Resilience resources, daily hassles and depression amongst individuals in Singapore

Abstract

Resilience research has typically focused on examining coping and adaptation processes that help individuals buffer against stress and psychopathology. Nevertheless, little is known about what causes individuals to judge a situation as stressful or manageable to begin with. Some research has begun identifying resilience resources that shape our appraisals. However, few have directly compared the effectiveness of these resources in helping individuals appraise potentially challenging situations in a manageable way to prevent the onset of subsequent psychopathology. To investigate the potential differences between resilience resources, 235 undergraduates in Singapore were primed to think about either dispositional (intrapersonal) or social (interpersonal) resilience resources and subsequently asked to report their perceived severity of daily hassles and severity of depressive symptoms in an online survey. One-way ANOVA and mediation analyses indicated that neither intra- nor interpersonal resilience resources had an effect on the perceived severity of daily hassles and subsequent depressive symptoms. Implications for the direction of future resilience research are discussed.