutsches Resilienz-Zentrum Mainz (DRZ), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany. http://www.drz.uni-mainz.de
Marianne B. Müller
Affiliation:
Deutsches Resilienz-Zentrum Mainz (DRZ), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany. http://www.drz.uni-mainz.de Research Group Molecular Stress Physiology, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, 80804 Munich, Germany.muellerm@mpipsykl.mpg.de Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Focus Program Translational Neuroscience (FTN), Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany.tuescher@uni-mainz.de
Oliver Tüscher
Affiliation:
Deutsches Resilienz-Zentrum Mainz (DRZ), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany. http://www.drz.uni-mainz.de Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Focus Program Translational Neuroscience (FTN), Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany.tuescher@uni-mainz.de

Abstract

We are delighted by the broad, intense, and fruitful discussion in reaction to our target article. A major point we take from the many comments is a prevailing feeling in the research community that we need significantly and urgently to advance resilience research, both by sharpening concepts and theories and by conducting empirical studies at a much larger scale and with a much more extended and sophisticated methodological arsenal than is the case currently. This advancement can be achieved only in a concerted international collaborative effort. In our response, we try to argue that an explicitly atheoretical, purely observational definition of resilience and a transdiagnostic, quantitative study framework can provide a suitable basis for empirically testing different competing resilience theories (sects. R1, R2, R6, R7). We are confident that it should be possible to unite resilience researchers from different schools, including from sociology and social psychology, behind such a pragmatic and theoretically neutral research strategy. In sections R3 to R5, we further specify and explain the positive appraisal style theory of resilience (PASTOR). We defend PASTOR as a comparatively parsimonious and translational theory that makes sufficiently concrete predictions to be evaluated empirically.

Type
Authors' Response
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P. & Teasdale, J. D. (1978) Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 87:4974. doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.87.1.49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Agudelo, L. Z., Femenía, T., Orhan, F., Porsmyr-Palmertz, M., Goiny, M., Martinez-Redondo, V. , Correia, J. C., Izadi, M., Bhat, M., Schuppe-Koistinen, I., Pettersson, A. T., Ferreira, D. M., Krook, A., Barres, R., Zierath, J. R., Erhardt, S., Lindskog, M. & Ruas, J. L. (2014) Skeletal muscle PGC-1α1 modulates kynurenine metabolism and mediates resilience to stress-induced depression. Cell 159(1):3345. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2014.07.051.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Antonovsky, A. (1987) Unraveling the mystery of health: How people manage stress and stay well. Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Antonovsky, A. (1995) The moral and the healthy: Identical, overlapping or orthogonal? The Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences 32(1):513.Google ScholarPubMed
Arnold, M. B. (1969) Human emotion and action. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Belsky, J., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2007) For better and for worse: Differential susceptibility to environmental influences. Current Directions in Psychological Science 16(6):300304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blechert, J., Sheppes, G., Di Tella, C., Williams, H. & Gross, J. J. (2012) See what you think: Reappraisal modulates behavioral and neural responses to social stimuli. Psychological Science 23(4):346–53. doi: 10.1177/0956797612438559.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Block, J. & Kremen, A. M. (1996) IQ and ego-resiliency: Conceptual and empirical connections and separateness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70(2):349–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boddez, Y., Baeyens, F., Hermans, D., Van der Oord, S. & Beckers, T. (2013a) Increasing the selectivity of threat through post-training instructions: Identifying one stimulus as source of danger reduces the threat value of surrounding stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology 4(4):315–24. doi: 10.5127/jep.028512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boden, M. T., Kulkarni, M., Shurick, A., Bonn-Miller, M. O. & Gross, J. J. (2014) Responding to trauma and loss: An emotion regulation perspective. In: The resilience handbook: Approaches to stress and trauma, ed. Kent, M., Davis, M. C. & Reich, J. W., pp. 8699. Routledge.Google Scholar
Bonanno, G. A. & Burton, C. L. (2013) Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science 8:591612. doi: 10.1177/1745691613504116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Campbell-Sills, L. & Barlow, D. H. (2007) Incorporating emotion regulation into conceptualizations and treatments of anxiety and mood disorders. In Handbook of emotion regulation, ed. Gross, J. J., pp. 542–59. Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Chaudhury, D., Walsh, J. J., Friedman, A. K., Juarez, B., Ku, S. M., Koo, J. W., Ferguson, D., Tsai, H. C., Pomeranz, L., Christoffel, D. J., Nectow, A. R., Ekstrand, M., Domingos, A., Mazei-Robison, M. S., Mouzon, E., Lobo, M. K., Neve, R. L., Friedman, J. M., Russo, S. J., Deisseroth, K., Nestler, E. J. & Han, M. H. (2013) Rapid regulation of depression-related behaviours by control of midbrain dopamine neurons. Nature 493:532–36. doi: 10.1038/nature11713 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cheng, C. (2001) Assessing coping flexibility in real-life and laboratory settings: A multimethod approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80:814–33. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.80.5.814.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Connor, K. M. & Davidson, J. R. T. (2003) Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Depression and Anxiety 18(2):7682. doi: 10.1002/da.10113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crombach, A. & Elbert, T. (2014) The benefits of aggressive traits: A study with current and former street children in Burundi. Child Abuse and Neglect 38(6):1041–50. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.12.003.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dias, C., Feng, J., Sun, H., Shao, N. Y., Mazei-Robison, M. S., Damez-Werno, D., Scobie, K., Bagot, R., LaBonté, B., Ribeiro, E., Liu, X., Kennedy, P., Vialou, V., Ferguson, D., Peña, C., Calipari, E. S., Koo, J. W., Mouzon, E., Ghose, S., Tamminga, C., Neve, R., Shen, L. & Nestler, E. J. (2014) β-catenin mediates stress resilience through Dicer1/microRNA regulation. Nature 516(7529):5155. doi: 10.1038/nature13976.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feder, A., Charney, D. & Abe, K. (2011) Neurobiology of resilience. In: Resilience and mental health: Challenges across the lifespan, ed. Southwick, S. M., Litz, B. T., Charney, D. & Friedman, M. J., pp. 129. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Foa, E. B. & Kozak, M. J. (1986) Emotional processing of fear: Exposure to corrective information. Psychological Bulletin 99(1):20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foucault, M. (2006) History of madness. Routledge.Google Scholar
Frankl, V. E. (2004) Man's search for meaning. An introduction to logotherapy. Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Franklin, T. B., Saab, B. J. & Mansuy, I. M. (2012) Neural mechanisms of stress resilience and vulnerability. Neuron 75(5):747–61. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.08.016.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friborg, O., Hjemdal, O., Rosenvinge, J. H. & Martinussen, M. (2003) A new rating scale for adult resilience: What are the central protective resources behind healthy adjustment? International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research 12(2):6576.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friedman, A. K., Walsh, J. J., Juarez, B., Ku, S. M., Chaudhury, D., Wang, J., Li, X., Dietz, D. M., Pan, N., Vialou, V. F., Neve, R. L., Yue, Z. & Han, M. H. (2014) Enhancing depression mechanisms in midbrain dopamine neurons achieves homeostatic resilience. Science 344:313–19. doi: 10.1126/science.1249240 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, B. M., Callaghan, B. L. & Richardson, R. (2014) Bridging the gap: Lessons we have learnt from the merging of psychology and psychiatry for the optimisation of treatments for emotional disorders. Behaviour Research and Therapy 62:316. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2014.07.012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartley, C. A. & Lee, F. S. (2015) Sensitive periods in affective development: Nonlinear maturation of fear learning. Neuropsychopharmacology: Official Publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology 40(1):5060. doi: 10.1038/npp.2014.179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Issler, O., Haramati, S., Paul, E. D., Maeno, H., Navon, I., Zwang, R., Gil, S., Mayberg, H. S., Dunlop, B. W., Menke, A., Awatramani, R., Binder, E. B., Deneris, E. S., Lowry, C. A. & Chen, A. (2014) MicroRNA 135 is essential for chronic stress resiliency, antidepressant efficacy, and intact serotonergic activity. Neuron 83(2):344–60. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2014.05.042.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Janicki-Deverts, D. & Cohen, S. (2011) Social ties and resilience in chronic disease. In: Resilience and mental health: Challenges across the lifespan, ed. Southwick, S. M., Litz, B. T., Charney, D. & Friedman, M. J., pp. 7689. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joormann, J., Siemer, M. & Gotlib, I. H. (2007) Mood regulation in depression: Differential effects of distraction and recall of happy memories on sad mood. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 116(3):484–90. doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.116.3.484.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Joseph, S. & Linley, P. A. (2006) Growth following adversity: Theoretical perspectives and implications for clinical practice. Clinical Psychology Review 26(8):1041–53. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2005.12.006.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kahnemann, D. (2011) Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Kashdan, T. B. & Rottenberg, J. (2010) Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. Clinical Psychology Review 30:865–78. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kross, E. & Ayduk, O. (2008) Facilitating adaptive emotional analysis: Distinguishing distanced-analysis of depressive experiences from immersed-analysis and distraction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34(7):924–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LeDoux, J. E. (2014) Coming to terms with fear. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111(8):2871–78. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1400335111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leventhal, H. & Scherer, K. R. (1987) The relationship of emotion to cognition: A functional approach to a semantic controversy. Cognition and Emotion 1:328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marr, D. (1982) Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Maslow, A. H. (1971) The farther reaches of human nature. Penguin.Google Scholar
McEwen, B. S. & Stellar, E. (1993) Stress and the individual: Mechanisms leading to disease. Archives of Internal Medicine 153(18):2093–101. doi: 10.1001/archinte.1993.00410180039004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mendl, M., Brooks, J., Basse, C., Burman, Paul, E. & Blackwell, E. & Casey, R. (2010) Dogs showing separation-related behaviour exhibit a “pessimistic” cognitive bias. Current Biology 20:R839–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moore, M. T. & Fresco, D. M. (2012) Depressive realism: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review 32(6):496509. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2012.05.004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moors, A. (2009) Theories of emotion causation: A review. Cognition and Emotion 23(4):625–62. doi: 10.1080/02699930802645739.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E. & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008) Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science 3(5):400–24. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00088.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Opitz, P. C., Gross, J. J. & Urry, H. L. (2012) Selection, optimization, and compensation in the domain of emotion regulation: Applications to adolescence, older age, and major depressive disorder. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 6(2):142–55. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00413.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pluess, M. & Belsky, J. (2013) Vantage sensitivity: Individual differences in response to positive experiences. Psychological Bulletin 139(4):901–16. doi: 10.1037/a0030196.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raskin, J. D. (2002) Constructivism in psychology: Personal construct psychology, radical constructivism, and social constructionism. American Communication Journal 5:126.Google Scholar
Reissman, D. B., Kowalski-Trakofler, K. M. & Katz, C. L. (2011) Public health practice and disaster resilience: A framework integrating resilience as a worker protection strategy. In: Resilience and mental health: Challenges across the lifespan, ed. Southwick, S. M., Litz, B. T., Charney, D. & Friedman, M. J., pp. 340–58. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, M. D. (1998) Running from William James' bear: A review of preattentive mechanisms and their contributions to emotional experience. Cognition and Emotion 12:667–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russo, S. J., Murrough, J. W., Han, M.-H., Charney, D. S. & Nestler, E. J. (2012) Neurobiology of resilience. Nature Neuroscience 15(11):1475–84. doi: 10.1038/nn.3234.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scheier, M. F. & Carver, C. S. (1985) Optimism, coping, and health: Assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies. Health Psychology 4:219–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scheier, M. F., Carver, C. S. & Bridges, M. W. (1994) Distinguishing optimism from neuroticism (and trait anxiety, self-mastery, and self-esteem): A reevaluation of the Life Orientation Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67(6):1063–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scherer, K. R. (2001) Appraisal considered as a process of multilevel sequential checking. In: Appraisal processes in emotion: Theory, methods, research, ed. Scherer, K. R., Schorr, A. & Johnstone, T., pp. 92120. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seligman, M. E., Rashid, T. & Parks, A. C. (2006) Positive psychotherapy. American Psychologist 61(8):774–88. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.61.8.774.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sheppes, G., Scheibe, S., Suri, G., Radu, P., Blechert, J. & Gross, J. J. (2014) Emotion regulation choice: A conceptual framework and supporting evidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General 143(1):163–81. doi: 10.1037/a0030831.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southwick, S. M., Pietrzak, R. H. & White, G. (2011b) Interventions to enhance resilience and resilience-related constructs in adults. In: Resilience and mental health: Challenges across the lifespan, ed. Southwick, S. M., Litz, B. T., Charney, D. & Friedman, M. J., pp. 289306. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tedeschi, R. G. & Calhoun, L. G. (2004) Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry 15(1):118. doi: 10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thiruchselvam, R., Blechert, J., Sheppes, G., Rydstrom, A. & Gross, J. J. (2011) The temporal dynamics of emotion regulation: An EEG study of distraction and reappraisal. Biological Psychology 87(1):8492. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.02.009.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Troy, A. S., Shallcross, A. J. & Mauss, I. B. (2013) A person-by-situation approach to emotion regulation: Cognitive reappraisal can either help or hurt, depending on the context. Psychological Science 24:2505–14. doi: 10.1177/0956797613496434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tugade, M. M. & Frederickson, B. L. (2004) Resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce back from negative emotional experiences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86:320–33. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.320.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Walker, B. & Salt, D., eds. (2006) Resilience thinking: Sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing world. Island Press.Google Scholar
Windle, G. (2011) What is resilience? A review and concept analysis. Reviews in Clinical Gerontology 21(2):152–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Windle, G., Bennett, K. M. & Noyes, J. (2011) A methodological review of resilience measurement scales. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 9:8. doi: 10.1186/1477-7525-9-8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zautra, A. J. (2014) Resilience is social, after all. In: The resilience handbook, ed. Kent, M., Davis, M. C. & Reich, J. W., pp. 185–96. Routledge.Google Scholar