Personal Resilience: Empirical Typology and Method of Measurement

Abstract

Ego-resilience (ER), defined and operationalized by J. Block, has been made more precise as regards A. Maslow's conception of the motivational factors of security (Security Feeling Syndrome – SFS) and psychological health, as a characterological determinant of whether an individual functions adequately in the changing and often stressful circumstances. In order to measure ER and SFS J. Block's ER-89 scale was employed and the author's factor version of A. Maslow's Security-Insecurity Inventory. 144 men and 144 women, aged 18-23, took part in the research. A statistically significant co-variability has been found between ER and the factors of security (SFS). Moreover, having used the multiple regression model, ego-resilience between ER and SFS factors was operationalized in terms of personal resilience – PR, as a continuous variable. This variable may form a basic ground for empirical typology in the sense of a characterologically interpreted PR. The subjects with a high PR index are characterized by a high level of the sense of intimacy, confidence and openness in relation to their closest surrounding. They trust their own competence and ability to employ their personal and accessible means to behave as adequate as possible. They reveal a tendency to obtain rather lower scores as regards the factor of stability, a fact that should be interpreted as their readiness to accept the risk of losing acquired routine and self-confidence when committing himself to new, often surprising, situations, and undertaking respective tasks. The persons of a low personal resilience have the highest scores in the factor of stability and the factor of self-confidence, and the lowest level as regards the sense of intimacy and openness to their surrounding. They are concentrated on themselves, on safeguarding and supporting the actual status quo. The types of personality that have thus been distinguished express two different orientations in life. They should not be simplified in terms of two polar traits of personality, ways of behaviour, or even in terms of the existential dilemma: security-growth, as described by Maslow