The raging debate about whether resilience is an inherited, genetically determined personality trait or a set of learned behaviours is informed by an understanding of coping and the body of research that exists on the way in which people cope with adversities.
The coping literature firmly places the management of stress and adversity within a behavioural context since coping presupposes that something is actually done about the situation. Even a do-nothing strategy can be thought of as a behavioural response.
Advantage of the coping perspective
The advantage of looking at resilience from a coping perspective is that coping strategies not only provide a concrete steer as to the kinds of behaviours that can be learned and used to overcome adversity but also provides evidence of different behaviours that will work in coping with different kinds of stressors.
Coping with adversity comes in all sorts of forms. One classification system comes from Ellen Skinner (1):
- problem solving - strategising, instrumental action, planning, watch and learn, mastery, efficacy
- Information seeking - reading, observation, asking others, curiosity, interest
- Helplessness - confusion, cognitive interference, cognitive exhaustion, guilt, helplessness
- Escape - behavioural avoidance, mental withdrawal, denial, wishful thinking, flight
- Self-reliance - emotion regulation, behaviour regulation, emotional expression, emotion approach, befriend, pride
- Support-seeking - contact seeking, comfort seeking, instrumental aid, social referencing, yearning
- Complaining - whining, self-pity, maladaptive help-seeking, shame
- Social Isolation - social withdrawal, concealment, avoiding others, duck and cover, freeze, sadness
- Accommodation - distraction, minimization, acceptance, cognitive restructuring
- Negotiation - bargaining, persuasion, compromise
- Submission - rumination, rigid perspective, intrusive thoughts, disgust
- Opposition - blame others, projection, aggression, stand and fight, anger, defiance
(1). Skinner, E.A., Zimmer-Gembeck, M.J. (2007) The Development of Coping. Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 58, pp119-44
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