The influence of life narrative themes on resilience and life outcomes

2022 
Abstract Resilience is the process of negotiating, managing, and adapting to significant sources of stress or trauma ( Windle et al., 2011 ). Previous research has demonstrated that higher levels of resilience can positively impact life outcomes, such as adaptive coping and life satisfaction. However, previous research has often been conducted within clinical populations, and less is known about how resilience develops in largely non-clinical college populations. Given some conceptual similarities between the components of resilience and research on three life narrative themes (i.e., agency, communion and personal growth), there is reason to believe that life narrative themes may be linked to the development of resilience. The current study collected data from 184 undergraduate students with ages ranging from 18 to 22 (M = 20.62, SD = 2.05), who were predominantly white (85%) and female (65%). The relations between life narrative themes, resilience, and life outcomes (e.g., coping skills, stress, depression, and anxiety) were modeled using a structural equation model. Results observed that resilience mediated the relationship between life narrative themes and life outcomes. The results of this effort have theoretical implications for the study of resilience. Additionally, these findings may prove helpful for informing future research to foster life outcomes by using interventions geared towards helping individuals improve resilience.
    • Correction
    • Source
    • Cite
    • Save
    • Machine Reading By IdeaReader
    44
    References
    0
    Citations
    NaN
    KQI
    []