Psychological Resilience: An Affect-Regulation Framework

Abstract

Exposure to adversity (e.g., poverty, bereavement) is a robust predictor of disruptions in psychological functioning. However, people vary greatly in their responses to adversity; some experience severe long-term disruptions, others experience minimal disruptions or even improvements. We refer to the latter outcomes-faring better than expected given adversity-as psychological resilience. Understanding what processes explain resilience has critical theoretical and practical implications. Yet, psychology's understanding of resilience is incomplete, for two reasons: (a) We lack conceptual clarity, and (b) two major approaches to resilience-the stress and coping approach and the emotion and emotion-regulation approach-have limitations and are relatively isolated from one another. To address these two obstacles,we first discuss conceptual questions about resilience. Next, we offer an integrative affect-regulation framework that capitalizes on complementary strengths of both approaches. This framework advances our understanding of resilience by integrating existing findings, highlighting gaps in knowledge, and guiding future research.

Keywords: adversity; affect regulation; emotion; emotion regulation; psychological health; resilience; stress and coping.

Figure 1

Our conceptual approach to psychological resilience. The two lines depict two prototypical trajectories: the green one leading to better-than-expected psychological health (resilience) and the red one leading to worse-than-expected psychological health (absence of resilience). The x-axis depicts time relative to adversity onset, indicating pre- and post-adversity. The y-axis depicts psychological health (i.e., resilience). The graded green and red backgrounds indicate that people fall along a continuum of resilience rather than into discrete types. The graded gray background indicates the gradual offset of adversity exposure.

Figure 2

An affect-regulation framework of psychological resilience. Families of affect-regulation strategies predict short-term consequences, which predict resilience. Features of adversity influence affect regulation, its short-term consequences, and its links with resilience, as indicated by the darker-gray box. The broader context, indicated by the larger lighter-gray box, encompasses all other aspects of the framework as it influences features of adversity as well as affect regulation, its short-term consequences, its links with resilience, and even what constitutes resilience in the first place. The broader context can also give rise to three-way interactions with adversity and any other aspects of the framework depicted here. Affective experience and social processes are bolded because they are the focus of the empirical review.