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communication skills conversation analysis Empathy and Active Listening

Mental Presence. Increase your attention and perception during interactions. What best world coaches do

Copyright by Dr. Daniele Trevisani. Article extracted with author’s permission from the book “Ascolto attivo ed Empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace” (translated title: “Active Listening and Empathy: The Secretes of Effective Communication”. The book’s rights are on sale in any language. Please contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani for information at the website www.danieletrevisani.com

Mental Presence: Knowing how to pick up signals, and what best coaches do

There is an urgent need to return to our ancestral sensibilities. We urgently need to restore our ability to increase our mental presence to perceive correctly, even before logically evaluating data alone. To do this, we must apply mental presence in conversations and know how to use listening in a special way, making it an “augmented perception” of any signal that enters our sphere:

  1. Verbal auditory signals. What did Tom just say at the other table?
  2. Paralinguistic auditory signals. Can I hear a person’s vocal stress?
  3. Tactile-tactile signals (did someone just sit in this chair? Is it warm?), or “what does this handshake tell me about you?
  4. Kinaesthetic-visual signals: how is the team today? Understand it in stride, in posture. Understand it even in the locker room. Do they seem calm or agitated? Demotivated or motivated?
  5. Olfactory Signals: What is this new smell I smell in my newly purchased car, have I ever paid attention to it? Am I aware that it is an engineered smell, or do I think it is a result of chance?
  6. Emotional Signals: how am I in the moment, how is my anxiety, my joy, my heart, my dreaming, my living in relationship with others and myself? E... How is the person in front of me? How is he/she breathing, what is he/she feeling?
  7. Body signs: what job might the second from the right on that table be doing, based on the type of muscles and how he is dressed and the marks I notice on his skin?
  8. Holistic signals: who is the most dangerous or dissonant person in this train car or bar, is there someone who might be dangerous? Based on what do I notice?

The signals are many. Signs of love, signs of hate, signs of indifference, signs of fear, signs of disgust, signs of friendship. If only we knew how to catch them all….

But as soon as we realize that the discourse does not touch our vital interests, we turn around and continue in our distracted way.

Distraction is an evil of the age.

The “rage of the times” and the rush have brought listening to absolute lows in the history of Western civilization.

Smartphones and other electronic devices have replaced people, and so we have become good at “listening” to the signals of electronic devices, recognizing a beep from a different beep, manipulating a phone or a touchscreen, but less good at looking into the eyes of a person who is speaking to us live and grasping their nuances, micro expressions, tone of voice, gaze, head nods, and understanding what they are feeling, and whether or not they are lying.

Throughout the book there will be dozens and dozens of useful tools to re-learn the art and technique of “reading people” – which means practicing a “listening beyond words”. The important thing is that the spark is ignited in us. The spark of ancestral DNA. The spark of curiosity.

The fury of the times has accustomed students to quizzes, multiple-choice tests, computerized exams, and the oral exam is slowly disappearing from the landscape of academic training because it “takes too long”. Thus, we no longer learn to “tune in to the Professor and his interests that we may have heard in class,” because it has become unnecessary.

Even in groups of boys and girls, sitting at a table in a restaurant, one can notice a constant “doing” but with one’s smartphone, and an almost physical absence of where people really are, with rare, very rare conversations between participants, often superficial.

It’s never easy to listen. Sometimes it’s more comfortable to act deaf, turn on the Walkman, and isolate yourself from everyone. It is so easy to replace listening with emails, texts and chats, and in this way we deprive ourselves of faces, glances and hugs.

(Pope Francis)

______

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

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the prosperous coach

timothy gallwey

transformational coaching

Verbal auditory signals

vocal stress

weight loss coach

wellness coach

world coach

Categories
Coaching communication skills

Coaching Ancestral Skills

Copyright by Dr. Daniele Trevisani. Article extracted with author’s permission from the book “Ascolto attivo ed Empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace” (translated title: “Active Listening and Empathy: The Secretes of Effective Communication”. The book’s rights are on sale in any language. Please contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani for information at the website www.danieletrevisani.com

Knowing how to ‘read’ people. A return to our ancestral sensibilities

In our DNA there is an inherent part of us that is interested in what others say, how they look, how they move, even how they smell.

There are several reasons for that. One is human curiosity, the other is connected to personal interest and self-preservation.

One of our main ancestral preoccupations is to understand whether or not a person is dangerous to us, based on the communication signals we receive. Another very concrete preoccupation of a more everyday nature is to understand whether or not a person is credible, whether or not we can give them credit, based on how he/she communicates, the communication channels he/she uses, the signs and signals he/she emits[1].

Knowing how to read a person in an instant, means grasping what – in that ‘frame’ of time, a second, or a few minutes – the person is ’emitting’ about him/herself. And so we will be able to capture words, but also and above all emotional states, states of mind, by reading faces, reading the body, listening to the paralinguistic messages, the timbre, the vocality, even before the words.

Even from a photo you can tell something. You can also ‘listen’ to a photo, yes. Or a painting, or a piece of music, or a landscape, or a car..

Of a person, at work, we might trust what is written on his or her business card, but we insist on looking also at his or her posture, straight or curved back, chin, shoulders, and sad or proud eyes, to understand if he or she is proud of that card is handing to you, or if it is a burden for him or her.

Let’s even say that we are curious by nature, because survival requires knowing things, understanding who is hostile or friendly, and knowing how to do it in a fraction of a second, like the real hunters/gatherers we were, by looking, observing eyes, movements, intentions.

Instinctively smelling situations comes before ‘understanding them rationally’.

This is part of that Unconscious Intelligence, a form of intelligence that in this book we are adding to the many Multiple Intelligences we have, mental and bodily resources so well exposed by Howard Gardner[2].

Freud has already spoken of unconscious intelligence (calling it ‘Unbewussten Verständnis‘, or ‘unconscious understanding’), but without highlighting it as a resource available to all of us, and the philosopher Schelling (1775-1854) speaks of it even earlier,[3] identifying it as an ‘intelligence of nature’, but once again without considering it for what it may be, our most precious resource. But we want to do it.

Gardner showed how the phenomenon of ‘intelligence’ can be broken down into a varied series of distinct human abilities, therefore of different intelligences: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, personal and interpersonal[4], adding later, the intra-personal level of intelligence, related to knowing oneself.

Close to Inter-personal Intelligence, we add in this volume the category of Unconscious Intelligence, which we consider here as a real skill, a trainable competence for active listening, deriving from a stronger connection and training in the dialogue between the Neocortex (a recent part of the brain development), and other ancient areas such as the reptilian brain and the pre-mammalian brain, areas very able to pick up subtle and instinctive information.

And here we are: on the animal side of man, on his ‘reading the gaze’, on his ‘listening also to the unspoken’.

Knowing how to read people, their purposes, requires a return to ancestral skills, when attraction was signalled with eyes to other eyes, and not with a social profile. Now, more than ever, it is time to learn how to read people again. Because, on the one hand, we are losing the ability to recognise ‘bad guys’ or enemies, and on the other hand, we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and perhaps we say NO to someone who can do us no harm and may even bring us value.

Coaching listening skills becomes of the highest value, since it trains people in “perceiving more” and this can bring an extra-value to any situation, including:

  • Negotiations
  • Dating
  • Parenting
  • Friendship
  • Business
  • Social life
  • Sports
  • Performance

… and any other field of life.

[1] Weigold, Michael & Trevisani, Daniele (1993). Mass Media, image and persuasion: The indirect effect of communication channels on source credibility and message acceptance. Paper presented at the Annual meeting of the Association For Education In Journalism And Mass Communication, Kansas City, MO, USA, (1993, August).

[2] Howard Gardner (1983), Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Edition Hachette UK, 2011.

[3] Friedrich Schelling, Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie oder über das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen (The self as the principle of Philosophy or the foundation of human knowledge), 1795

Friedrich Schelling, Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (Ideas for a philosophy of nature), 1797

[4] Howard Gardner (2010), Formae mentis. Saggio sulla pluralità dell’intelligenza. Feltrinelli, Milano.

____

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

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Categories
Empathy and Active Listening

Skills and Supercompetence

Howell’s Staircase. Steps towards fluidity

Copyright by Dr. Daniele Trevisani. Article extracted with author’s permission from the book “Ascolto attivo ed Empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace” (translated title: “Active Listening and Empathy: The Secretes of Effective Communication”. The book’s rights are on sale in any language. Please contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani for information at the website www.danieletrevisani.com

If you were born with wings, I don’t see why you should crawl

if you were born with wings, I don’t see why you shouldn’t try to use them

if you are not born with wings, but you really want them, they will grow

until you don’t even notice you’re using them.

and you will fly high in the sky, free.

As highlighted in “Il Coraggio delle Emozioni”[1], Howell’s studies[2] summarise the human being’s climb towards higher level skills and competences, well exposed in Howell’s Staircase model.

This climb also applies to emotional and empathic listening skills. The different statuses can be extended to the field of training, Coaching or counselling. Let’s see their nature:

Picture 3 – Schematic visualisation of the Staircase of Competences

Howell staircase of competences model

  1. unconscious incompetence: what I don’t know, elements or gaps that escape my consciousness, my self-awareness;
  2. conscious incompetence: skill gaps of which I have become aware; becoming aware of a previously unknown lack of skills can be emotionally painful but it’s a necessary stage for learning;
  3. conscious competences: what I know I know; execution is possible, but a conscious attention must still be paid to the mechanisms, to the process at hand;
  4. unconscious competences: what I do without having to think about it. The execution takes place without having to think consciously, it uses psycho-motor and/or linguistic patterns already acquired, and this is why it requires a small or limited effort. It is based on a strong mastery of the mechanisms in action. It highlights the presence of mastery in skills, an internalised, definitively acquired ability;
  5. super-competences: the level of maximum mastery combined with an extreme technique training and personal skills that are out of the ordinary, which differentiates a key-performer, a star performer, from others, although they are good. It also includes intuition, bodily intelligence, multiple intelligences that converge to form the world’s best pilots, the world’s best musicians, the world’s best surgeons, the world’s best dancers, and any other kind of person who excels beyond the norm in his or her field.

Howell’s model was originally designed to study a ranking of states of intercultural empathy. Howell intended to study the different levels of a person’s ability to adapt them to a different cultural context (overcoming the difficulties that come with settling in a non-native country): when can I move well and smoothly within a culture, having incorporated and understood it completely?

This question was the starting point, but the model was then taken up by many as a general scheme of learning degrees in every field, sport, management, education.

William Howell and Stella Ting-Toomey also subsequently introduced a fifth category, Unconscious Super-Competence, to highlight those who, in a process of adaptation, manage to develop skills that are clearly above average, exceptional, above the limit.

The validity of this scale is wide; it concerns all kinds of learning in life. It helps us to ask where we are, or where we have stopped, and, above all, invites us to reflect on the fact that there is room for improvement everywhere and at all times. Also in learning to manage our emotions and develop empathy.

[1] “Il coraggio delle emozioni. Energie per la vita, la comunicazione e la crescita personale“, di Daniele Trevisani, Franco Angeli editore, 2015

[2] Howell, William S. (1982). The empathic communicator. University of Minnesota: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

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© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

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Four stages of competence

In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the “conscious competence” learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill.

History

Management trainer Martin M. Broadwell described the model as “the four levels of teaching” in February 1969.[1] Paul R. Curtiss and Phillip W. Warren mentioned the model in their 1973 book The Dynamics of Life Skills Coaching.[2] The model was used at Gordon Training International by its employee Noel Burch in the 1970s; there it was called the “four stages for learning any new skill”.[3] Later the model was frequently attributed to Abraham Maslow, incorrectly since the model does not appear in his major works.[4]

Overview

The four stages suggest that individuals are initially unaware of how little they know, or unconscious of their incompetence. As they recognize their incompetence, they consciously acquire a skill, then consciously use it. Eventually, the skill can be utilized without it being consciously thought through: the individual is said to have then acquired unconscious competence.[5]

Several elements, including helping someone “know what they don’t know” or recognize a blind spot, can be compared to some elements of a Johari window, although Johari deals with self-awareness, while the four stages of competence deals with learning stages.

Stages

howell competence hierarchy 4 levels

The four stages are:

  1. Unconscious incompetence
    The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.[5]
  2. Conscious incompetence
    Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, they recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.
  3. Conscious competence
    The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.[5]
  4. Unconscious competence
    The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become “second nature” and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

See also

References

  1. ^ Broadwell, Martin M. (20 February 1969). “Teaching for learning (XVI)”wordsfitlyspoken.org. The Gospel Guardian. Retrieved 11 May 2018.
  2. ^ Curtiss, Paul R.; Warren, Phillip W. (1973). The dynamics of life skills coaching. Life skills series. Prince Albert, Saskatchewan: Training Research and Development Station, Dept. of Manpower and Immigration. p. 89. OCLC 4489629.
  3. ^ Adams, Linda. “Learning a new skill is easier said than done”gordontraining.com. Gordon Training International. Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  4. ^ Hansen, Alice (2012). “Trainees and teachers as reflective learners”. In Hansen, Alice; et al. (eds.). Reflective learning and teaching in primary schools. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Learning Matters; Sage Publications. pp. 32–48 (34). doi:10.4135/9781526401977.n3ISBN 9780857257697OCLC 756592765.
  5. Jump up to:a b c Flower, Joe (January 1999). “In the mush”Physician Executive25 (1): 64–66. PMID 10387273.[dead link]

Further reading

A few examples among many peer-reviewed articles that mention the four stages:

Categories
Empathy and Active Listening

Listening, empathy, emotions, conversational leadership

Copyright by Dr. Daniele Trevisani. Article extracted with author’s permission from the book “Ascolto attivo ed Empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace” (translated title: “Active Listening and Empathy: The Secretes of Effective Communication”. The book’s right is on sale in any language. Please contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani for information at the website www.danieletrevisani.com

_____________

People do not listen, they just wait for their turn to talk. (Chuck Palahniuk)

Effective listening essentially has two meanings:

1) when listening has been useful to gather information and better understand the state of things, facts, and people;

2) when listening has been a pleasant, welcoming moment of relationship, in which we were able to act as an emotional container for the person.

When these two situations occur, we are experiencing effective listening. It is a quite rare situation. During a lifetime, no gold is as rare and as precious as someone who understands you. Some questions can be useful: Have you ever had the feeling that a person is not listening to you? That they do not want to hear you, or that they cannot hear you at all? Or have you ever felt that while you are talking, the other one is saying things halfway, not saying everything, holding something back?

Out of willingness, sometimes, or out of incapacity, or out of fear, who knows? Have you ever felt that persons you are talking, give a false idea of themselves, practising some form of “Impressions Management” (creating an artificial image of themselves)?

Have you ever intended to talk to someone in order to deepen a certain theme or situation, while the person continues to escape, run away, avoid? Have you ever felt the presence of a ‘core‘ behind a person’s talk, of content – ideas, opinions, projects – which is only observed in transparency, but does not emerge, no matter how hard the person tries to explain himself?

If you have ever experienced even one of these situations, you had been practising ‘listening beyond words‘, ‘heightened perception‘ and approached or approached the topics of active listening and empathy. Moreover, if there were interests at stake, you have experienced the importance of Conversational Leadership and the ability to direct the course of a conversation. In your own life, you have also experienced, how rare active listening is, and that being listened to is quite rare, compared to normal life where everything is rushing, and there is no time for anything.

Rather than blaming others for what they do or do not do, for whoever wants to, the main goal of this book is offering tools to improve your listening, whether at work or in everyday life, and practice quality listening, active listening, and empathic listening. The spirit of Virgil’s words, his invitation to always seek to understand, is the foundation that runs throughout this book: the underlying value that inspires us to practice active listening. You can be tired of everything, but not of understanding. (Virgil)

Listening is perception, and perceiving for us is normal, physiological.

You did it hundreds and thousands of times, even just observing people in how they are dressed or how they walk – inevitably. You did it whether you wanted to or not. As perception has become very superficial, so has listening. This is what matters, dishonourable because acute perception is a privileged path to truth.

Conversational leadership is the ability to restore the power of listening, to direct the conversation on the issues that interest us, or on the formats that we want to strategically activate (and listening is one of them). Why is leadership important for listening skills? Because leadership is a voluntary act, and in this volume, listening is considered a voluntary act, decided by the listener, not a random act likely to happen without paying attention. Human beings are endowed with natural listening skills, they use their hearing ability to understand sounds and words, because this is vital for their survival.

If we did not know how to listen, neither to sounds nor to intentions (e.g., aggressive, hostile, or friendly), we would already be extinct. It is believed that it takes courage to stand up and speak out, to have one is said. Well, very often it also takes courage to put our mind there, where we are now, to listen and look inside the soul and mind of a person. There is also courage in listening. Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. (Sir Winston Churchill)

Listen to emotions: emotions and communication

Emotions and communication are strongly related.

Emotions and communication

In addition to the verbal data (objects, subjects, verbs, adjectives, and other speech elements), we can always notice an emotional background in communication (the outer part of Plutchik’s wheel presented below). Sometimes this background becomes more intense, and we can almost ‘feel’ or ‘perceive’ better the emotional background than single words (area of intermediate emotions). When we enter the extreme emotions area, the intense ones are placed in the middle of the model, words become almost useless, because we are inundated by the emotion coming from the other, and this ends up overwhelming any content.

Plutchik’s Solid or Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions is one of the best representations of how emotions work. We must keep in mind that we are communicators too, so this system also applies when we are the ones talking.

Plutchick wheel of emotions

Inevitably, in a communicative exchange, we always have an underlying exchange of emotions.  Some people are particularly good and very quick at grasping their inner emotions, directing them, dominating them, making use of them as they wish. For example, speaking in public in front of thousands of people without feeling the slightest bit of anxiety.  On the other hand, other people fall victims of their emotions, may become victims of a love that is blind and deaf to all denials, and persevere in loving a person who does not love them, or who has never even shown any signs of love.

They may be afraid even thinking about the idea of speaking in public and fear it like the worst of poisons.  Each communicative situation (COMSIT) owns specific meanings and emotional undertones. COMSITs are specific frames or communicative moments that can be distinguished from each other, such as a dialogue between friends, or an argument, or giving explanations, and a thousand other possibilities in relationships.

In each COMSIT, different degrees of incommunicability and different types of emotions arise4.  What can we do then? The way, the only real way, is “to train oneself to emotions”. This way, it sounds like ‘training to live’, something intangible. And it is precisely this training in the intangible that makes ‘training in emotions’ an exercise in great emotional intelligence. Such as a refined gym of Experiential Coaching, for those who design active training exercises on emotions. 

This involves dealing with emotions in an ’emotional laboratory’ where they can be experienced and then ‘debriefed’ with the support of a trainer, coach, counsellor, or psychologist, depending on the type of intervention.  Working on corporate groups and not on clinical pathology situations, requires the Trainer and the Counsellor as main figures and reference. These “emotion workshops” must be engineered by using videos, images, letters, themed dialogues, and any kind of exercise involving emotions.  As Howell said about our ‘unconscious emotional incompetence’, at first, we may find it all a bit silly or we may be ‘clumsy’, but then we will ‘climb’ this peak, step by step, until we reach a strong emotional competence. 

This competence is necessary, the higher the career position is. Think of the need for emotional balance in a judge, or a surgeon, or a police officer, or in specific situations such as taking a penalty shot, or in difficult and extreme sports where emotions are everything, or almost everything.  Emotions are often mixed, a cross between different emotional states, as we see in this picture showing the primary, secondary, and tertiary links between emotion dyads in Plutchik’s model. 

mixed emotions

Links between emotional state produce different emotions in different emotional state (Mixed Emotions), our everyday actual emotional truth.

ascolto attivo ed empatia

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

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Categories
Coaching

Self-Esteem Coaching

Self-esteem

Self-esteem is an individual’s subjective evaluation of their own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself (for example, “I am unloved”, “I am worthy”) as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame.[1] Smith and Mackie (2007) defined it by saying “The self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, is the positive or negative evaluations of the self, as in how we feel about it.”[2]

Self-esteem is an attractive psychological construct because it predicts certain outcomes, such as academic achievement,[3][4] happiness,[5] satisfaction in marriage and relationships,[6] and criminal behavior.[6] Self-esteem can apply to a specific attribute (for example, “I believe I am a good writer and I feel happy about that”) or globally (for example, “I believe I am a bad person, and I feel bad about myself in general”). Psychologists usually regard self-esteem as an enduring personality characteristic (trait self-esteem), though normal, short-term variations (state self-esteem) also exist. Synonyms or near-synonyms of self-esteem include many things: self-worth,[7] self-regard,[8] self-respect,[9][10] and self-integrity.

History

The concept of self-esteem has its origins in the 18th century, first expressed in the writings of David Hume. The Scottish enlightenment thinker, shows the idea that it is important to value and think well of yourself because it serves as a motivational function that enables people to explore their full potential.[11][12]

The identification of self-esteem as a distinct psychological construct has its origins in the work of philosopher, psychologist, geologist, and anthropologist William James (1892). James identified multiple dimensions of the self, with two levels of hierarchy: processes of knowing (called the ‘I-self’) and the resulting knowledge about the self (the ‘Me-self’). The observation about the self and storage of those observations by the I-self creates three types of knowledge, which collectively account for the Me-self, according to James. These are the material selfsocial self, and spiritual self. The social self comes closest to self-esteem, comprising all characteristics recognized by others. The material self consists of representations of the body and possessions and the spiritual self of descriptive representations and evaluative dispositions regarding the self. This view of self-esteem as the collection of an individual’s attitudes toward oneself remains today.[13]

In the mid-1960s, social psychologist Morris Rosenberg defined self-esteem as a feeling of self-worth and developed the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSES), which became the most-widely used scale to measure self-esteem in the social sciences.[14]

In the early 20th century, the behaviorist movement minimized introspective study of mental processes, emotions, and feelings, replacing introspection with objective study through experiments on behaviors observed in relation with the environment. Behaviorism viewed the human being as an animal subject to reinforcements, and suggested placing psychology as an experimental science, similar to chemistry or biology. As a consequence, clinical trials on self-esteem were overlooked, since behaviorists considered the idea less liable to rigorous measurement.[15] In the mid-20th century, the rise of phenomenology and humanistic psychology led to renewed interest in self-esteem. Self-esteem then took a central role in personal self-actualization and in the treatment of psychic disorders. Psychologists started to consider the relationship between psychotherapy and the personal satisfaction of persons with high self-esteem as useful to the field. This led to new elements being introduced to the concept of self-esteem, including the reasons why people tend to feel less worthy and why people become discouraged or unable to meet challenges by themselves.[15]

In 1992 the political scientist Francis Fukuyama associated self-esteem with what Plato called thymos – the “spiritedness” part of the Platonic soul.[16]

As of 1997 the core self-evaluations approach included self-esteem as one of four dimensions that comprise one’s fundamental appraisal of oneself – along with locus of controlneuroticism, and self-efficacy.[17] The concept of core self-evaluations as first examined by Judge, Locke, and Durham (1997),[17] has since proven to have the ability to predict job satisfaction and job performance.[17][18][19][20][21] Self-esteem may be essential to self-evaluation.[20]

In public policy

The importance of self-esteem gained endorsement from some government and non-government groups starting around the 1970s, such that one can speak of a self-esteem movement.[5][22] This movement can be used[by whom?] as an example of promising evidence that psychological research can have an effect on forming public policy.[citation needed] The underlying idea of the movement was that low self-esteem was the root of problems for individuals, making it the root of societal problems and dysfunctions. A leading figure of the movement, psychologist Nathaniel Branden, stated: “[I] cannot think of a single psychological problem – from anxiety and depression, to fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse battery or child molestation – that is not traced back to the problem of low self-esteem”.[5]:3

Self-esteem was believed[by whom?] to be a cultural phenomenon of Western individualistic societies since low self-esteem was not found in collectivist countries such as Japan.[23] Concern about low self-esteem and its many presumed negative consequences led California assemblyman John Vasconcellos to work to set up and fund the Task Force on Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility in California in 1986. Vasconcellos argued that this task force could combat many of the state’s problems – from crime and teen pregnancy to school underachievement and pollution.[5] He compared increasing self-esteem to giving out a vaccine for a disease: it could help protect people from being overwhelmed by life‘s challenges.

The task force set up committees in many California counties and formed a committee of scholars to review the available literature on self-esteem. This committee found very small associations between low self-esteem and its assumed consequences, ultimately showing that low self-esteem is not the root of all societal problems and not as important as the committee had originally thought. However, the authors of the paper that summarized the review of the literature still believe that self-esteem is an independent variable that affects major social problems. The task force disbanded in 1995, and the National Council for Self-Esteem and later the National Association for Self-Esteem (NASE) was established,[by whom?] taking on the task force’s mission. Vasconcellos and Jack Canfield were members of its advisory board in 2003, and members of its Masters’ Coalition included Anthony RobbinsBernie Siegel, and Gloria Steinem.[5]

Theories

Many early theories suggested that self-esteem is a basic human need or motivation. American psychologist Abraham Maslow included self-esteem in his hierarchy of human needs. He described two different forms of “esteem”: the need for respect from others in the form of recognition, success, and admiration, and the need for self-respect in the form of self-love, self-confidence, skill, or aptitude.[24] Respect from others was believed to be more fragile and easily lost than inner self-esteem. According to Maslow, without the fulfillment of the self-esteem need, individuals will be driven to seek it and unable to grow and obtain self-actualization. Maslow also states that the healthiest expression of self-esteem “is the one which manifests in the respect we deserve for others, more than renown, fame, and flattery”. Modern theories of self-esteem explore the reasons humans are motivated to maintain a high regard for themselves. Sociometer theory maintains that self-esteem evolved to check one’s level of status and acceptance in ones’ social group. According to Terror Management Theory, self-esteem serves a protective function and reduces anxiety about life and death.[25]

Carl Rogers (1902–1987), an advocate of humanistic psychology, theorized the origin of many people’s problems to be that they despise themselves and consider themselves worthless and incapable of being loved. This is why Rogers believed in the importance of giving unconditional acceptance to a client and when this was done it could improve the client’s self-esteem.[15] In his therapy sessions with clients, he offered positive regard no matter what.[26] Indeed, the concept of self-esteem is approached since then in humanistic psychology as an inalienable right for every person, summarized in the following sentence:

Every human being, with no exception, for the mere fact to be it, is worthy of unconditional respect of everybody else; he deserves to esteem himself and to be esteemed.[15]

Measurement

Self-esteem is typically assessed using self-report inventories.

One of the most widely used instruments, the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSES) is a 10-item self-esteem scale score that requires participants to indicate their level of agreement with a series of statements about themselves. An alternative measure, The Coopersmith Inventory uses a 50-question battery over a variety of topics and asks subjects whether they rate someone as similar or dissimilar to themselves.[27] If a subject’s answers demonstrate solid self-regard, the scale regards them as well adjusted. If those answers reveal some inner shame, it considers them to be prone to social deviance.[28]

Implicit measures of self-esteem began to be used in the 1980s.[29] These rely on indirect measures of cognitive processing thought to be linked to implicit self-esteem, including the Name Letter Task.[30] Such indirect measures are designed to reduce awareness of the process of assessment. When used to assess implicit self-esteem, psychologists feature self-relevant stimuli to the participant and then measure how quickly a person identifies positive or negative stimuli.[31] For example, if a woman was given the self-relevant stimuli of female and mother, psychologists would measure how quickly she identified the negative word, evil, or the positive word, kind.

Development across lifespan

Experiences in a person’s life are a major source of how self-esteem develops.[5] In the early years of a child’s life, parents have a significant influence on self-esteem and can be considered the main source of positive and negative experiences a child will have.[32] Unconditional love from parents helps a child develop a stable sense of being cared for and respected. These feelings translate into later effects on self-esteem as the child grows older.[33] Students in elementary school who have high self-esteem tend to have authoritative parents who are caring, supportive adults who set clear standards for their child and allow them to voice their opinion in decision making.

Although studies thus far have reported only a correlation of warm, supportive parenting styles (mainly authoritative and permissive) with children having high self-esteem, these parenting styles could easily be thought of as having some causal effect in self-esteem development.[32][34][35][36] Childhood experiences that contribute to healthy self-esteem include being listened to, being spoken to respectfully, receiving appropriate attention and affection and having accomplishments recognized and mistakes or failures acknowledged and accepted. Experiences that contribute to low self-esteem include being harshly criticized, being physically, sexually or emotionally abused, being ignored, ridiculed or teased or being expected to be “perfect” all the time.[37]

During school-aged years, academic achievement is a significant contributor to self-esteem development.[5] Consistently achieving success or consistently failing will have a strong effect on students’ individual self-esteem.[38] However, students can also experience low self-esteem while in school. For example, they may not have academic achievements, or they live in a troubled environment outside of school. Issues like the ones previously stated, can cause adolescents to doubt themselves. Social experiences are another important contributor to self-esteem. As children go through school, they begin to understand and recognize differences between themselves and their classmates. Using social comparisons, children assess whether they did better or worse than classmates in different activities. These comparisons play an important role in shaping the child’s self-esteem and influence the positive or negative feelings they have about themselves.[39][40] As children go through adolescence, peer influence becomes much more important. Adolescents make appraisals of themselves based on their relationships with close friends.[41] Successful relationships among friends are very important to the development of high self-esteem for children. Social acceptance brings about confidence and produces high self-esteem, whereas rejection from peers and loneliness brings about self-doubts and produces low self-esteem.[42]

Adolescence shows an increase in self-esteem that continues to increase in young adulthood and middle age.[6] A decrease is seen from middle age to old age with varying findings on whether it is a small or large decrease.[6] Reasons for the variability could be because of differences in health, cognitive ability, and socioeconomic status in old age.[6] No differences have been found between males and females in their development of self-esteem.[6] Multiple cohort studies show that there is not a difference in the life-span trajectory of self-esteem between generations due to societal changes such as grade inflation in education or the presence of social media.[6]

High levels of mastery, low risk taking, and better health are ways to predict higher self-esteem. In terms of personality, emotionally stable, extroverted, and conscientious individuals experience higher self-esteem.[6] These predictors have shown us that self-esteem has trait-like qualities by remaining stable over time like personality and intelligence.[6] However, this does not mean it can not be changed.[6] Hispanic adolescents have a slightly lower self-esteem than their black and white peers, but then slightly higher levels by age 30.[43][44] African Americans have a sharper increase in self-esteem in adolescence and young adulthood compared to Whites. However, during old age, they experience a more rapid decline in self-esteem.[6]

Shame

Shame can be a contributor to those with problems of low self-esteem.[45] Feelings of shame usually occur because of a situation where the social self is devalued, such as a socially evaluated poor performance. A poor performance leads to higher responses of psychological states that indicate a threat to the social self namely a decrease in social self-esteem and an increase in shame.[46] This increase in shame can be helped with self-compassion.[47][48]

Real self, ideal self, and dreaded self

There are three levels of self-evaluation development in relation to the real self, ideal self, and the dreaded self. The real, ideal, and dreaded selves develop in children in a sequential pattern on cognitive levels.[49]

  • Moral judgment stages: Individuals describe their real, ideal, and dreaded selves with stereotypical labels, such as “nice” or “bad”. Individuals describe their ideal and real selves in terms of disposition for actions or as behavioral habits. The dreaded self is often described as being unsuccessful or as having bad habits.
  • Ego development stages: Individuals describe their ideal and real selves in terms of traits that are based on attitudes as well as actions. The dreaded self is often described as having failed to meet social expectations or as self-centered.
  • Self-understanding stages: Individuals describe their ideal and real selves as having unified identities or characters. Descriptions of the dreaded self focus on a failure to live up to one’s ideals or role expectations often because of real world problems.

This development brings with it increasingly complicated and encompassing moral demands. This level is where individuals’ self-esteems can suffer because they do not feel as though they are living up to certain expectations. This feeling will moderately affect one’s self-esteem with an even larger effect seen when individuals believe they are becoming their dreaded selves.[49]

Types

High

Pyramid of Maslow.

People with a healthy level of self-esteem:[50]

  • Firmly believe in certain values and principles, and are ready to defend them even when finding opposition, feeling secure enough to modify them in light of experience.[15]
  • Are able to act according to what they think to be the best choice, trusting their own judgment, and not feeling guilty when others do not like their choice.[15]
  • Do not lose time worrying excessively about what happened in the past, nor about what could happen in the future. They learn from the past and plan for the future, but live in the present intensely.[15]
  • Fully trust in their capacity to solve problems, not hesitating after failures and difficulties. They ask others for help when they need it.[15]
  • Consider themselves equal in dignityto others, rather than inferior or superior, while accepting differences in certain talents, personal prestige or financial standing.[15]
  • Understand how they are an interesting and valuable person for others, at least for those with whom they have a friendship.[15]
  • Resist manipulation, collaborate with others only if it seems appropriate and convenient.[15]
  • Admit and accept different internal feelings and drives, either positive or negative, revealing those drives to others only when they choose.[15]
  • Are able to enjoy a great variety of activities.[15]
  • Are sensitive to feelings and needs of others; respect generally accepted social rules, and claim no right or desire to prosper at others’ expense.[15]
  • Can work toward finding solutions and voice discontent without belittling themselves or others when challenges arise.[51]

Secure vs. defensive

A person can have high self-esteem and hold it confidently where they do not need reassurance from others to maintain their positive self-view, whereas others with defensive high self-esteem may still report positive self-evaluations on the Rosenberg Scale, as all high self-esteem individuals do; however, their positive self-views are fragile and vulnerable to criticism. Defensive high self-esteem individuals internalize subconscious self-doubts and insecurities, causing them to react very negatively to any criticism they may receive. There is a need for constant positive feedback from others for these individuals to maintain their feelings of self-worth. The necessity of repeated praise can be associated with boastful, arrogant behavior or sometimes even aggressive and hostile feelings toward anyone who questions the individual’s self-worth, an example of threatened egotism.[52][53]

The Journal of Educational Psychology conducted a study in which they used a sample of 383 Malaysian undergraduates participating in work integrated learning (WIL) programs across five public universities to test the relationship between self-esteem and other psychological attributes such as self-efficacy and self-confidence. The results demonstrated that self-esteem has a positive and significant relationship with self-confidence and self-efficacy since students with higher self-esteem had better performances at university than those with lower self-esteem. It was concluded that higher education institutions and employers should emphasize the importance of undergraduates’ self-esteem development.[54]

Implicit, explicit, narcissism and threatened egotism

Implicit self-esteem refers to a person’s disposition to evaluate themselves positively or negatively in a spontaneous, automatic, or unconscious manner. It contrasts with explicit self-esteem, which entails more conscious and reflective self-evaluation. Both explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem are subtypes of self-esteem proper.

Narcissism is a disposition people may have that represents an excessive love for one’s self. It is characterized by an inflated view of self-worth. Individuals who score high on narcissism measures, Robert Raskin’s 40 Item True or False Test, would likely select true to such statements as “If I ruled the world, it would be a much better place.”[55] There is only a moderate correlation between narcissism and self-esteem;[56] that is to say that an individual can have high self-esteem but low narcissism or can be a conceited, obnoxious person and score high self-esteem and high narcissism.[57]

Threatened egotism is characterized as a response to criticism that threatens the ego of narcissists; they often react in a hostile and aggressive manner.[14][58][59]

Low

Low self-esteem can result from various factors, including genetic factors, physical appearance or weight, mental health issues, socioeconomic status, significant emotional experiences, social stigmapeer pressure or bullying.[60]

A person with low self-esteem may show some of the following characteristics:[61]

  • Heavy self-criticismand dissatisfaction.[15]
  • Hypersensitivityto criticism with resentment against critics and feelings of being attacked.[15]
  • Chronic indecisionand an exaggerated fear of mistakes.[15]
  • Excessive will to pleaseand unwillingness to displease any petitioner.[15]
  • Perfectionism, which can lead to frustration when perfection is not achieved.[15]
  • Neurotic guilt, dwelling on or exaggerating the magnitude of past mistakes.[15]
  • Floating hostilityand general defensiveness and irritability without any proximate cause.[15]
  • Pessimismand a general negative outlook.[15]
  • Envy, invidiousness, or general resentment.[15]
  • Sees temporary setbacks as permanent, intolerable conditions.[51]

Individuals with low self-esteem tend to be critical of themselves. Some depend on the approval and praise of others when evaluating self-worth. Others may measure their likability in terms of successes: others will accept themselves if they succeed but will not if they fail.[62]

The three states

This classification proposed by Martin Ross[63] distinguishes three states of self-esteem compared to the “feats” (triumphshonorsvirtues) and the “anti-feats” (defeatsembarrassmentshame, etc.) of the individuals.[4][64]

Shattered[

The individual does not regard themselves as valuable or lovable. They may be overwhelmed by defeat, or shame, or see themselves as such, and they name their “anti-feat”. For example, if they consider that being over a certain age is an anti-feat, they define themselves with the name of their anti-feat, and say, “I am old”. They express actions and feelings such as pity, insulting themselves, and they may become paralyzed by their sadness.[63][65]

Vulnerable

The individual has a generally positive self-image. However, their self-esteem is also vulnerable to the perceived risk of an imminent anti-feat (such as defeat, embarrassment, shame, discredit), consequently, they are often nervous and regularly use defense mechanisms.[65] A typical protection mechanism of those with vulnerable self-esteem may consist in avoiding decision-making. Although such individuals may outwardly exhibit great self-confidence, the underlying reality may be just the opposite: the apparent self-confidence is indicative of their heightened fear of anti-feats and the fragility of their self-esteem.[4] They may also try to blame others to protect their self-image from situations that would threaten it. They may employ defense mechanisms, including attempting to lose at games and other competitions in order to protect their self-image by publicly dissociating themselves from a need to win, and asserting an independence from social acceptance which they may deeply desire. In this deep fear of being unaccepted by an individual’s peers, they make poor life choices by making risky decisions.[64][65]

Strong

People with strong self-esteem have a positive self-image and enough strength so that anti-feats do not subdue their self-esteem. They have less fear of failure. These individuals appear humble, cheerful, and this shows a certain strength not to boast about feats and not to be afraid of anti-feats.[64][65] They are capable of fighting with all their might to achieve their goals because, if things go wrong, their self-esteem will not be affected. They can acknowledge their own mistakes precisely because their self-image is strong, and this acknowledgment will not impair or affect their self-image.[65] They live with less fear of losing social prestige, and with more happiness and general well-being.[65] However, no type of self-esteem is indestructible,[citation needed] and due to certain situations or circumstances in life, one can fall from this level into any other state of self-esteem.[63][65]

Contingent vs. non-contingent

A distinction is made between contingent (or conditional[66]) and non-contingent (or unconditional[67]) self-esteem.

Contingent self-esteem is derived from external sources, such as what others say, one’s success or failure, one’s competence,[68] or relationship-contingent self-esteem.

Therefore, contingent self-esteem is marked by instability, unreliability, and vulnerability. Persons lacking a non-contingent self-esteem are “predisposed to an incessant pursuit of self-value”.[69] However, because the pursuit of contingent self-esteem is based on receiving approval, it is doomed to fail, as no one receives constant approval, and disapproval often evokes depression. Furthermore, fear of disapproval inhibits activities in which failure is possible.[70]

“The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable…. This is the Pauline-Lutheran doctrine of ‘justification by faith.'” Paul Tillich[71]

Non-contingent self-esteem is described as true, stable, and solid.[72] It springs from a belief that one is “acceptable period, acceptable before life itself, ontologically acceptable”.[73] Belief that one is “ontologically acceptable” is to believe that one’s acceptability is “the way things are without contingency”.[74] In this belief, as expounded by theologian Paul Tillich, acceptability is not based on a person’s virtue. It is an acceptance given “in spite of our guilt, not because we have no guilt”.[75]

Psychiatrist Thomas A Harris drew on Tillich for his classic I’m OK – You’re OK that addresses non-contingent self-esteem. Harris translated Tillich’s “acceptable” by the vernacular OK, a term that means “acceptable”.[76] The Christian message, said Harris, is not “YOU CAN BE OK, IF”; it is “YOU ARE ACCEPTED, unconditionally”.[77]

A secure non-contingent self-esteem springs from the belief that one is ontologically acceptable and accepted.[78]

Importance

Abraham Maslow states that psychological health is not possible unless the essential core of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by oneself. Self-esteem allows people to face life with more confidence, benevolence, and optimism, and thus easily reach their goals and self-actualize.[79]

Self-esteem may make people convinced they deserve happiness.[79] Understanding this is fundamental, and universally beneficial, since the development of positive self-esteem increases the capacity to treat other people with respect, benevolence and goodwill, thus favoring rich interpersonal relationships and avoiding destructive ones.[79] For Erich Fromm, the love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love toward themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others. Self-esteem allows creativity at the workplace and is a specially critical condition for teaching professions.[80]

José-Vicente Bonet claims that the importance of self-esteem is obvious as a lack of self-esteem is, he says, not a loss of esteem from others, but self-rejection. Bonet claims that this corresponds to major depressive disorder.[15] Freud also claimed that the depressive has suffered “an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale….He has lost his self-respect”.[81]

The Yogyakarta Principles, a document on international human rights law, addresses the discriminatory attitude toward LGBT people that makes their self-esteem low to be subject to human rights violation including human trafficking.[82] The World Health Organization recommends in “Preventing Suicide“,[83] published in 2000, that strengthening students’ self-esteem is important to protect children and adolescents against mental distress and despondency, enabling them to cope adequately with difficult and stressful life situations.[84]

Other than increased happiness, higher self-esteem is also known to correlate with a better ability to cope with stress and a higher likeliness of taking on difficult tasks relative to those with low self-esteem.[85]

Correlations

From the late 1970s to the early 1990s many Americans assumed as a matter of course that students’ self-esteem acted as a critical factor in the grades that they earned in school, in their relationships with their peers, and in their later success in life. Under this assumption, some American groups created programs which aimed to increase the self-esteem of students. Until the 1990s, little peer-reviewed and controlled research took place on this topic.

Peer-reviewed research undertaken since then has not validated previous assumptions. Recent research indicates that inflating students’ self-esteems in and of itself has no positive effect on grades. Roy Baumeister has shown that inflating self-esteem by itself can actually decrease grades.[86][87] The relationship involving self-esteem and academic results does not signify that high self-esteem contributes to high academic results. It simply means that high self-esteem may be accomplished as a result of high academic performance due to the other variables of social interactions and life events affecting this performance.[5]

“Attempts by pro-esteem advocates to encourage self-pride in students solely by reason of their uniqueness as human beings will fail if feelings of well-being are not accompanied by well-doing. It is only when students engage in personally meaningful endeavors for which they can be justifiably proud that self-confidence grows, and it is this growing self-assurance that in turn triggers further achievement.”[88]

High self-esteem has a high correlation to self-reported happiness; whether this is a causal relationship has not been established.[5] The relationship between self-esteem and life satisfaction is stronger in individualistic cultures.[89]

Additionally, self-esteem has been found to be related to forgiveness in close relationships, in that people with high self-esteem will be more forgiving than people with low self-esteem.[90]

High self-esteem does not prevent children from smoking, drinking, taking drugs, or engaging in early sex.[5] One exception is that high self-esteem reduces the chances of bulimia in females.[5]

Neuroscience

In research conducted in 2014 by Robert S. Chavez and Todd F. Heatherton, it was found that self-esteem is related to the connectivity of the frontostriatal circuit. The frontostriatal pathway connects the medial prefrontal cortex, which deals with self-knowledge, to the ventral striatum, which deals with feelings of motivation and reward. Stronger anatomical pathways are correlated with higher long-term self-esteem, while stronger functional connectivity is correlated with higher short-term self-esteem.[91]

Criticism and controversy

The American psychologist Albert Ellis criticized on numerous occasions the concept of self-esteem as essentially self-defeating and ultimately destructive.[92] Although acknowledging the human propensity and tendency to ego rating as innate, he has critiqued the philosophy of self-esteem as unrealistic, illogical and self- and socially destructive – often doing more harm than good. Questioning the foundations and usefulness of generalized ego strength, he has claimed that self-esteem is based on arbitrary definitional premises, and over-generalized, perfectionistic and grandiose thinking.[92] Acknowledging that rating and valuing behaviors and characteristics is functional and even necessary, he sees rating and valuing human beings’ totality and total selves as irrational and unethical. The healthier alternative to self-esteem according to him is unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional other-acceptance.[93] Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a psychotherapy based on this approach.[94]

“There seem to be only two clearly demonstrated benefits of high self-esteem….First, it increases initiative, probably because it lends confidence. People with high self-esteem are more willing to act on their beliefs, to stand up for what they believe in, to approach others, to risk new undertakings. (This unfortunately includes being extra willing to do stupid or destructive things, even when everyone else advises against them.)…It can also lead people to ignore sensible advice as they stubbornly keep wasting time and money on hopeless causes”[95]

False attempts

For persons with low self-esteem, any positive stimulus will temporarily raise self-esteem. Therefore, possessions, sex, success, or physical appearance will produce the development of self-esteem, but the development is ephemeral at best.[96] Such attempts to raise one’s self-esteem by positive stimulus produce a “boom or bust” pattern. “Compliments and positive feedback” produce a boost, but a bust follows a lack of such feedback. For a person whose “self-esteem is contingent”, success is “not extra sweet”, but “failure is extra bitter”.[70]

As narcissism

Life satisfaction, happiness, healthy behavioral practices, perceived efficacy, and academic success and adjustment have been associated with having high levels of self-esteem (Harter, 1987; Huebner, 1991; Lipschitz-Elhawi & Itzhaky, 2005; Rumberger 1995; Swenson & Prelow, 2005; Yarcheski & Mahon, 1989).[97]:270 However, a common mistake is to think that loving oneself is necessarily equivalent to narcissism, as opposed for example to what Erik Erikson speaks of as “a post-narcissistic love of the ego”.[98] People with a healthy self-esteem accept and love themselves unconditionally, acknowledging both virtues and faults in the self, and yet, in spite of everything, is able to continue to love themselves. In narcissists, by contrast, an ” uncertainty about their own worth gives rise to…a self-protective, but often totally spurious, aura of grandiosity[99] – producing the class “of narcissists, or people with very high, but insecure, self-esteem… fluctuating with each new episode of social praise or rejection.”[2]:479

Narcissism can thus be seen as a symptom of fundamentally low self-esteem, that is, lack of love towards oneself, but often accompanied by “an immense increase in self-esteem” based on “the defense mechanism of denial by overcompensation.”[100] “Idealized love of self…rejected the part of him” that he denigrates – “this destructive little child”[101] within. Instead, the narcissist emphasizes their virtues in the presence of others, just to try to convince themself that they are a valuable person and to try to stop feeling ashamed for their faults;[15] such “people with unrealistically inflated self-views, which may be especially unstable and highly vulnerable to negative information,…tend to have poor social skills.”[2]:126

See also

References

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Further reading

  • Baumeister, Roy F. (2001). “Violent Pride: Do people turn violent because of self-hate or self-love?,” in Scientific American284, No. 4, pp. 96–101; April 2001.
  • Branden, N. (1969). The Psychology of Self-Esteem. New York: Bantam.
  • Branden, N. (2001). The psychology of self-esteem: a revolutionary approach to self-understanding that launched a new era in modern psychology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001. ISBN0787945269
  • Burke, C. (2008) “Self-esteem: Why?; Why not?,” New York: 2008
  • Crocker J.; Park L. E. (2004). “The costly pursuit of self-esteem”. Psychological Bulletin. 130(3): 392–414. doi:1037/0033-2909.130.3.392PMID 15122925.
  • Franklin, Richard L. (1994). “Overcoming The Myth of Self-Worth: Reason and Fallacy in What You Say to Yourself.” ISBN0963938703
  • Hill, S.E. & Buss, D.M.(2006). “The Evolution of Self-Esteem.” In Michael Kernis, (Ed.), Self Esteem: Issues and Answers: A Sourcebook of Current Perspectives.. Psychology Press:New York. 328–33. Full text
  • Lerner, Barbara (1985). “Self-Esteem and Excellence: The Choice and the Paradox,” American Educator, Winter 1985.
  • Mecca, Andrew M., et al., (1989). The Social Importance of Self-esteemUniversity of California Press, 1989. (ed; other editors included Neil J. Smelser and John Vasconcellos)
  • Mruk, C. (2006). Self-Esteem research, theory, and practice: Toward a positive psychology of self-esteem(3rd ed.). New York: Springer.
  • Rodewalt F.; Tragakis M. W. (2003). “Self-esteem and self-regulation: Toward optimal studies of self-esteem”. Psychological Inquiry. 14(1): 66–70. doi:1207/s15327965pli1401_02.
  • Ruggiero, Vincent R. (2000). “Bad Attitude: Confronting the Views That Hinder Student’s Learning” American Educator.
  • Sedikides, C., & Gregg. A. P. (2003). “Portraits of the self.” In M. A. Hogg & J. Cooper (Eds.), Sage handbook of social psychology(pp. 110–38). London: Sage Publications.
  • Twenge, Jean M. (2007). Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before. Free Press. ISBN978-0743276986
Categories
Resilience

Resilience

Resilience. What it really is and why it is so important

Resilience is the ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly.[1] Resilience exists when the person uses “mental processes and behaviors in promoting personal assets and protecting self from the potential negative effects of stressors”.[2] In simpler terms, psychological resilience exists in people who develop psychological and behavioral capabilities that allow them to remain calm during crises/chaos and to move on from the incident without long-term negative consequences.

Background

Resilience is generally thought of as a “positive adaptation” after a stressful or adverse situation.[3] When a person is “bombarded by daily stress, it disrupts their internal and external sense of balance, presenting challenges as well as opportunities.” However, the routine stressors of daily life can have positive impacts which promote resilience. It is still unknown what the correct level of stress is for each individual. Some people can handle greater amounts of stress than others. According to Germain and Gitterman (1996), stress is experienced in an individual’s life course at times of difficult life transitions, involving developmental and social change; traumatic life events, including grief and loss; and environmental pressures, encompassing poverty and community violence.[4] Resilience is the integrated adaptation of physical, mental and spiritual aspects in a set of “good or bad” circumstances, a coherent sense of self that is able to maintain normative developmental tasks that occur at various stages of life.[5] The Children’s Institute of the University of Rochester explains that “resilience research is focused on studying those who engage in life with hope and humor despite devastating losses”.[6] It is important to note that resilience is not only about overcoming a deeply stressful situation, but also coming out of the said situation with “competent functioning”. Resiliency allows a person to rebound from adversity as a strengthened and more resourceful person.[5] Aaron Antonovsky in 1979 stated that when an event is appraised as comprehensible (predictable), manageable (controllable), and somehow meaningful (explainable) a resilient response is more likely.[7][8]

History

The first research on resilience was published in 1973. The study used epidemiology, which is the study of disease prevalence, to uncover the risks and the protective factors that now help define resilience.[9] A year later, the same group of researchers created tools to look at systems that support development of resilience.[10]

Emmy Werner was one of the early scientists to use the term resilience in the 1970s. She studied a cohort of children from KauaiHawaii. 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.[11] Werner noted that of the children who grew up in these detrimental 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’.[12] Thus, resilient children and their families were those who, by definition, demonstrated traits that allowed them to be more successful than non-resilient children and families.

Resilience also emerged as a major theoretical and research topic from the studies of children with mothers diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1980s.[13] In a 1989 study,[14] the results showed that children with a schizophrenic parent may not obtain an appropriate level of comforting caregiving—compared to children with healthy parents—and that such situations often had a detrimental impact on children’s development. On the other hand, 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.

Since 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,[15] catastrophic life events,[16] or urban poverty.[17] The focus of empirical work then has been shifted to understand the underlying protective processes. Researchers endeavor to uncover how some factors (e.g. connection to family) may contribute to positive outcomes.[17]

Process

In all these instances, resilience is best understood as a process. However, it is often mistakenly assumed to be a trait of the individual, an idea more typically referred to as “resiliency”.[18] 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.[19]

It is essential to understand the process or this cycle of resiliency. When people are faced with an adverse condition, there are three ways in which they may approach the situation:

  1. Erupt with anger
  2. Implode with overwhelming negative emotions, go numb, and become unable to react
  3. Simply become upset about the disruptive change

Only the third approach promotes well-being. It is employed by resilient people, who become upset about the disruptive state and thus change their current pattern to cope with the issue. The first and second approaches lead people to adopt the victim role by blaming others and rejecting any coping methods even after the crisis is over. These people prefer to instinctively react, rather than respond to the situation. Those who respond to the adverse conditions by adapting tend to cope, spring back, and halt the crisis. Negative emotions involve fear, anger, anxiety, distress, helplessness, and hopelessness which decrease a person’s ability to solve the problems they face and weaken a person’s resiliency. Constant fears and worries weaken people’s immune systems and increase their vulnerability to illnesses.[20]

These processes include individual continuous coping strategies, or may be helped by a protective environment like good families, schools, communities, and social policies that make resilience more likely to occur.[21] In this sense “resilience” occurs when there are cumulative “protective factors”. These factors are likely to play a more important role, the greater the individual’s exposure to cumulative risk factors.

Biological models

Three notable bases for resilience—self-confidenceself-esteem and self-concept—all have roots in three different nervous systems—respectively, the somatic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system and the central nervous system.[22]

An emerging field in the study of resilience is the neurobiological basis of resilience to stress.[23] 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.[24] Research indicates that like trauma, resilience is influenced by epigenetic modifications. Increased DNA methylation of the growth factor Gdfn in certain brain regions promotes stress resilience, as does molecular adaptations of the blood brain barrier.[25] The two primary neurotransmitters responsible for stress buffering within the brain are dopamine and endogenous opioids as evidenced by current research showing that dopamine and opioid antagonists increased stress response in both humans and animals.[26] Primary and secondary rewards reduce negative reactivity of stress in the brain in both humans and animals.[27] For example, rats who were given a sweet drink showed lower distress to a stressor involving social isolation and increased pain tolerance.[28] Interestingly, the same effect was found in human infants given a sweet drink who subsequently showed less distress to painful medical procedures, such as blood draws.[29] In terms of more chronic stressors such as symptoms of depression, a secondary reward of social support increased dopamine and opiod activity, resulting in reduced depressive symptoms.[30] Additionally, 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.[31] “Resilience, conceptualized as a positive bio-psychological adaptation, has proven to be a useful theoretical context for understanding variables for predicting long-term health and well-being”.[32][33]

Related factor

Studies show that there are several factors which develop and sustain a person’s resilience:[34]

  1. The ability to make realistic plans and being capable of taking the steps necessary to follow through with them
  2. Confidence in one’s strengths and abilities
  3. Communication and problem-solving skills
  4. The ability to manage strong impulses and feelings

Resilience is negatively correlated with personality traits of neuroticism and negative emotionality, which represents tendencies to see and react to the world as threatening, problematic, and distressing, and to view oneself as vulnerable. Positive correlations stands with personality traits of openness and positive emotionality, that represents tendencies to engage and confront the world with confidence in success and a fair value to self-directedness.[35]

Positive emotions

There is significant research found in scientific literature on the relationship between positive emotions and resilience. Studies show that maintaining positive emotions whilst facing adversity promote flexibility in thinking and problem solving. Positive emotions serve an important function in their ability to help an individual recover from stressful experiences and encounters. That being said, maintaining a positive emotionality aids in counteracting the physiological effects of negative emotions. It also facilitates adaptive coping, builds enduring social resources, and increases personal well-being.[36]

The formation of conscious perception and the monitoring of one’s own socioemotional factors is considered a stabile aspect of positive emotions.[37] This is not to say that positive emotions are merely a by-product of resilience, but rather that feeling positive emotions during stressful experiences may have adaptive benefits in the coping process of the individual.[38] Empirical evidence for this prediction arises from research on resilient individuals who have a propensity for coping strategies that concretely elicit positive emotions, such as benefit-finding and cognitive reappraisal, humor, optimism, and goal-directed problem-focused coping. Individuals who tend to approach problems with these methods of coping may strengthen their resistance to stress by allocating more access to these positive emotional resources.[39] Social support from caring adults encouraged resilience among participants by providing them with access to conventional activities.[40]

Positive emotions not only have physical outcomes but also physiological ones. Some physiological outcomes caused by humor include improvements in immune system functioning and increases in levels of salivary immunoglobulin A, a vital system antibody, which serves as the body’s first line of defense in respiratory illnesses.[41][42] Moreover, other health outcomes include faster injury recovery rate and lower readmission rates to hospitals for the elderly, and reductions in a patient’s stay in the hospital, among many other benefits. A study was done on positive emotions in trait-resilient individuals and the cardiovascular recovery rate following negative emotions felt by those individuals. The results of the study showed that trait-resilient individuals experiencing positive emotions had an acceleration in the speed in rebounding from cardiovascular activation initially generated by negative emotional arousal, i.e. heart rate and the like.[38]

Forgiveness is also said to play a role in predicting resilience, among patients with chronic pain (but not the severity of the pain).[43]

Other factors

A study was conducted among high-achieving professionals who seek challenging situations that require resilience. Research has examined 13 high achievers from various professions, all of whom had experienced challenges in the workplace and negative life events over the course of their careers but who had also been recognized for their great achievements in their respective fields. Participants were interviewed about everyday life in the workplace as well as their experiences with resilience and thriving. The study found six main predictors of resilience: positive and proactive personality, experience and learning, sense of control, flexibility and adaptability, balance and perspective, and perceived social support. High achievers were also found to engage in many activities unrelated to their work such as engaging in hobbies, exercising, and organizing meetups with friends and loved ones.[44]

Several factors are found to modify the negative effects of adverse life situations. Many studies show that the primary factor for the development of resilience is social support.[45][46][47] While many competing definitions of social support exist, most can be thought of as the degree of access to, and use of, strong ties to other individuals who are similar to one’s self.[48] Social support requires not only that you have relationships with others, but that these relationships involve the presence of solidarity and trust, intimate communication, and mutual obligation[49] both within and outside the family.[46] Additional factors are also associated with resilience, like the capacity to make realistic plans, having self-confidence and a positive self image,[50] developing communications skills, and the capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses.[51]

Temperamental and constitutional disposition is considered as a major factor in resilience. It is one of the necessary precursors of resilience along with warmth in family cohesion and accessibility of prosocial support systems.[52] There are three kinds of temperamental systems that play part in resilience, they are the appetitive system, defensive system and attentional system.[53]

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 a 1995 study distinguished three contexts for protective factors:[54]

  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, such as receiving support or counsel from peers.

Furthermore, a study of the elderly in Zurich, Switzerland, illuminated the role humor plays as a coping mechanism to maintain a state of happiness in the face of age-related adversity.[55]

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.[56] 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”[57] 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”[58]

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. Furthermore, maltreated children are more likely than nonmaltreated children to demonstrate disruptive-aggressive, withdraw, and internalized behavior problems. Finally, ego-resiliency, and positive self-esteem were predictors of competent adaptation in the maltreated children.[56]

Demographic information (e.g., gender) and resources (e.g., social support) are also used to predict resilience. Examining people’s adaptation after disaster 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.[59]

Certain aspects of religions, spirituality, or mindfulness may, hypothetically, promote or hinder certain psychological virtues that increase resilience. 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”.[60] 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.[61] The United States Army has received criticism for promoting spirituality in its new Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program as a way to prevent PTSD, due to the lack of conclusive supporting data.

In military studies it has been found that resilience is also dependent on group support: unit cohesion and morale is the best predictor of combat resiliency within a unit or organization. Resilience is highly correlated to peer support and group cohesion. Units with high cohesion tend to experience a lower rate of psychological breakdowns than units with low cohesion and morale. High cohesion and morale enhance adaptive stress reactions.[62]

Building Resilience

In cognitive behavioral therapy, building resilience is a matter of mindfully changing basic behaviors and thought patterns.[63] The first step is to change the nature of self-talk. Self-talk is the internal monologue people have that reinforce beliefs about the person’s self-efficacy and self-value. To build resilience, the person needs to eliminate negative self-talk, such as “I can’t do this” and “I can’t handle this”, and to replace it with positive self-talk, such as “I can do this” and “I can handle this”. This small change in thought patterns helps to reduce psychological stress when a person is faced with a difficult challenge. The second step a person can take to build resilience is to be prepared for challenges, crises, and emergencies.[64] In business, preparedness is created by creating emergency response plans, business continuity plans, and contingency plans. For personal preparedness, the individual can create a financial cushion to help with economic crises, he/she can develop social networks to help him/her through trying personal crises, and he/she can develop emergency response plans for his/her household.

Resilience is also enhanced by developing effective coping skills for stress.[65] Coping skills help the individual to reduce stress levels, so they remain functional. Coping skills include using meditation, exercise, socialization, and self-care practices to maintain a healthy level of stress, but there are many other lists associated with psychological resilience.

The American Psychological Association suggests “10 Ways to Build Resilience”,[34] which are:

  1. to maintain good relationshipswith close family members, friends and others;
  2. to avoid seeing crisesor stressful events as unbearable problems;
  3. to accept circumstances that cannot be changed;
  4. to develop realistic goalsand move towards them;
  5. to take decisive actions in adverse situations;
  6. to look for opportunities for self-discovery after a struggle with loss;
  7. to develop 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 visualizingwhat is wished;
  10. to take care of one’s mindand bodyexercisingregularly, paying attention to one’s own needs and feelings.

The Besht model of natural resilience building in an ideal family with positive access and support from family and friends, through parenting illustrates four key markers. They are:

  1. Realistic upbringing
  2. Effective risk communications
  3. Positivity and restructuring of demanding situations
  4. Building self efficacy and hardiness

In this model, self-efficacy is the belief in one’s ability to organize and execute the courses of action required to achieve necessary and desired goals and hardiness is a composite of interrelated attitudes of commitment, control, and challenge.

A number of self-help approaches to resilience-building have been developed, drawing mainly on the theory and practice of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT).[66] For example, a group cognitive-behavioral intervention, called the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP), has been shown to foster various aspects of resilience. A meta-analysis of 17 PRP studies showed that the intervention significantly reduces depressive symptoms over time.[67]

The idea of ‘resilience building’ is debatably at odds with the concept of resilience as a process,[68] since it is used to imply that it is a developable characteristic of oneself.[69] Those who view resilience as a description of doing well despite adversity, view efforts of ‘resilience building’ as method to encourage resilience. Bibliotherapy, positive tracking of events, and enhancing psychosocial protective factors with positive psychological resources are other methods for resilience building.[70] In this way, increasing an individual’s resources to cope with or otherwise address the negative aspects of risk or adversity is promoted, or builds, resilience.[71]

Contrasting research finds that strategies to regulate and control emotions, in order to enhance resilience, allows for better outcomes in the event of mental illness.[72] While initial studies of resilience originated with developmental scientists studying children in high-risk environments, a study on 230 adults diagnosed with depression and anxiety that emphasized emotional regulation, showed that it contributed to resilience in patients. These strategies focused on planning, positively reappraising events, and reducing rumination helped in maintaining a healthy continuity.[72][clarification needed] Patients with improved resilience were found to yield better treatment outcomes than patients with non-resilience focused treatment plans,[72] providing potential information for supporting evidence based psychotherapeutic interventions that may better handle mental disorders by focusing on the aspect of psychological resilience.

Other development programs

See also: Compensatory education

The Head Start program was shown to promote resilience.[73] So was the Big Brothers Big Sisters Programme, the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project,[74][75] and social programs for youth with emotional or behavioral difficulties.[76]

The Positive Behavior Supports and Intervention program is a successful trauma-informed, resilience-based for elementary age students with four components.[77] These four elements include positive reinforcements such as encouraging feedback, understanding that behavior is a response to unmet needs or a survival response, promoting belonging, mastery and independence, and finally, creating an environment to support the student through sensory tools, mental health breaks and play. [78]

Tuesday’s Children,[79] a family service organization that made a long-term commitment to the individuals that have lost loved ones to 9/11 and terrorism around the world, works to build psychological resilience through programs such as Mentoring and Project COMMON BOND, an 8-day peace-building and leadership initiative for teens, ages 15–20, from around the world who have been directly impacted by terrorism.[80]

Military organizations test personnel for the ability to function under stressful circumstances by deliberately subjecting them to stress during training. Those students who do not exhibit the necessary resilience can be screened out of the training. Those who remain can be given stress inoculation training. The process is repeated as personnel apply for increasingly demanding positions, such as special forces.[81]

Children

Resilience in children refers to individuals who are doing better than expected, given a history that includes risk or adverse experience. Once again, it is not a trait or something that some children simply possess. There is no such thing as an ‘invulnerable child’ that can overcome any obstacle or adversity that he or she encounters in life—and in fact, the trait is quite common.[69] All children share the uniqueness of an upbringing, experiences which could be positive or negative. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) are events which occur in a child’s life that could lead to maladaptive symptoms such as feeling tension, low mood, repetitive and recurring thoughts, and avoidance.[82][83] The psychological resilience to overcome adverse events is not the sole explanation of why some children experience post-traumatic growth and some do not.[83] Resilience is the product of a number of developmental processes over time, that has allowed children experience small exposures to adversity or some sort of age appropriate challenges to develop mastery and continue to develop competently.[84] This gives children a sense of personal pride and self-worth.[85]

Research on ‘protective factors’, which are characteristics of children or situations that particularly help children in the context of risk has helped developmental scientists to understand what matters most for resilient children. Two of these that have emerged repeatedly in studies of resilient children are good cognitive functioning (like cognitive self-regulation and IQ) and positive relationships (especially with competent adults, like parents).[86] 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.

Building in the classroom

Resilient children within classroom environments have been described as working and playing well and holding high expectations, have often been characterized using constructs such as locus of controlself-esteemself-efficacy, and autonomy.[87] All of these things work together to prevent the debilitating behaviors that are associated with learned helplessness.

Role of the community

Communities play a huge role in fostering resilience. The clearest sign of a cohesive and supportive community is the presence of social organizations that provide healthy human development.[88] Services are unlikely to be used unless there is good communication concerning them. Children who are repeatedly relocated do not benefit from these resources, as their opportunities for resilience-building, meaningful community participation are removed with every relocation.[89]

Role of the family

Fostering resilience in children is favored in family environments that are caring and stable, hold high expectations for children’s behavior and encourage participation in the life of the family.[90] 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. The definition of parental resilience, as the capacity of parents to deliver a competent and quality level of parenting to children, despite the presence of risk factors, has proven to be a very important role in children’s resilience. Understanding the characteristics of quality parenting is critical to the idea of parental resilience.[32] Even if divorce produces stress, the availability of social support from family and community can reduce this stress and yield positive outcomes.[91] 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.[12] Resilience research has traditionally focused on the well being of children, with limited academic attention paid to factors that may contribute to the resilience of parents.[32]

Families in poverty

Numerous studies have shown that some practices that poor parents utilize help promote resilience within families. These include frequent displays of warmth, affection, emotional support; reasonable expectations for children combined with straightforward, not overly harsh discipline; family routines and celebrations; and the maintenance of common values regarding money and leisure.[92] According to sociologist Christopher B. Doob, “Poor children growing up in resilient families have received significant support for doing well as they enter the social world—starting in daycare programs and then in schooling.”[93]

Bullying[

Beyond preventing bullying, it is also important to consider how interventions based on emotional intelligence (EI) are important in the case that bullying does occur. Increasing EI may be an important step in trying to foster resilience among victims. When a person faces stress and adversity, especially of a repetitive nature, their ability to adapt is an important factor in whether they have a more positive or negative outcome.[94]

A 2013 study examined adolescents who illustrated resilience to bullying and found some interesting gendered differences, with higher behavioral resilience found among girls and higher emotional resilience found among boys. Despite these differences, they still implicated internal resources and negative emotionality in either encouraging or being negatively associated with resilience to bullying respectively and urged for the targeting of psychosocial skills as a form of intervention.[95] Emotional intelligence has been illustrated to promote resilience to stress[96] and as mentioned previously, the ability to manage stress and other negative emotions can be preventative of a victim going on to perpetuate aggression.[97] One factor that is important in resilience is the regulation of one’s own emotions.[94] Schneider et al. (2013) found that emotional perception was significant in facilitating lower negative emotionality during stress and Emotional Understanding facilitated resilience and has a positive correlation with positive affect.[96]

Studies in specific populations and causal situations

Affected populations

Among transgender youth

Transgender youth experience a wide range of abuse and lack of understanding from the people in their environment and are better off with a high resilience to deal with their lives. A study was done looking at 55 transgender youths studying their sense of personal mastery, perceived social support, emotion-oriented coping and self-esteem. It was seen that around 50% of the variation in the resilience aspects accounted for the problematic issues of the teens. This means that transgender youths with lower resilience were more prone to mental health issues, including depression and trauma symptoms. Emotion-oriented coping was a strong aspect of resilience in determining how depressed the individuals were.[98]

Among pregnant adolescents and depressive symptoms

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.[99]

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.[100]

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.

Causal situations

Divorce

Oftentimes divorce is viewed as detrimental to one’s emotional health, but studies have shown that cultivating resilience may be beneficial to all parties involved. The level of resilience a child will experience after their parents have split is dependent on both internal and external variables. Some of these variables include their psychological and physical state and the level of support they receive from their schools, friends, and family friends.[3] The ability to deal with these situations also stems from the child’s age, gender, and temperament. Children will experience divorce differently and thus their ability to cope with divorce will differ too. About 20–25% of children will “demonstrate severe emotional and behavioral problems” when going through a divorce.[3] This percentage is notably higher than the 10% of children exhibiting similar problems in married families.[101] Despite having divorces parents of approximately 75–80% of these children will “develop into well-adjusted adults with no lasting psychological or behavioral problems”. This comes to show that most children have the tools necessary to allow them to exhibit the resilience needed to overcome their parents’ divorce.

The effects of the divorce extend past the separation of both parents. The remaining conflict between parents, financial problems, and the re-partnering or remarriage of parents can cause lasting stress.[3] Studies conducted by Booth and Amato (2001) have shown that there is no correlation between post-divorce conflict and the child’s ability to adjust to their life circumstance.[101] On the other hand, Hetherington (1999) completed research on this same topic and did find adverse effects in children.[101] In regards to the financial standing of a family, divorce does have the potential to reduce the children’s style of living. Child support is often given to help cover basic needs such as schooling. If the parents’ finances are already scarce then their children may not be able to participate in extracurricular activities such as sports and music lessons, which can be detrimental to their social lives.

Repartnering or remarrying can bring in additional levels of conflict and anger into their home environment. One of the reasons that re-partnering causes additional stress is because of the lack of clarity in roles and relationships; the child may not know how to react and behave with this new “parent” figure in their life. In most cases, bringing in a new partner/spouse will be the most stressful when done shortly after the divorce. In the past, divorce had been viewed as a “single event”, but now research shows that divorce encompasses multiple changes and challenges.[101] It is not only internal factors that allow for resiliency, but the external factors in the environment are critical for responding to the situation and adapting. Certain programs such as the 14-week Children’s Support Group and the Children of Divorce Intervention Program may help a child cope with the changes that occur from a divorce.[102]

Natural disasters

Resilience after a natural disaster can be gauged in a number of different ways. It can be gauged on an individual level, a community level, and on a physical level. The first level, the individual level, can be defined as each independent person in the community. The second level, the community level, can be defined as all those inhabiting the locality affected. Lastly, the physical level can be defined as the infrastructure of the locality affected.[103]

UNESCAP funded research on how communities show resiliency in the wake of natural disasters.[104] They found that, physically, communities were more resilient if they banded together and made resiliency an effort of the whole community.[104] Social support is key in resilient behavior, and especially the ability to pool resources.[104] In pooling social, natural, and economic resources, they found that communities were more resilient and able to over come disasters much faster than communities with an individualistic mindset.[104]

The World Economic Forum met in 2014 to discuss resiliency after natural disasters. They conclude that countries that are more economically sound, and have more individuals with the ability to diversify their livelihoods, will show higher levels of resiliency.[105] This has not been studied in depth yet, but the ideas brought about through this forum appear to be fairly consistent with already existing research.[105]

Research indicates that resilience following natural disasters can be predicted by the level of emotion an individual experienced and were able to process within and following the disaster. Those who employ emotional styles of coping were able to grow from their experiences and then help others. In these instances, experiencing emotions was adaptive. Those who did not engage with their emotions and employed avoidant and suppressive coping styles had poorer mental heath outcomes following disaster. [106]

Death of a family member

Little research has been done on the topic of family resilience in the wake of the death of a family member.[107] Traditionally, clinical attention to bereavement has focused on the individual mourning process rather than on those of the family unit as a whole. Resiliency is distinguished from recovery as the “ability to maintain a stable equilibrium”[108] which is conducive to balance, harmony, and recovery. Families must learn to manage familial distortions caused by the death of the family member, which can be done by reorganizing relationships and changing patterns of functioning to adapt to their new situation.[109] Exhibiting resilience in the wake of trauma can successfully traverse the bereavement process without long-term negative consequences.[110]

One of the healthiest behaviors displayed by resilient families in the wake of a death is honest and open communication. This facilitates an understanding of the crisis. Sharing the experience of the death can promote immediate and long-term adaptation to the recent loss of a loved one. Empathy is a crucial component in resilience because it allows mourners to understand other positions, tolerate conflict, and be ready to grapple with differences that may arise. Another crucial component to resilience is the maintenance of a routine that helps to bind the family together through regular contact and order. The continuation of education and a connection with peers and teachers at school is an important support for children struggling with the death of a family member.[111]

Failure and setbacks in professional settings

Resilience has also been examined in the context of failure and setbacks in workplace settings.[112][113] Representing one of the core constructs of positive organizational behavior (Luthans, 2002), and given increasingly disruptive and demanding work environments, scholars’ and practitioners’ attention to psychological resilience in organizations has greatly increased.[114][115] This research has highlighted certain personality traits, personal resources (e.g., self-efficacy, work-life balance, social competencies), personal attitudes (e.g., sense of purpose, job commitment), positive emotions, and work resources (e.g., social support, positive organizational context) as potential facilitators of workplace resilience.[113]

Beyond studies on general workplace reslience, attention has been directed to the role of resilience in innovative contexts. Due to high degrees of uncertainty and complexity in the innovation process,[116][117] failure and setbacks are naturally happening frequently in this context.[118] As such failure and setbacks can have strong and harmful effects on affected individuals’ motivation and willingness to take risks, their resilience is essential to productively engage in future innovative activities. To account for the peculiarities of the innovation context, a resilience construct specifically aligned to this unique context was needed to address the need to diagnose and develop innovators’ resilience to minimize the human cost of failure and setbacks in innovation. As a context-specific conceptualization of resilience, Innovator Resilience Potential (IRP) serves this purpose and captures the potential for innovative functioning after the experience of failure or setbacks in the innovation process and for handling future setbacks.[119] Based on Bandura’s social cognitive theory,[120] IRP is proposed to consist of six components: self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, optimism, hope, self-esteem, and risk propensity.[119] The concept of IRP thus reflects a process perspective on resilience. On the one hand, in this process, IRP can be seen as an antecedent of how a setback affects an innovator. On the other hand, IRP can be seen as an outcome of the process that, in turn, is influenced by the setback situation.[119] Recently, a measurement scale of IRP was developed and validated.[121]

Cross-cultural resilience

Resilience in individualist and collectivist communities

Individualist cultures, such as those of the U.S., Austria, Spain, and Canada, emphasize personal goals, initiatives, and achievements. Independence, self-reliance, and individual rights are highly valued by members of individualistic cultures. Economic, political, and social policies reflect the culture’s interest in individualism. The ideal person in individualist societies is assertive, strong, and innovative. People in this culture tend to describe themselves in terms of their unique traits- “I am analytical and curious” (Ma et al. 2004). Comparatively, in places like Japan, Sweden, Turkey, and Guatemala, Collectivist cultures emphasize family and group work goals. The rules of these societies promote unity, brotherhood, and selflessness. Families and communities practice cohesion and cooperation. The ideal person in collectivist societies is trustworthy, honest, sensitive, and generous- emphasizing intrapersonal skills. Collectivists tend to describe themselves in terms of their roles- “I am a good husband and a loyal friend” (Ma et al. 2004) In a study on the consequences of disaster on a culture’s individualism, researchers operationalized these cultures by identifying indicative phrases in a society’s literature. Words that showed the theme of individualism include, “able, achieve, differ, own, personal, prefer, and special.” Words that indicated collectivism include, “belong, duty, give, harmony, obey, share, together.”

Natural disasters

Natural disasters threaten to destroy communities, displace families, degrade cultural integrity, and diminish an individual’s level of functioning. In the aftermath of disaster, resiliency is called into action. Comparing individualist community reactions to collectivist community responses after disasters illustrates their differences and respective strengths as tools of resilience. Some suggest that disasters reduce individual agency and sense of autonomy as it strengthens the need to rely on other people and social structures. Therefore, countries/regions with heightened exposure to disaster should cultivate collectivism. However, Withey (1962) and Wachtel (1968) conducted interviews and experiments on disaster survivors which indicated that disaster-induced anxiety and stress decrease one’s focus on social-contextual information – a key component of collectivism. In this way, disasters may lead to increased individualism. Mauch and Pfister (2004) questioned the association between socio-ecological indicators and cultural-level change in individualism. In their research, for each socio-ecological indicator, frequency of disasters was associated with greater (rather than less) individualism. Supplementary analyses indicated that the frequency of disasters was more strongly correlated with individualism-related shifts than was the magnitude of disasters or the frequency of disasters qualified by the number of deaths. Baby-naming practices is one interesting indicator of change. According to Mauch and Pfister (2004) Urbanization was linked to preference for uniqueness in baby-naming practices at a 1-year lag, secularism was linked to individualist shifts in interpersonal structure at both lags, and disaster prevalence was linked to more unique naming practices at both lags. Secularism and disaster prevalence contributed mainly to shifts in naming practices. There is a gap in disaster recovery research that focuses on psychology and social systems but does not adequately address interpersonal networking or relationship formation and maintenance. A disaster response theory holds that individuals who use existing communication networks fare better during and after disasters. Moreover, they can play important roles in disaster recovery by taking initiative to organize and help others recognize and use existing communication networks and coordinate with institutions which correspondingly should strengthen relationships with individuals during normal times so that feelings of trust exist during stressful ones. Future researchers might look at the organic nature of communication’s role in community building, particularly in areas with limited resources. One problem a government agency or NGO might address is what to do when community networks exclude outsiders. In a collectivist sense, building strong, self-reliant communities, whose members know each other, know each other’s needs and are aware of existing communication networks, looks like an optimum defense against disasters. In comparing these cultures, there is really no way to measure resilience, but one can look at the collateral consequences of a disaster to a country to gauge how much it “bounced back.” Collectivist Resilience: (1) returning to routine, (2) rebuilding family structures, (3) communal sharing of resources, (4) emotional expression of grief and loss to a supportive listener, and (5) finding benefits from the disaster experience. Individualist Resilience: (1) redistribution of power/resources, (2) returning to routine, (3) emotional expression through formal support systems, (4) confrontation of the problem, (5) reshaping one’s outlook after the disaster experience. Whereas individualistic societies promote individual responsibility for self-sufficiency, the collectivistic culture defines self-sufficiency within an interdependent communal context (Kayser et al. 2008). Even where individualism is salient, a group thrives when its members choose social over personal goals and seek to maintain harmony and where they value collectivist over individualist behavior (McAuliffe et al. 2003).

Resilience education and developing children

See also: Academic buoyancy

Many years and sources of research indicate that there are a few consistent protective factors of young children despite differences in culture and stressors (poverty, war, divorce of parents, natural disasters, etc.):

  • Capable parenting
  • Other close relationships
  • Intelligence
  • Self-control
  • Motivation to succeed
  • Self-confidence & self-efficacy
  • Faith, hope, belief life has meaning
  • Effective schools
  • Effective communities
  • Effective cultural practices[122]

Ann Masten coins these protective factors as “ordinary magic,” the ordinary human adaptive systems that are shaped by biological and cultural evolution. In her book, Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development, she discusses the “immigrant paradox“, the phenomenon that first-generation immigrant youth are more resilient than their children. Researchers hypothesize that “there may be culturally based resiliency that is lost with succeeding generations as they become distanced from their culture of origin.” Another hypothesis is that those who choose to immigrate are more likely to be more resilient.[123]

Research by Rosemary Gonzalez and Amado M. Padilla on the academic resilience of Mexican–American high school students reveal that while a sense of belonging to school is the only significant predictor of academic resilience, a sense of belonging to family, a peer group, and a culture can also indicate higher academic resilience. “Although cultural loyalty overall was not a significant predictor of resilience, certain cultural influences nonetheless contribute to resilient outcomes, like familism and cultural pride and awareness.” The results of Gonzalez and Padilla’s study “indicate a negative relationship between cultural pride and the ethnic homogeneity of a school.” They hypothesize that “ethnicity becomes a salient and important characteristic in more ethnically diverse settings”.[124]

Considering the implications of the research by Masten, Gonzalez, and Padilla, a strong connection with one’s cultural identity is an important protective factor against stress and is indicative of increased resilience. While many additional classroom resources have been created to promote resilience in developing students, the most effective ways to ensure resilience in children is by protecting their natural adaptive systems from breaking down or being hijacked. At home, resilience can be promoted through a positive home environment and emphasized cultural practices and values. In school, this can be done by ensuring that each student develops and maintains a sense of belonging to the school through positive relationships with classroom peers and a caring teacher. Research on resilience consistently shows that a sense of belonging—whether it be in a culture, family, or another group—greatly predicts resiliency against any given stressor.

Language of resilience

While not all languages have a direct translation for the English word “resilience”, most have a form of the word that relates to a similar concept of “bouncing back”. As a result, the concept of resilience exists in nearly every culture and community globally. Additionally, as the world globalizes, language learning and communication have proven to be helpful factors in developing resilience in people who travel, study abroad, work internationally, or in those who find themselves as refugees in countries where their home language is not spoken.

The concept of resilience in language

The differences between the literal meanings of translated words shows that there is a common understanding of what resilience is. Even if a word does not directly translate to “resilience” in English, it relays a meaning similar enough to the concept and is used as such within the language.

If a specific word for resilience does not exist in a language, speakers of that language typically assign a similar word that insinuates resilience based on context. Many languages use words that translate to “elasticity” or “bounce”, which are used in context to capture the meaning of resilience. For example, one of the main words for “resilience” in Chinese literally translates to “rebound”, one of the main words for “resilience” in Greek translates to “bounce”, and one of the main words for “resilience” in Russian translates to “elasticity,” just as it does in German. However, this is not the case for all languages. For example, if a Spanish speaker wanted to say “resilience”, their main two options translate to “resistance” and “defense against adversity”.[125] Many languages have words that translate better to “tenacity” or “grit” better than they do to “resilience”. While these languages may not have a word that exactly translates to “resilience”, note that English speakers often use tenacity or grit when referring to resilience. While one of the Greek words for “resilience” translates to “bounce”, another option translates to “cheerfulness”. Moreover, Arabic has a word solely for resilience, but also two other common expressions to relay the concept, which directly translate to “capacity on deflation” or “reactivity of the body”, but are better translated as “impact strength” and “resilience of the body” respectively. On the other hand, a few languages, such as Finnish, have created words to express resilience in a way that cannot be translated back to English. In Finnish, the word “sisu” could most closely be translated to mean “grit” in English, but blends the concepts of resilience, tenacity, determination, perseverance, and courage into one word that has even become a facet of Finnish culture and earned its place as a name for a few Finnish brands.[126]

The Child and Youth Resilience Measure / Adult Resilience Measure

The Child and Youth Resilience Measure and the Adult Resilience Measure are brief validated and reliable measures of resilience for children, youth, or adults. These short surveys consist of 17 base items which can be adapted and expanded using a process of localisation.

The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale

The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale[127] aims to quantify and assess resilience. While the test was originally created in English, it has been translated and adapted to several languages. In each translation, translators work hard to retain the meaning of the assessment prompts, even if it requires some modifying of phrasing or words. In one instance in which the scale was translated into Polish, researchers translated it directly back into English, and presented English speakers with both the English and English-translated Polish version. When taking both versions, the scores obtained from both had negligible differences, insinuating that the context and meaning were retained.[128]

Building resilience through language

Research conducted by the British Council[129] ties a strong relationship between language and resilience in refugees. Their language for resilience research conducted in partnership with institutions and communities from the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas claims that providing adequate English-learning programs and support for Syrian refugees builds resilience not only in the individual, but also in the host community. Their findings reported five main ways through which language builds resilience: home language and literacy development; access to education, training, and employment; learning together and social cohesion; addressing the effects of trauma on learning; and building inclusivity.

The language for resilience research suggests that further development of home language and literacy helps create the foundation for a shared identity.[129] By maintaining the home language, even when displaced, a person not only learns better in school, but enhances the ability to learn other languages. This enhances resilience by providing a shared culture and sense of identity that allows refugees to maintain close relationships to others who share their identity and sets them up to possibly return one day. Thus, identity is not stripped and a sense of belonging persists.

Access to education, training, and employment opportunities allow refugees to establish themselves in their host country and provides more ease when attempting to access information, apply to work or school, or obtain professional documentation.[129] Securing access to education or employment is largely dependent on language competency, and both education and employment provide security and success that enhance resilience and confidence.

Learning together encourages resilience through social cohesion and networks. When refugees engage in language-learning activities with host communities, engagement and communication increases.[129] Both refugee and host community are more likely to celebrate diversity, share their stories, build relationships, engage in the community, and provide each other with support. This creates a sense of belonging with the host communities alongside the sense of belonging established with other members of the refugee community through home language.

Additionally, language programs and language learning can help address the effects of trauma by providing a means to discuss and understand.[129] Refugees are more capable of expressing their trauma, including the effects of loss, when they can effectively communicate with their host community. Especially in schools, language learning establishes safe spaces through storytelling, which further reinforces comfort with a new language, and can in turn lead to increased resilience.

The fifth way, building inclusivity, is more focused on providing resources.[129] By providing institutions or schools with more language-based learning and cultural material, the host community can better learn how to best address the needs of the refugee community. This overall addressing of needs feeds back into the increased resilience of refugees by creating a sense of belonging and community.

Additionally, a study completed by Kate Nguyen, Nile Stanley, Laurel Stanley, and Yonghui Wang shows the impacts of storytelling in building resilience.[130] This aligns with many of the five factors identified by the study completed by the British Council, as it emphasizes the importance of sharing traumatic experiences through language. This study in particular showed that those who were exposed to more stories, from family or friends, had a more holistic view of life’s struggles, and were thus more resilient, especially when surrounded by foreign languages or attempting to learn a new language.[129][130]

Criticism

Brad Evans and Julian Reid criticize resilience discourse and its rising popularity in their book, Resilient Life.[131] The authors assert that policies of resilience can put the onus of disaster response on individuals rather than publicly coordinated efforts. Tied to the emergence of neoliberalismclimate change theory, third-world development, and other discourses, Evans and Reid argue that promoting resilience draws attention away from governmental responsibility and towards self-responsibility and healthy psychological affects such as “posttraumatic growth”.

Another criticism regarding resilience is its definition. Like other psychological phenomena, by defining specific psychological and affective states in certain ways, controversy over meaning will always ensue. How the term resilience is defined affects research focuses; different or insufficient definitions of resilience will lead to inconsistent research about the same concepts. Research on resilience has become more heterogeneous in its outcomes and measures, convincing some researchers to abandon the term altogether due to it being attributed to all outcomes of research where results were more positive than expected.[132]

There is also controversy about the indicators of good psychological and social development when resilience is studied across different cultures and contexts.[133][134][135] The American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents,[136] 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.[137] Researchers of indigenous health have shown the impact of culture, history, community values, and geographical settings on resilience in indigenous communities.[138] People who cope may also show “hidden resilience”[139] 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).[140] Recently there has also been evidence that resilience can indicate a capacity to resist a sharp decline in other harm even though a person temporarily appears to get worse.[141][142]

See also

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