Untying a Gordian knot: Exploring the nomological network of resilience

Abstract

Objective: This study investigates the relations of resilience with coping, personality traits, emotional intelligence, sense of coherence and maladaptive personality traits. Method: The study employs network analysis techniques to the study of resilience, showcasing how these methods can estimate a model that is simple to interpret while still retaining the most important relations and that can even suggest the direction of causality despite using a cross-sectional design (N = 305). Results: The results highlight several important variables that should be considered for fostering resilience, foremost among them the use of positive reappraisal coping, sense of coherence, and the social management aspect of emotional intelligence. Conclusions: The results successfully replicated known associations between resilience and other psychological constructs (emotional intelligence, personality, sense of coherence, coping) and shed light on relations between resilience and maladaptive personality traits. Network analysis considered all these constructs together, so as to take into account the complex pattern of relations between them and offer a bird's eye view of the whole network of associations centred on resilience. The resulting model is parsimonious and easy to interpret while still striving to preserve the complexity of the variables' interrelations.