Chapter 6. The Mechanism of Dissociation (1) Resilience--- Capacity not to Dissociate (5)

Garmezy, a pioneer of the studies of resilience found that inborn temperament and intelligence, having good relationship with adults, having good leaders and role models are positive contributing factors for resilience. He also found that having religious beliefs has a significant positive influence on one’s resilience (Garmezy, 1970).
Garmezy, N. 1970. Process and reactive schizophrenia: Some conceptions and issues. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2:30-74.
Studies on resilience have also been done by Japanese researchers, especially on its relation to the personality traits and psychological features. According to Oshio et al.’s study (2002), psychological trait with positive influence to resilience include four factors: positive future-orientedness, emotional regulation, varieties of interest and curiosity, and tolerance. In sum, resilience had positive correlation with self-esteem but did not with the number of negative life events (Oshio, 2002).
Oshio, A., et al. 2002. [Development and validation of an Adolescent Resilience Scale]. [Japanese Journal of Counseling Science], 35 , 57-65. [in Japanese with English abstract]
Ishige et al (2006) related resilience with seven-factor model of Cloninger and found that resilience scale is related to three factors; positive activity, self-disclosure and optimism. “For boys, self-directedness and cooperativeness had a positive correlation with positive activity, and cooperativeness with self-disclosure. Meanwhile, a positive correlation was found for girls between self-directedness and positive activity, and between reward dependence and self-disclosure, but harm avoidance had a negative correlation with optimism”(from the author’s abstract).
Ishige, M, Mutoh, T 2006. Resilience and Personality Traits in Junior High School Students The Japanese Journal of Personality 14：266-280.
These studies help us have a concrete image of a person with high resilience. That person does not linger on painful experiences, maintains his pride, with a show of flexibility and positive attitude. However, it is not clear how much measurement based on self-report could really reflect one’s resilience. Also it is hard to tell whether these personality traits lead to high resilience, or due to high resilience these personality traits are manifested. Perhaps both are true.