The etiology of resilience to disadvantage

Abstract

Background: Although early life exposure to chronic disadvantage is associated with deleterious outcomes, 40%–60% of exposed youth continue to thrive. To date, little is known about the etiology of these resilient outcomes. Methods: The current study examined child twin families living in disadvantaged contexts (N = 417 pairs) to elucidate the etiology of resilience. We evaluated maternal reports of the Child Behavior Checklist to examine three domains of resilience and general resilience. Results: Genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental influences significantly contributed to social resilience (22%, 61%, 17%, respectively) and psychiatric resilience (40%, 28%, 32%, respectively), but academic resilience was influenced only by genetic and nonshared environmental influences (65% and 35%, respectively). These three domains loaded significantly onto a latent resilience factor, with factor loadings ranging from 0.60 to 0.34. A common pathway model revealed that the variance common to all three forms of resilience was predominantly explained by genetic and non-shared environmental influences (50% and 35%, respectively). Conclusions: These results support recent conceptualizations of resilience as a multifaceted construct influenced by both genetic and environmental influences, only some of which overlap across the various domains of resilience.