Individual explanation 1 - Hardiness Flashcards
Hardy Personality
Suzanne Kobasa and Salvatore Maddi people with a hardy personality consists of three main elements
1. control- hardy individuals see themselves as being in control of their own lives rather than being controlled by external factors (sense of personal power) They believe that they can take actions that will directly influence the course of their lives
2. Commitment - hardy people have a sense of purpose and meaning in life. They are curious about other people and the world around them aswell as believing that no matter how bad things get you should stay involved rather than alienating yourself from the situation.
3. Challenge - people see stressful situations as an opportunity for growth and development. They accept that experiencing stress and change is part of life and something to overcome. Therefore they do not expect life to be easy and learn from failure as well as success
control
hardy individuals see themselves as being in control of their own lives rather than being controlled by external factors (sense of personal power) They believe that they can take actions that will directly influence the course of their lives
commitment
Commitment - hardy people have a sense of purpose and meaning in life. They are curious about other people and the world around them aswell as believing that no matter how bad things get you should stay involved rather than alienating yourself from the situation.
Challenge
people see stressful situations as an opportunity for growth and development. They accept that experiencing stress and change is part of life and something to overcome. Therefore they do not expect life to be easy and learn from failure as well as success
how these characteristics buffer against stress
having a hardy personality is seen as a pathway to resiliance against. Together these personality characteristics mean that when faced with a stressor the individual will fare better through processes of coping stratergies, self care and use of social support. In turn hardy individuals will experience less of a physiological response to stress, such as not having raised blood pressure and heart rate. This will mean that they are less likely to experiance stress related illness as they do not experience the high levels of the stress hormones cortisol
Suzanne Kobasa
used a version of SRRS along with an illness survey to compare two groups of male business executives. One group had experianced high stress in the previous 3 years without falling ill. Personality tests showed that the group who had experienced the stress and had fallen ill had a more hardy personality.
Salvatore Maddi
conducted research on the employee of Bell Telephone Company who were experiencing a stressful period of redundancies and reorganisation. A third of the individuals demonstrated hardy personalities and these were also the ones that suffered fewer stress related illnesses such as heart problems or mental health issues such as depression.
Benefits of hardiness eg Paul Bartone
found that soliders with a higher hardiness level were more able to cope with stress as both a result of life events and things that happened in combat. The hardy soliders were less likely to experiance long term negative health consequences of these events such as PTSD or depression
evaluation
- gender differences
- importance of three elements
- neuroticism
- issues with measuring hardiness
gender differences
original study done by Kobasa was carried out on males may be different for females. james shepered highlighted unconsistent findings when considering gender and how hardiness effects their response to stress. Research found control and commitment parts of hardy personality predicted on health outcomes for males but not females.
Shephard also mentioned may be differences in effects hardiness in diff age groups
Relationship between stress and outcomes and hardiness only evident in older women may help to explain inconsistent results
importance of three elements
maddi argues all 3 parts of hardy personality are needed to have buffering effect against stress. eg those high in control but without commitment and challenge would be similar to type A personality.
other researchers disagree. Asle Sandik studied 21 norweigan navy cadets during stress field exercise, obtaining hardiness scores couple days beforehand and then collecting blood samples midway through and at the end of exercise. some high in commitment and control but lower in challenge . these termed ‘unbalanced’ hardiness group and damaging immune response to stress and blood sample.
low challenge may make more vunerable to stress in ambigious situations
neuroticism
steven funk and kent houston noted overlap between items on hardiness scale and those used to measure the personality trait of neuroticism
those high on neuroticism scale dwell of failures and focus on negative aspects of their life, more likely to overexaggerate illness and physical complaints.
so those who classified as low hardiness not ill they are more neurotic and therefore more complaints. Funk suggest more research needed to establish exact nature of relationship between two.eg higher order characteristic that buffers stressof which high hardiness and low neuroticism is a feature
issues with measuring hardiness
measuring hardiness relies on self report- which are subject to social desirability
number of scales used to measure hardiness which could cause confusion when comparing different studies
any differences in studies would be scale used or diff researcher
steven funk reccomends more uniform approach using DRS dispositional resiliance scale
claiming its better as it measures 3 components equally and contains more items that are phrased positively and more widely available
