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Resilience Defined & Applied
This paper has been prepared for Health Canada and the Health & Learning Knowledge Centre of the Canadian Council on Learning to facilitate discussion of practical applications of resilience-based research in schools and several other settings. Readers are invited to comment on the paper by using the "thread" feature found at the bottom of this page. If you would like to discuss the concept of resilience more generally, please use the "Discussions" feature found in the navigation bar for this web site at the top of the page. Thanks in advance for your participation.
Introducing the Author: Ann Masten, PhD., LP, is Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. Her research has focused on competence, risk and resilience with the goal of informing efforts to promote positive mental health amd development. Masten has studied resilience in the context of poverty, homelessness, immigration, war and disasters, as well as in normal development. She has served as President of Division 7 (Developmental) of the American Psychological Association and takes office later this year as President-Elect of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Resilience in Children and Youth: A Practical Guide
Editor: Doug McCall
Contributors:
First Draft Posted: March 6, 2009
Most Recent Major Update:
Permissions: This summary is "locked". Comments can be made anonymously by clicking on the "thread" button at the bottom of the page or by using the Discussion feature in the top navigation bar.
Webinars from this Paper: Use your computer to see and hear a recorded Webinar presented by the author of this paper by using the following link: Resiliency Defined and Applied
Why is Resilience Important?
Close to half a century ago, a group of pioneering scientists embarked on a journey to understand how some young people were managing to do so well in life even though they had faced many risks and adversities. These pioneers – including Norman Garmezy, Lois Murphy, Michael Rutter, and Emmy Werner – recognized the enormous potential there might be in understanding the processes that lead to resilience. These influential scientists inspired their students and colleagues to bring much greater attention in their research to the children and youth who defied the odds against good outcomes, overcame catastrophic experiences, and simply developed into much healthier youth and young adults than people expected on the basis of their dire or risky circumstances. The ultimate goal of this work was practical: to inform efforts to promote positive development in young people at risk due to serious psychosocial adversity or a multitude of risks.
Human interest in the phenomena now described by the broad concept of “resilience” probably dates back thousands of years, to oral stories of heroes and heroines, and a human fascination with tales of overcoming adversity to succeed in life. What the pioneers launched was a new science of resilience. There have been three waves of research to date and a fourth wave is overtaking all those that came before. The first wave was focused on describing resilience and methods for research. The second wave that quickly followed was focused on the promotive or protective processes that might account for resilience. The third wave began to test
these ideas through experimental interventions. Now, a major transformation is taking place as a result of major leaps forward in knowledge on human genomics and the neurobiology of behavior, as well as advances in methods of statistical analysis, biological assessments, and brain imaging, leading to a fourth wave of integrative research that is bridging multiple disciplines and
levels of analysis. The purpose of this summary is to highlight what has been learned from the initial decades of research on resilience in human development that could inform efforts to promote resilience and the odds for healthy development, concluding with a glimpse at the horizon of future research on human resilience.
What is Resilience?
The word, resilience, stems from the Latin resilire (to recoil or leap back). Rubber bands and balls have resilience in this sense, and people are sometimes said to “bounce back” (metaphorically) after a difficult experience. But resilience has a broader meaning in science, generally referring to the phenomenon of positive adaptation in any kind of system following a serious challenge to the system’s function or viability. There is a great deal of interest in resilience across disciplines concerned with many different kinds of systems, ranging from ecosystems to computer systems to organizations or families. Resilience can be studied in any of
these dynamic—always interacting and changing—systems.
In the study of individual people, resilience can be defined as the capacity for, processes of, or manifested patterns of positive adaptation during or following exposure to significant risks or threats to human function or development. In simpler terms, resilience means doing well in life despite adversity.
Resilience as an Inference about Adaptation and Risk: Two Judgments
Defining and assessing resilience involves two key components: positive adaptation and risk. Resilience is an inference about positive adaptation in the context of risky circumstances. Thus, in the early research on resilience in children and youth, it was important to figure out the criteria by which to judge “positive adaptation” as well as “adversity” or “risk.” If a person (or a family or a school) is doing fine, but there has been no significant risk or threat exposure, then the person (or any other system) is described as competent, healthy, normal, or in some other terminology meaning that the system is functioning OK with respect to
however it is supposed to be functioning. When no risk or adversity has (yet) been encountered, then one might speculate that there is good potential for resilience (perhaps because there are many adaptive system or resources available), but until there is adversity exposure or a significance challenge of some kind, resilience cannot be manifested.
The study of resilience grew out of the study of children at risk for psychopathology and physical health problems. The risk researchers were trying to understand the etiology of disorders and problems by studying the early development of children in group who had high risk, meaning an elevated statistical probability of the problem. Many different “at risk” groups have been studied, ranging from genetic risk to hazardous experiences, divorce to war, low birth weight to hurricane survivors. Measures were developed to assess negative life events, traumatic experiences, economic hardship and many other kinds of risk factors. It was clear early in this work that risk factors often clustered together in time or in the lives of a particular person, and higher cumulative risk often was associated with higher levels of problems. Thus, there appeared to be a risk gradient, such that when risk levels were higher, children on average had more problems.
Yet, those who worked with high-risk youth, whether they were researchers, clinicians, or teachers, noticed that there was a great deal of variation in the health, well being or development of the individuals in the risk group. They were intrigued with explaining good outcomes among the children who were doing much better than one might expect from the high level of risk: in other words, by children who were “off-gradient” or resilient.
How did people know these children were doing better than expected? Clearly, there are expectations or standards by which we judge how well a person is doing. For a clinician, this might mean signs of health or well being and for a teacher, it might be good classroom conduct. Many of the early resilience researchers were interested in defining and measuring the “positive
adaptation” of children and youth.
Competence in Developmental Tasks
A number of the pioneers focused on competence in developmental tasks as their indicators of doing well in life, arguing that many of the stakeholders in the healthy development of children, including parents, teachers, and members of society, have common expectations for child health and behavior for a given culture and time and developmental level or age, based on historical observations as well as pooled knowledge about human development. Examples of common developmental tasks in contemporary societies include the following.
Early childhood
(e.g., rites of passage for a specific religion). The assessment of competence in developmental tasks became an important cornerstone of resilience research, focusing attention on the criteria by which we decide if child development is going in the right direction, and the assessment of good function or outcomes as well as problems and disorders.
Promotive and Protective Factors
Learning about resilience requires more than criteria about adaptation and risk. There was great interest in the factors and processes that make a difference in promoting or protecting people so they can achieve resilience. Investigators had many ideas about these potential promotive (also called resources or assets) or protective factors that might explain why one child is able to overcome adversity while another is not. Promotive factors are helpful to children at all levels of risk, whereas protective factors play a special role when risk high. Promotive factors are analogous to a person’s immune system or family operating effectively to keep a child
healthy and well-cared for, whereas a protective factor is more like the antibodies (stimulated by a vaccine for example) that provide special protection when the body is invaded by a specific kind of bacteria or virus (such as small pox or the flu). A parent can function both ways, as a promotive factor for positive development in all their ordinary roles of rearing children (e.g., establishing household routines, setting limits, monitoring homework, taking a child for pediatric checkups, attending teacher-parent conferences, etc.) and also as protective factor by taking special actions to protect children in the face of severe threats to a child’s function or
development (e.g., by responding to screams for help, preparing children for an impending loss, taking a child to the emergency room or crisis nursery, finding a special tutor or mentor that their child needs, etc.).
Many promotive and protective factors have been studied. Some are attributes of the child (such as good cognitive skills) and other factors are attributes of the child’s relationships or family (such as a strong bond with a caring adult or teacher and a parent who monitors the child). Still others are qualities of the environment (such as a safe neighborhood or a good school). Much of the resilience research has focused on identifying these promotive and protective factors and then in figuring out how they work. This interest resulted in great attention to the assessment of assets and strengths in addition to risks and symptoms.
The focus on positive adaptation and development in resilience research, as well as the positive influences that promote resilience, has had a transformative effect on assessment in child research and practice. There is now much greater attention to the assessment of assets and strengths in the lives of children, and much more monitoring of positive domains of functioning.
Numerous instruments have been developed and are now being standardized, such as the Search Institute’s tool to assess assets in a child and his relationships and community (called the Developmental Assets Survey) and the tools (e.g., Assessment and Action Record) developed for Looking after Children (LAC) programs worldwide, which assess progress in seven developmental domains of competence and well being across multiple age periods.
The first wave of resilience research quickly established a group of potential promotive or protective factors that are often found to be associated with or predict resilience across diverse studies of risk or adversity. Examples follow. Research continues to corroborate these factors and now there is great interest in the processes that explain why these factors keep turning up as important. Examples of factors consistently associated with resilience in child development include the following.
Strong and secure attachment bonds to caregivers
The consistency with which these factors associated with resilience emerged in study after study strongly suggested that there might be powerful protective systems for human adaptation and development that played a key role in resilience across different kinds of adversities.
Protective Systems for Human Resilience
Basic human adaptation systems, operating normally, appear to generate much of the capacity for resilience. Resilience does not arise typically from extraordinary processes but rather from basic systems that are likely the product of biological and cultural evolution and accumulated wisdom. The most fundamental protective systems suggested by research on resilience in children and youth are the following: attachment, family, problem-solving by the central nervous system, self-control, mastery motivation, belief (and religious) systems, and various social organizations like schools that nurture learning and the other fundamental systems.
These are highlighted briefly here.
Attachment—Every review of resilience since scientists began to study these phenomena has implicated the importance of close relationships for resilience, often embedded in family systems. Early in life, infants and caregivers form attachment bonds that provide physical and emotional protection when either the caregiver or child perceives a threat. John Bowlby elucidated the nature of this powerful, biologically-based, protective system in his classic three volume series on Attachment and Loss, first published in 1969. When a child has a secure attachment bond and the attachment system is activated by threat, an alarmed young child will
seek the comfort and proximity of the caregiver, who can soothe the child and down-regulate fear and other forms of arousal. Reciprocally, a parent will seek to protect a child when a threat is perceived by the parent or when the child signals alarm. As children grow older, attachment bonds form with additional people, including close friends and later romantic partners. If a child
does not have the protection afforded by adults in attachment relationships, the child may be highly vulnerable to the effects of adversity. Concomitantly, if the functions of protective adults in a child’s system of attachments are lost through death, injury, or separation, restoring the functions of attached adults is paramount for resilience.
Intelligence (central nervous systems for problem-solving and information processing)— It was not surprising to discover that intellectual skills, presumably based on a human brain in good working order, were among the most important predictors of resilience. After all, intelligence has been described as the mental activity associated with good adaptation, learning, and problem-solving. It follows that protecting healthy brain development is one of the most important keys to facilitating the capacity for resilience in children. Parents and schools play central roles in nurturing brain development in multiple ways, ranging from nutrition to
intellectual stimulation. There is growing concern that high levels of stress in early childhood may negatively affect brain development, and strong evidence already exists that malnutrition or profound emotional neglect has negative effects on healthy brain function and development. As is the case with parenting, adversity may take its greatest toll by undermining the protections
afforded by fundamental human adaptive systems such as attachment and cognitive development.
Agency, self-efficacy, and the mastery motivation systems—In his classic paper on competence and powerful human motivation system behind mastering the environment, Robert White argued that people are motivated to adapt and experience pleasure in succeeding in those efforts. Later, Albert Bandura would describe in his theory about self-efficacy how such systems work to motivate action and also persistence in the face of failure. People take an active role in their own resilience and there are powerful, biologically-grounded reward systems for this agency. Resilience researchers have noted that “late-bloomers,” or youth who initially have trouble in adolescence but later rally to become successful adults, often report a motivation to change direction before the change is manifested in their actions. On the other hand, this system can be suppressed or extinguished by extreme deprivation or loss of control over adversity, with the result that children or adults feel powerless or helpless to do anything about their lives.
Children neglected in poor quality orphanages often show a passivity and apathy reflecting this kind of “learned helplessness.”
The mastery motivation system is believed to be a powerful engine for change that can be engaged or re-kindled to promote resilience, for example by providing opportunities for successful agency. Effective teachers as well as parents and therapists often attempt to motivate positive adaptation by engaging this system, and children who express self-efficacy also express
confidence they can be successful and also tend to keep trying when life is challenging.
Successful and graduated mastery experiences often are provided by scaffolding success— providing a series of experiences with just enough support so a young person can accomplish something on their own and enjoy the pleasure in step-by-step mastery.
Regulatory systems for self-control of attention, emotion, and action—Adaptive behavior under all circumstances requires a degree of regulatory control in order to coordinate and direct an effective response. Self-regulation tools for life develop over the course of maturation. For young children who do not yet have mature self-regulatory capacity, parents and other adults provide a kind of auxiliary regulatory system. Parents help children manage their emotions and behavior by monitoring and taking actions to help children control their arousal and avoid the consequences of impulsive actions. The attachment system supports this co-regulation function of adults during the extended years of learning and maturing in human development. Routines, rules, and structure in the home and in school environments also support the development of self-control. Brain maturation plays a central role in the development of many so-called “executive function” skills of children; as neural systems come on line, especially in the prefrontal cortex, the potential for self-control, planning, and other regulatory skills expand. Self-regulation systems are strongly implicated in resilience research as protective for children who experience adversity or grow up in disadvantaged homes. As with other fundamental protective systems, concern is growing that the self-regulation systems of children who are not protected from early
negative experiences of chaos, trauma, or severe neglect, may be undermined such that the development of these cognitive, self-control tools, as well as the neural systems that support these functions are compromised.
Faith, religion, and other cultural meaning-making systems—Systems of belief learned through culture and religion and life experience also have been widely implicated in resilience. Religions across time and cultures have provided many important protective rituals, beliefs, and other kinds of supports that appear to foster resilience. Widely practiced religions of the world
have similarities in that they engage the fundamental protective systems described above. Religions offer attachment relationship (spiritual and human), rituals for the difficult passages of life, self-regulation tools (e.g., meditation or prayer), and many other kinds of comforts and supports of emotional and physical assistance. Similarly, cultural and ethnic traditions provide protections for individuals and families for facing and recovering from adversities. In addition, religions and cultures offer cohesive belief systems that imbue life (and death) with meaning. Although there has been surprisingly little research on the role of cultural and religious systems
for resilience in human development, investigators who study resilience in individual lives through time invariably note the importance of cultural practices and the meaning-making power of spirituality, cultural traditions, and religion for resilience. There is a great need for better understanding and applications of the unique strengths and protective factors embedded in cultures and religions that have evolved over time and generations.
Family system—Many of the adaptive systems noted above are instantiated in families that rear children, whether the family is small or very extended, biologically- or culturally-based. Two of the main functions of the family for human development are protection from threats in the present and nurturing the adaptive systems that the child will carry forward to future challenges. Families are the nest where many of the most fundamental adaptive systems for human development are formed and supported throughout the life span. Consequently, if the adversity or risk to a young child is arising within the family, as happens with family violence or maltreatment, there is enormous risk to the development of the tools for resilience, in addition to the threats posed by the adversity itself.
Other adaptive systems—the lives of children are embedded in many systems beyond the family and culture that also appear to offer key supports for resilience. Peer systems, school systems, and media systems, for example, play important roles in human development. Schools provide a context where the adaptive systems within the child (e.g., self-control and problemsolving
skills, mastery motivation) are nurtured and also where children can find competent and caring adults who serve in a variety of mentoring, attachment, or coaching roles that foster competence in general and the tools for resilience in particular. As children grow older, friends can provide important supports and protections in times of adversity and media access may facilitate these peer social connections. Media access also can provide valuable information about resources, although clearly media is a tool with the potential for great risk exposure too.
Can Resilience be Promoted and if so, How?
The consistencies observe in research on resilience strongly suggested that resilience could be facilitated, and intervention research based on resilience models to date has supported the potential of resilience models for practice and policy, although there still is much work to be done. Many specific strategies have been considered for specific problems and situations (e.g., preparing a child for surgery), but research also supports three general approaches to fostering resilience, briefly noted here.
Reduce risk exposure. Sometimes, though not always, it is possible to intervene to prevent or reduce the amount of exposure to adversity or risk. Examples include removing landmines before building a school, prenatal care to reduce premature birth, building affordable housing to prevent homelessness, keeping a homeless child in the same school, turning off the TV to reduce repeated traumatic viewings by young children of terrifying events, and many other strategies that target threat exposure. Efforts to prepare for likely threats such as hurricanes have this aim as well.
Boost assets and resources. Another strategy bolsters strengths and assets in a child’s life to promote better adaptation. These efforts may add assets or improve access to existing resources, or attempt to improve the quality of an existing asset. Examples include providing a tutor or meals at school, building a recreation center, training teachers, or providing opportunities
to develop a talent.
Mobilizing and protecting powerful protective systems. Efforts also can be directed at engaging or enhancing the most fundamental protective systems for human development (e.g., attachment relationships, mastery motivation, executive function skills). Here the attempt is made to influence the most important and powerful protective systems of human adaptation, often in the hope of engendering long-lasting change in resilience capacity. Programs that aim for improving parent-child attachment quality, moving an orphan into a loving family, building a strong mentoring relationship, boosting self-efficacy, or building self-regulation tools are all
examples of strategies to mobilize the power of basic protective systems for human development.
Experimental research on preventive interventions has shown that it is possible to protect the quality of parenting provided to children undergoing severe adversity. Examples include the Parenting Through Change intervention developed by Marion Forgatch and other investigators associated with the Oregon Social Learning Center to help families going through divorce and other traumatic experiences and the parenting interventions developed by the Irwin Sandler, Sharlene Wolchik and other prevention scientists at the Arizona State University for families going through bereavement and divorce. Recent prevention research by Adele Diamond and
colleagues in Canada has demonstrated the effectiveness of training high-risk children in executive function skills through a preschool curriculum called “Tools of the Mind.” These strategies focus on changing systems or processes that are believed to play a very basic role in protecting the development of competence and adaptation under risky circumstances.
A Resilience Framework for Practice and Policy
Research on resilience also suggests a general framework for promoting resilience that has the following features, comprising a “4 M” approach described briefly here.
Mission: Frame positive goals. The articulation of positive goals serves multiple purposes. Positive goals are more appealing to all stakeholders and they also keep attention focused on assessment and attainment of positive progress and outcomes. Furthermore, evidence often supports the effectiveness of promoting competence in order to prevent problems.
Models: Include positive as well as negative influences. Consider strengths, assets, promotive factors, and protective factors in addition to risks, negative life events, vulnerabilities, or symptoms. Many processes may contribute to good (as well as poor) outcomes and some of the most powerful processes for positive change were overlooked in deficit-oriented models.
Measures: Measure the positive along with the negative. Positive missions and models call for the assessment of strengths, protective systems, and competence, in addition to risks or problems. Tracking positive progress, often overlooked in deficit-based approaches, not only uncovers and documents positive gains, but also may have transformative effects on morale. Some of the best interventions appear to work by promoting competence and protective systems which have cumulative and positive effects on developmental trajectories.
Methods: Consider strategies to reduce risk, add assets, and mobilize adaptive systems across multiple systems. As discussed above, there are multiple possibilities for boosting the odds of resilience because human adaptation and development arises from many interactions across multiple levels of influence and systems. Many contemporary interventions and programs combine strategies in an effort to boost their overall effectiveness, such as targeting parenting skills, child self-control, and teacher effectiveness in a single intervention designed to promote school success. Many of the prevention programs with encouraging evidence of efficacy (e.g.,Fast Track, High/Scope Perry Preschool, LAC, PATHS curriculum, Seattle Social Development
Project) combine multiple strategies in an effort to promote competence and resilience.
On the Horizon
The fourth wave of resilience is now rising. New knowledge and technologies for research are opening new horizons for studying and eventually for fostering resilience. It is now feasible to study processes involving genes and brain function and their role in resilience in ways unimagined a few decades ago. At the same time, there is growing attention to the function of larger macrosystems, including cultural processes and the role of the media in risk or resilience.
Statistical advances have made it possible to model more complex processes of growth and change. Growing evidence suggests that there may be more plasticity and potential for change in human development than earlier thought, such that it may be possible to correct developmental problems and “reset” protective systems that have gone awry as a result of negative experiences.
Finally, there is growing recognition that the resilience of human individuals is inextricably tied to the resilience of many other systems. War, terrorism, natural disasters, ecological disasters, and the possibility of pandemic diseases all point to the interdependence of systems related to human life and development and the importance of more integrated approaches of preparation
and response to promote resilience in the face of such large scale threats.
Conclusion
Much work remains to be done in the goal of understanding human resilience well enough to apply this knowledge effectively to practice and policies that promote resilience in young people at risk for adaptive or developmental problems. Nonetheless, there is a sturdy body of knowledge that offers important clues to inform policy or practice. Children and youth whose well being and development are threatened today cannot wait for scientists to learn all the answers. There is sufficient evidence at hand to inform and guide efforts to promote resilience in young people.
Recommended Reading
Flynn, R. J., Dudding, P. M., & Barber, J. G. (Eds.). (2006). Promoting resilience in development: A general framework for systems of care. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Lester, B. M., Masten, A. S., & McEwen, B. S. (Eds.) (2006). Resilience in Children. Vol. 1094, New York Academy of Sciences.
Luthar, S. S. (2006). Resilience in development: A synthesis of research across five decades. In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology, Vol. 3: Risk,disorder, and adaptation (2nd ed., Vol. 3). New York: Wiley.
Masten, A. S. (2007). Resilience in developing systems: Progress and promise as the fourth wave rises. Development and Psychopathology, 19, 921-930.
Masten, A. S., Herbers, J. E., Cutuli, J. J., & Lafavor, T. L. (2008). Promoting competence and resilience in the school context. Professional School Counseling, 12, 76-84.
Masten, A. S., & Obradović, J. (2007). Disaster preparation and recovery: Lessons from research on resilience in human development. Ecology and Society, 13(1), 9 [online]. URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art9/
Possible Web links
Encyclopedia on Early Child Development entries on resilience.
http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/en-ca/child-resilience/how-important-is-it.html
Introducing the Author: Ann Masten, PhD., LP, is Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. Her research has focused on competence, risk and resilience with the goal of informing efforts to promote positive mental health amd development. Masten has studied resilience in the context of poverty, homelessness, immigration, war and disasters, as well as in normal development. She has served as President of Division 7 (Developmental) of the American Psychological Association and takes office later this year as President-Elect of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Resilience in Children and Youth: A Practical Guide
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author: Ann Masten: amasten@umn.edu Editor: Doug McCall
Contributors:
First Draft Posted: March 6, 2009
Most Recent Major Update:
Permissions: This summary is "locked". Comments can be made anonymously by clicking on the "thread" button at the bottom of the page or by using the Discussion feature in the top navigation bar.
Webinars from this Paper: Use your computer to see and hear a recorded Webinar presented by the author of this paper by using the following link: Resiliency Defined and Applied
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why is Resilience Important?
Close to half a century ago, a group of pioneering scientists embarked on a journey to understand how some young people were managing to do so well in life even though they had faced many risks and adversities. These pioneers – including Norman Garmezy, Lois Murphy, Michael Rutter, and Emmy Werner – recognized the enormous potential there might be in understanding the processes that lead to resilience. These influential scientists inspired their students and colleagues to bring much greater attention in their research to the children and youth who defied the odds against good outcomes, overcame catastrophic experiences, and simply developed into much healthier youth and young adults than people expected on the basis of their dire or risky circumstances. The ultimate goal of this work was practical: to inform efforts to promote positive development in young people at risk due to serious psychosocial adversity or a multitude of risks.
Human interest in the phenomena now described by the broad concept of “resilience” probably dates back thousands of years, to oral stories of heroes and heroines, and a human fascination with tales of overcoming adversity to succeed in life. What the pioneers launched was a new science of resilience. There have been three waves of research to date and a fourth wave is overtaking all those that came before. The first wave was focused on describing resilience and methods for research. The second wave that quickly followed was focused on the promotive or protective processes that might account for resilience. The third wave began to test
these ideas through experimental interventions. Now, a major transformation is taking place as a result of major leaps forward in knowledge on human genomics and the neurobiology of behavior, as well as advances in methods of statistical analysis, biological assessments, and brain imaging, leading to a fourth wave of integrative research that is bridging multiple disciplines and
levels of analysis. The purpose of this summary is to highlight what has been learned from the initial decades of research on resilience in human development that could inform efforts to promote resilience and the odds for healthy development, concluding with a glimpse at the horizon of future research on human resilience.
What is Resilience?
The word, resilience, stems from the Latin resilire (to recoil or leap back). Rubber bands and balls have resilience in this sense, and people are sometimes said to “bounce back” (metaphorically) after a difficult experience. But resilience has a broader meaning in science, generally referring to the phenomenon of positive adaptation in any kind of system following a serious challenge to the system’s function or viability. There is a great deal of interest in resilience across disciplines concerned with many different kinds of systems, ranging from ecosystems to computer systems to organizations or families. Resilience can be studied in any of
these dynamic—always interacting and changing—systems.
In the study of individual people, resilience can be defined as the capacity for, processes of, or manifested patterns of positive adaptation during or following exposure to significant risks or threats to human function or development. In simpler terms, resilience means doing well in life despite adversity.
Resilience as an Inference about Adaptation and Risk: Two Judgments
Defining and assessing resilience involves two key components: positive adaptation and risk. Resilience is an inference about positive adaptation in the context of risky circumstances. Thus, in the early research on resilience in children and youth, it was important to figure out the criteria by which to judge “positive adaptation” as well as “adversity” or “risk.” If a person (or a family or a school) is doing fine, but there has been no significant risk or threat exposure, then the person (or any other system) is described as competent, healthy, normal, or in some other terminology meaning that the system is functioning OK with respect to
however it is supposed to be functioning. When no risk or adversity has (yet) been encountered, then one might speculate that there is good potential for resilience (perhaps because there are many adaptive system or resources available), but until there is adversity exposure or a significance challenge of some kind, resilience cannot be manifested.
The study of resilience grew out of the study of children at risk for psychopathology and physical health problems. The risk researchers were trying to understand the etiology of disorders and problems by studying the early development of children in group who had high risk, meaning an elevated statistical probability of the problem. Many different “at risk” groups have been studied, ranging from genetic risk to hazardous experiences, divorce to war, low birth weight to hurricane survivors. Measures were developed to assess negative life events, traumatic experiences, economic hardship and many other kinds of risk factors. It was clear early in this work that risk factors often clustered together in time or in the lives of a particular person, and higher cumulative risk often was associated with higher levels of problems. Thus, there appeared to be a risk gradient, such that when risk levels were higher, children on average had more problems.
Yet, those who worked with high-risk youth, whether they were researchers, clinicians, or teachers, noticed that there was a great deal of variation in the health, well being or development of the individuals in the risk group. They were intrigued with explaining good outcomes among the children who were doing much better than one might expect from the high level of risk: in other words, by children who were “off-gradient” or resilient.
How did people know these children were doing better than expected? Clearly, there are expectations or standards by which we judge how well a person is doing. For a clinician, this might mean signs of health or well being and for a teacher, it might be good classroom conduct. Many of the early resilience researchers were interested in defining and measuring the “positive
adaptation” of children and youth.
Competence in Developmental Tasks
A number of the pioneers focused on competence in developmental tasks as their indicators of doing well in life, arguing that many of the stakeholders in the healthy development of children, including parents, teachers, and members of society, have common expectations for child health and behavior for a given culture and time and developmental level or age, based on historical observations as well as pooled knowledge about human development. Examples of common developmental tasks in contemporary societies include the following.
Early childhood
- Forming attachment bonds to caregivers
- Talking and learning the language of the family
- Complying with simple adult commands
- Playing and getting along with other children
- Going to school and learning to read, write, and calculate
- Following the rules for behavior in school, culture, and community
- Achieving academic success in more advanced topics
- Making close friends
- Preparing for higher education or work
(e.g., rites of passage for a specific religion). The assessment of competence in developmental tasks became an important cornerstone of resilience research, focusing attention on the criteria by which we decide if child development is going in the right direction, and the assessment of good function or outcomes as well as problems and disorders.
Promotive and Protective Factors
Learning about resilience requires more than criteria about adaptation and risk. There was great interest in the factors and processes that make a difference in promoting or protecting people so they can achieve resilience. Investigators had many ideas about these potential promotive (also called resources or assets) or protective factors that might explain why one child is able to overcome adversity while another is not. Promotive factors are helpful to children at all levels of risk, whereas protective factors play a special role when risk high. Promotive factors are analogous to a person’s immune system or family operating effectively to keep a child
healthy and well-cared for, whereas a protective factor is more like the antibodies (stimulated by a vaccine for example) that provide special protection when the body is invaded by a specific kind of bacteria or virus (such as small pox or the flu). A parent can function both ways, as a promotive factor for positive development in all their ordinary roles of rearing children (e.g., establishing household routines, setting limits, monitoring homework, taking a child for pediatric checkups, attending teacher-parent conferences, etc.) and also as protective factor by taking special actions to protect children in the face of severe threats to a child’s function or
development (e.g., by responding to screams for help, preparing children for an impending loss, taking a child to the emergency room or crisis nursery, finding a special tutor or mentor that their child needs, etc.).
Many promotive and protective factors have been studied. Some are attributes of the child (such as good cognitive skills) and other factors are attributes of the child’s relationships or family (such as a strong bond with a caring adult or teacher and a parent who monitors the child). Still others are qualities of the environment (such as a safe neighborhood or a good school). Much of the resilience research has focused on identifying these promotive and protective factors and then in figuring out how they work. This interest resulted in great attention to the assessment of assets and strengths in addition to risks and symptoms.
The focus on positive adaptation and development in resilience research, as well as the positive influences that promote resilience, has had a transformative effect on assessment in child research and practice. There is now much greater attention to the assessment of assets and strengths in the lives of children, and much more monitoring of positive domains of functioning.
Numerous instruments have been developed and are now being standardized, such as the Search Institute’s tool to assess assets in a child and his relationships and community (called the Developmental Assets Survey) and the tools (e.g., Assessment and Action Record) developed for Looking after Children (LAC) programs worldwide, which assess progress in seven developmental domains of competence and well being across multiple age periods.
The first wave of resilience research quickly established a group of potential promotive or protective factors that are often found to be associated with or predict resilience across diverse studies of risk or adversity. Examples follow. Research continues to corroborate these factors and now there is great interest in the processes that explain why these factors keep turning up as important. Examples of factors consistently associated with resilience in child development include the following.
Strong and secure attachment bonds to caregivers
- Positive relationships with other nurturing and competent adults
- Bonds to pro-social schools and community organizations
- Intellectual skills
- Self-regulation skills
- Positive self-perceptions; self-efficacy
- Faith, hope, and a sense of meaning in life
- Friends and romantic partners who are supportive, well-adjusted, and pro-social
- Effective emergency and community services
- Socioeconomic resources
The consistency with which these factors associated with resilience emerged in study after study strongly suggested that there might be powerful protective systems for human adaptation and development that played a key role in resilience across different kinds of adversities.
Protective Systems for Human Resilience
Basic human adaptation systems, operating normally, appear to generate much of the capacity for resilience. Resilience does not arise typically from extraordinary processes but rather from basic systems that are likely the product of biological and cultural evolution and accumulated wisdom. The most fundamental protective systems suggested by research on resilience in children and youth are the following: attachment, family, problem-solving by the central nervous system, self-control, mastery motivation, belief (and religious) systems, and various social organizations like schools that nurture learning and the other fundamental systems.
These are highlighted briefly here.
Attachment—Every review of resilience since scientists began to study these phenomena has implicated the importance of close relationships for resilience, often embedded in family systems. Early in life, infants and caregivers form attachment bonds that provide physical and emotional protection when either the caregiver or child perceives a threat. John Bowlby elucidated the nature of this powerful, biologically-based, protective system in his classic three volume series on Attachment and Loss, first published in 1969. When a child has a secure attachment bond and the attachment system is activated by threat, an alarmed young child will
seek the comfort and proximity of the caregiver, who can soothe the child and down-regulate fear and other forms of arousal. Reciprocally, a parent will seek to protect a child when a threat is perceived by the parent or when the child signals alarm. As children grow older, attachment bonds form with additional people, including close friends and later romantic partners. If a child
does not have the protection afforded by adults in attachment relationships, the child may be highly vulnerable to the effects of adversity. Concomitantly, if the functions of protective adults in a child’s system of attachments are lost through death, injury, or separation, restoring the functions of attached adults is paramount for resilience.
Intelligence (central nervous systems for problem-solving and information processing)— It was not surprising to discover that intellectual skills, presumably based on a human brain in good working order, were among the most important predictors of resilience. After all, intelligence has been described as the mental activity associated with good adaptation, learning, and problem-solving. It follows that protecting healthy brain development is one of the most important keys to facilitating the capacity for resilience in children. Parents and schools play central roles in nurturing brain development in multiple ways, ranging from nutrition to
intellectual stimulation. There is growing concern that high levels of stress in early childhood may negatively affect brain development, and strong evidence already exists that malnutrition or profound emotional neglect has negative effects on healthy brain function and development. As is the case with parenting, adversity may take its greatest toll by undermining the protections
afforded by fundamental human adaptive systems such as attachment and cognitive development.
Agency, self-efficacy, and the mastery motivation systems—In his classic paper on competence and powerful human motivation system behind mastering the environment, Robert White argued that people are motivated to adapt and experience pleasure in succeeding in those efforts. Later, Albert Bandura would describe in his theory about self-efficacy how such systems work to motivate action and also persistence in the face of failure. People take an active role in their own resilience and there are powerful, biologically-grounded reward systems for this agency. Resilience researchers have noted that “late-bloomers,” or youth who initially have trouble in adolescence but later rally to become successful adults, often report a motivation to change direction before the change is manifested in their actions. On the other hand, this system can be suppressed or extinguished by extreme deprivation or loss of control over adversity, with the result that children or adults feel powerless or helpless to do anything about their lives.
Children neglected in poor quality orphanages often show a passivity and apathy reflecting this kind of “learned helplessness.”
The mastery motivation system is believed to be a powerful engine for change that can be engaged or re-kindled to promote resilience, for example by providing opportunities for successful agency. Effective teachers as well as parents and therapists often attempt to motivate positive adaptation by engaging this system, and children who express self-efficacy also express
confidence they can be successful and also tend to keep trying when life is challenging.
Successful and graduated mastery experiences often are provided by scaffolding success— providing a series of experiences with just enough support so a young person can accomplish something on their own and enjoy the pleasure in step-by-step mastery.
Regulatory systems for self-control of attention, emotion, and action—Adaptive behavior under all circumstances requires a degree of regulatory control in order to coordinate and direct an effective response. Self-regulation tools for life develop over the course of maturation. For young children who do not yet have mature self-regulatory capacity, parents and other adults provide a kind of auxiliary regulatory system. Parents help children manage their emotions and behavior by monitoring and taking actions to help children control their arousal and avoid the consequences of impulsive actions. The attachment system supports this co-regulation function of adults during the extended years of learning and maturing in human development. Routines, rules, and structure in the home and in school environments also support the development of self-control. Brain maturation plays a central role in the development of many so-called “executive function” skills of children; as neural systems come on line, especially in the prefrontal cortex, the potential for self-control, planning, and other regulatory skills expand. Self-regulation systems are strongly implicated in resilience research as protective for children who experience adversity or grow up in disadvantaged homes. As with other fundamental protective systems, concern is growing that the self-regulation systems of children who are not protected from early
negative experiences of chaos, trauma, or severe neglect, may be undermined such that the development of these cognitive, self-control tools, as well as the neural systems that support these functions are compromised.
Faith, religion, and other cultural meaning-making systems—Systems of belief learned through culture and religion and life experience also have been widely implicated in resilience. Religions across time and cultures have provided many important protective rituals, beliefs, and other kinds of supports that appear to foster resilience. Widely practiced religions of the world
have similarities in that they engage the fundamental protective systems described above. Religions offer attachment relationship (spiritual and human), rituals for the difficult passages of life, self-regulation tools (e.g., meditation or prayer), and many other kinds of comforts and supports of emotional and physical assistance. Similarly, cultural and ethnic traditions provide protections for individuals and families for facing and recovering from adversities. In addition, religions and cultures offer cohesive belief systems that imbue life (and death) with meaning. Although there has been surprisingly little research on the role of cultural and religious systems
for resilience in human development, investigators who study resilience in individual lives through time invariably note the importance of cultural practices and the meaning-making power of spirituality, cultural traditions, and religion for resilience. There is a great need for better understanding and applications of the unique strengths and protective factors embedded in cultures and religions that have evolved over time and generations.
Family system—Many of the adaptive systems noted above are instantiated in families that rear children, whether the family is small or very extended, biologically- or culturally-based. Two of the main functions of the family for human development are protection from threats in the present and nurturing the adaptive systems that the child will carry forward to future challenges. Families are the nest where many of the most fundamental adaptive systems for human development are formed and supported throughout the life span. Consequently, if the adversity or risk to a young child is arising within the family, as happens with family violence or maltreatment, there is enormous risk to the development of the tools for resilience, in addition to the threats posed by the adversity itself.
Other adaptive systems—the lives of children are embedded in many systems beyond the family and culture that also appear to offer key supports for resilience. Peer systems, school systems, and media systems, for example, play important roles in human development. Schools provide a context where the adaptive systems within the child (e.g., self-control and problemsolving
skills, mastery motivation) are nurtured and also where children can find competent and caring adults who serve in a variety of mentoring, attachment, or coaching roles that foster competence in general and the tools for resilience in particular. As children grow older, friends can provide important supports and protections in times of adversity and media access may facilitate these peer social connections. Media access also can provide valuable information about resources, although clearly media is a tool with the potential for great risk exposure too.
Can Resilience be Promoted and if so, How?
The consistencies observe in research on resilience strongly suggested that resilience could be facilitated, and intervention research based on resilience models to date has supported the potential of resilience models for practice and policy, although there still is much work to be done. Many specific strategies have been considered for specific problems and situations (e.g., preparing a child for surgery), but research also supports three general approaches to fostering resilience, briefly noted here.
Reduce risk exposure. Sometimes, though not always, it is possible to intervene to prevent or reduce the amount of exposure to adversity or risk. Examples include removing landmines before building a school, prenatal care to reduce premature birth, building affordable housing to prevent homelessness, keeping a homeless child in the same school, turning off the TV to reduce repeated traumatic viewings by young children of terrifying events, and many other strategies that target threat exposure. Efforts to prepare for likely threats such as hurricanes have this aim as well.
Boost assets and resources. Another strategy bolsters strengths and assets in a child’s life to promote better adaptation. These efforts may add assets or improve access to existing resources, or attempt to improve the quality of an existing asset. Examples include providing a tutor or meals at school, building a recreation center, training teachers, or providing opportunities
to develop a talent.
Mobilizing and protecting powerful protective systems. Efforts also can be directed at engaging or enhancing the most fundamental protective systems for human development (e.g., attachment relationships, mastery motivation, executive function skills). Here the attempt is made to influence the most important and powerful protective systems of human adaptation, often in the hope of engendering long-lasting change in resilience capacity. Programs that aim for improving parent-child attachment quality, moving an orphan into a loving family, building a strong mentoring relationship, boosting self-efficacy, or building self-regulation tools are all
examples of strategies to mobilize the power of basic protective systems for human development.
Experimental research on preventive interventions has shown that it is possible to protect the quality of parenting provided to children undergoing severe adversity. Examples include the Parenting Through Change intervention developed by Marion Forgatch and other investigators associated with the Oregon Social Learning Center to help families going through divorce and other traumatic experiences and the parenting interventions developed by the Irwin Sandler, Sharlene Wolchik and other prevention scientists at the Arizona State University for families going through bereavement and divorce. Recent prevention research by Adele Diamond and
colleagues in Canada has demonstrated the effectiveness of training high-risk children in executive function skills through a preschool curriculum called “Tools of the Mind.” These strategies focus on changing systems or processes that are believed to play a very basic role in protecting the development of competence and adaptation under risky circumstances.
A Resilience Framework for Practice and Policy
Research on resilience also suggests a general framework for promoting resilience that has the following features, comprising a “4 M” approach described briefly here.
Mission: Frame positive goals. The articulation of positive goals serves multiple purposes. Positive goals are more appealing to all stakeholders and they also keep attention focused on assessment and attainment of positive progress and outcomes. Furthermore, evidence often supports the effectiveness of promoting competence in order to prevent problems.
Models: Include positive as well as negative influences. Consider strengths, assets, promotive factors, and protective factors in addition to risks, negative life events, vulnerabilities, or symptoms. Many processes may contribute to good (as well as poor) outcomes and some of the most powerful processes for positive change were overlooked in deficit-oriented models.
Measures: Measure the positive along with the negative. Positive missions and models call for the assessment of strengths, protective systems, and competence, in addition to risks or problems. Tracking positive progress, often overlooked in deficit-based approaches, not only uncovers and documents positive gains, but also may have transformative effects on morale. Some of the best interventions appear to work by promoting competence and protective systems which have cumulative and positive effects on developmental trajectories.
Methods: Consider strategies to reduce risk, add assets, and mobilize adaptive systems across multiple systems. As discussed above, there are multiple possibilities for boosting the odds of resilience because human adaptation and development arises from many interactions across multiple levels of influence and systems. Many contemporary interventions and programs combine strategies in an effort to boost their overall effectiveness, such as targeting parenting skills, child self-control, and teacher effectiveness in a single intervention designed to promote school success. Many of the prevention programs with encouraging evidence of efficacy (e.g.,Fast Track, High/Scope Perry Preschool, LAC, PATHS curriculum, Seattle Social Development
Project) combine multiple strategies in an effort to promote competence and resilience.
On the Horizon
The fourth wave of resilience is now rising. New knowledge and technologies for research are opening new horizons for studying and eventually for fostering resilience. It is now feasible to study processes involving genes and brain function and their role in resilience in ways unimagined a few decades ago. At the same time, there is growing attention to the function of larger macrosystems, including cultural processes and the role of the media in risk or resilience.
Statistical advances have made it possible to model more complex processes of growth and change. Growing evidence suggests that there may be more plasticity and potential for change in human development than earlier thought, such that it may be possible to correct developmental problems and “reset” protective systems that have gone awry as a result of negative experiences.
Finally, there is growing recognition that the resilience of human individuals is inextricably tied to the resilience of many other systems. War, terrorism, natural disasters, ecological disasters, and the possibility of pandemic diseases all point to the interdependence of systems related to human life and development and the importance of more integrated approaches of preparation
and response to promote resilience in the face of such large scale threats.
Conclusion
Much work remains to be done in the goal of understanding human resilience well enough to apply this knowledge effectively to practice and policies that promote resilience in young people at risk for adaptive or developmental problems. Nonetheless, there is a sturdy body of knowledge that offers important clues to inform policy or practice. Children and youth whose well being and development are threatened today cannot wait for scientists to learn all the answers. There is sufficient evidence at hand to inform and guide efforts to promote resilience in young people.
Recommended Reading
Flynn, R. J., Dudding, P. M., & Barber, J. G. (Eds.). (2006). Promoting resilience in development: A general framework for systems of care. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Lester, B. M., Masten, A. S., & McEwen, B. S. (Eds.) (2006). Resilience in Children. Vol. 1094, New York Academy of Sciences.
Luthar, S. S. (2006). Resilience in development: A synthesis of research across five decades. In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology, Vol. 3: Risk,disorder, and adaptation (2nd ed., Vol. 3). New York: Wiley.
Masten, A. S. (2007). Resilience in developing systems: Progress and promise as the fourth wave rises. Development and Psychopathology, 19, 921-930.
Masten, A. S., Herbers, J. E., Cutuli, J. J., & Lafavor, T. L. (2008). Promoting competence and resilience in the school context. Professional School Counseling, 12, 76-84.
Masten, A. S., & Obradović, J. (2007). Disaster preparation and recovery: Lessons from research on resilience in human development. Ecology and Society, 13(1), 9 [online]. URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art9/
Possible Web links
Encyclopedia on Early Child Development entries on resilience.
http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/en-ca/child-resilience/how-important-is-it.html
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