A resilience overview - about personal qualities, stressors, appraisals, responses and the environment

What is resilience?

Especially in the aftermath of the Covid19 pandemic, resilience has become an often misunderstood buzzword. It is a context-specific term described in sport research as a the ability to use personal qualities to withstand pressure and maintain functioning (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016; Bonnano, 2004). Generally there is a tendency to distinguish between two trajectories: a)“robust resilience” which describes the protective quality aiding a person to maintain their well-being and performance when under pressure (2016); and b) “rebound resilience”, referring to a bounce back quality from minor or temporary disruptions to a person’s well-being and performance and swift return to normal functioning (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016). There has also been in increasing tendency to conceptualize resilience as a process with a capacity to develop and change over time in “the context of person-environment interactions” (Fletcher and Sarkar, 2014; 2016). Its mostly comprised of different components, namely personal qualities, stressors, appraisals, responses and environment. See our short presentations of each of them underneath here.

Personal qualities

What are Personal qualities?

Personal qualities can be described as psychological factors protecting an individual from negative consequences (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016; 2012). It should be noted that it might be beneficial to distinguish between personality and psychological skills (2016) when investigating personal qualities. Personality or personality characteristics is a more stable, multilayered personal quality and “contribute to an individual’s distinctive patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving” (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016; Cervone & Pervin, 2013, p. 8). Psychological skills are more adaptable, cognitive affective techniques and processes which are used, on their own or in combination, to enhance and optimize and individual’s functioning or mental readiness in encountering stressors (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016). Consequently, an individual can train certain psychological skills which will enhance or improve personality traits beneficial in demonstrating resilience. In dance, the following personal qualities were identified to aid the demonstration of resilience:

Positive Personality

Motivational quality

Confidence

Relatedness

Harmonious passion

Stressors and stress

Overall, there are indications that dancers experience different kind of stressors which a study has categorized as personal stressors, interpersonal stressors, situational stressors, and cultural stressors (Blevins et al., 2020).

Personal stressors included low confidence, poor performance and the impact of training demands and individual capacity for recovery (Blevins et al., 2020). Interpersonal stressors entailed competition and comparisons with peers, value being placed on the opinions of others, and perceiving difficulty in living up to others’ expectations of oneself (Blevins et al., 2020). Situational stressors, on the other hand, focused on concerns outside dance training and entailed worries about employability, finances and time-management issues. Cultural stressors included worries related to physical appearance and conforming to aesthetic ideals, such as what a dancer’s body should look like and the perceived ability to fit into the dance world (Blevins et al., 2020). In the scoping review, we also identified environmental stressors such as mirrors and dance uniforms as an own category.

What are stressors?

Stressors are “environmental demands encountered by an individual” (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2014). They are often multifactorial and experienced both on personal, cultural and environmental level.
Within dance, there are known sources of physical stress related to dance training, such as high physical workload, and requirements concerning technical skill and mastery of choreographic demands (Blevins et al., 2020). However, there are also psychosocial stressors related to environment (daily tasks and gasses such as managing finances and obligations), personal roles (perceived autonomy or control within a group, competition, social support) and major life events such as death, career or school transitions, injuries (Blevins et al., 2020).

Overview over stressors

Situational stressors: factors or concerns outside of dance training, worries about employability, finances and time- management

Interpersonal stressors: factors that highlight competition and comparisons with peers, value being placed on the opinions of others and perceived difficulty living up to others’ expectations of oneself (Blevins et al., 2020)

Cultural stressors: worries related to physical appearance, body image, conforming to aesthetic ideals (such as what a dancer’s body should look like) and perceived ability to fit into the dance world (Blevins et al., 2020)

Environmental stressors: factors such as mirrors, dance uniforms.

Personal stressors: factors that cause low confidence and poor performance as well as impact of training demands and individual capacity for recovery (Blevins et al., 2020)

Appraisals

Whether and to which extent these stressors have a detrimental effect, depends on how we perceive and evaluate them. Primary appraisals can be seen as “rain checks” or evaluations of how relevant or significant what is happening is in relation to our goals as well as what is at stake and the implications of the latter (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016). A person can react negatively to a stressor and thus evaluate it as a threat or a harm/loss or respond positively, assessing it as a challenge or a benefit. After evaluating this encounter, a person will appraise which personal resources are available to deal with the threat/harm/loss or challenge, and whether what they can do about it will be enough (ibid, 2016). According to resilience research undertaken by Fletcher & Sarkar, individuals will also assess their own thoughts , emotions and their relevance for their performance and well-being, also called meta-cognition and -emotion (2016). The latter is a higher level of cognitive-affective processing and is important for withstanding pressure and sustaining performance (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016)

Responses

Facilitative responses

A single or series of reactions to stressful encounters or situations, resulting in persons maintaining their well-being and performance

Debilitative responses

A single or series of reactions to stressful encounters and situations which might weaken or debilitate a person’s physical and/or mental well-being

Environment

Psychological resilience is greatly influenced by environmental factors, which can range from social, cultural to environmental circumstances (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016). In the scoping review, we have followed Sport researcher’s suggestion to use Sanfords theory of challenge, which presents four different environments facilitating different levels of challenge and support (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2016; Sanford, 1967): Facilitative environments (high challenge, high support); Unrelenting environments (high challenge, low support); Stagnant environments (low challenge, low support) and Comfortable environments (low challenge, high support).