So, how did they do it? This involves the study of psychological resilience.
Resilience research originated from the study of vulnerable children before 1970s.
At that time, psychologists conducted a follow-up study on many children of mental patients and found that they all lived in "bad environment" families. To the researchers' surprise, most of them are still growing up healthily and developing well in personality and other aspects. ...
What is "psychological resilience"? In this regard, domestic and foreign researchers have different definitions, which can be roughly divided into three categories:
The first is the definition of results, focusing on defining psychological resilience from the positive results of individual development.
For example, some researchers believe that "psychological resilience is a phenomenon that can produce good adaptation or smooth development even under serious threats."
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The second is the definition of ability. psychological resilience is regarded as an individual's ability or quality, which is a characteristic of the individual.
For example, some researchers say that "resilience is an individual's ability to withstand a high level of destructive changes while showing as little bad behavior as possible"; Resilience is the ability of individuals to recover from negative experiences and flexibly adapt to changing external environment.
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The third is process definition, that is, psychological resilience is defined as a dynamic process.
For example, some researchers put forward that "resilience is a good adaptation process when individuals face life adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or other major pressures in life, which means recovering from difficult experiences".
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Generally speaking, the above definition contains two core elements: one is that individuals encounter adversity; Second, individuals successfully cope (or adapt well).
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In contrast, the definition of process not only emphasizes the good adaptability and internal coping ability of individuals, but also describes the dynamic interaction between individuals and the environment, which is more integrated, so it is adopted by most researchers.
At present, the unanimous conclusion on the mechanism of psychological resilience is that "protective factors" play a key intermediary role; Protective factors can alleviate the negative impact of unfavorable situation to some extent.
These protective factors can be external factors (such as social support) or some characteristics of individuals themselves (such as self-efficacy).
Some researchers have summarized the research results in the past decades and noticed that protective factors similar to the following table are mentioned in different studies on resilience.
Researchers have found that these protective factors play a role in many situations around the world, such as war, living with parents with serious mental illness, domestic violence, poverty, natural disasters and so on.
This means that psychological resilience's mechanism is to reveal what protective factors individuals have when encountering adversity, and what and how to motivate psychological resilience to achieve a good adaptive state.
So, how can protective factors reduce or make up for the adverse effects caused by dangerous factors?
In this regard, researchers put forward different models, among which four models of elastic development mechanism (slowing down the influence of crisis factors, slowing down negative chain reactions, promoting individual self-efficacy and self-esteem, and developing opportunities) seem to be more popular and easy to use; More specifically:
One is to reduce the adverse effects caused by risk factors, including changing individuals' cognition of risk factors and avoiding or reducing contact with them.
Second, it reduces the possible negative chain reaction caused by (long-term) risk factors. For example, because of the good care of others, children can escape the negative chain reaction caused by the death of their parents.
Thirdly, the influence of protective factors on elastic development can be realized by improving self-esteem and self-efficacy, so that individuals have confidence to cope with unfavorable situations.
Fourth, create opportunities for individuals to obtain resources or complete important turning points in their lives.
What we should pay attention to here is the comparison between individual protective factors and environmental pressure. If the individual's protective factors are not enough to bear the pressure, then psychological resilience will be weakened or even lost.
Finally, it should be mentioned that some researchers point out that psychological resilience is nothing more than a kind of "positive adaptation" based on the simplicity of science, and this term does not seem to bring new ideas to "positive adaptation" or strengthen the theory of psychological development.
Some people say, "Resilience should be damned, and it is time to' retire' from the research field with dignity."
(References: Review and Prospect of Resilience Research at Home and Abroad, Vivienne Liu, Wang Haibin, Li Mei, Huang Li; A Review of Resilience and Its Mechanism, Ma, Sang Biao, Hong: Review and Prospect of Resilience Research, Xi Juzhe, Sang Biao, Zuo Zhihong)