Resilience-as-process: Negative Affect, Stress, and Coupled Dynamical Systems

Resilience is often considered both a trait and a process. The current study proposes a new way to conceptualize resilience-as-process based on dynamical systems modeling, which allows researchers to capture the process of stress management in real time. Coupled damped linear oscillator models succinctly describe daily stress and negative affect in terms of developmental forces (e.g., velocity, acceleration). Models were fit to 56-day daily response data from 42 aging adults (M(age) = 78.8 years; SD(age) = 6.6 years) to observe and understand linkages between daily stress and affect. It was speculated that individuals with greater resilience would experience stress as less coupled to changes in negative affect (less stress reactivity), and would recover their affective equilibrium more quickly following a given exogenous stressor (greater stress recovery). To identify resilience resources related to reliable interindividual differences in coupling and damping between stress and negative affect, we examined possible protective factors. Aspects of personality and social support predicted both the strength and nature of this coupling, such that higher levels of these resources resulted in greater protection from the cost to negative affect from stress, as observed in damping of negative affect and decreased coupling between systems.