Hardiness

• Hardiness (Kobasa 1979) is a personality trait that determines someone's resistance to stress and how they handle stressful situations
• Maddi (1986) claims hardiness (Kobasa 1979) provides the existential courage to deal with stress and the determination to keep going through stressful situations
• There are 3 aspects to a person's cognitive appraisal of their hardiness; commitment, challenge, and control
• Commitment is how hardy people have greater engagement in their environment and relationships meaning they are more likely to see the rewards on the other side of a stressful situation
• Challenge is how hardy people see stressful situations as an opportunity for growth rather than potentially psychologically harmful and damaging to self-esteem
• Control is how hardy people people are able to take charge of stressful situations as they see themselves as able to overcome stress
• Kobasa (1979) studied 670 American Male middle and senior managers aged between 40 and 49
• Kobasa (1979) used the schedule of recent experiences (A type of social readjustment rating scale holmes and rahe 1967) to identify participants with high levels of stress
• Kobasa (1979) measured illness of participants based on the severity of illness survey and the number of days taken off work
• Kobasa (1979) found managers who scored highly on commitment, control, and challenge coped with stress better than than others with similar social readjustment rating scale (holmes and rahe 1967) as they scored lower on the seriousness of illness survey and took less days off sick
• Kobasa (1979) weakness; beta bias as the study only uses a sample of males and still applies results to women
• Maddi (1987) conducted a longitudinal study of 400 managers and supervisors at the Bell Telephone company undergoing a massive reorganisation causing thousands to lose their jobs leading to severe stress for those who remained at the company
• Maddi (1987) found 2/3 participants experienced severe declines in their health including strokes, heart attacks, depression, and drug abuse
• Maddi (1987) found 1/3 participants claimed to feel happier and more fulfilled at work than ever; these participants scored higher on average in commitment, challenge and control
• Hardiness strength; Real world application as Bartone (2008) found that US military personnel who undergo a highly stressful 4 week assessment course have greater hardiness than those who do not pass showing how hardiness can be used to select suitable candidates for certain jobs
• Hardiness strength; research support as Lifton (2006) measured hardiness from 5 US universities and found individuals with lower hardiness are more likely to drop out
• Hardiness weakness; concepts of control, challenge, and commitment are not concrete and measurable
• Kobasa (1979) weakness; relies on retrospective self report data which is unreliable as memory can be inaccurate and can be open to social desirability bias especially when considering stress as it can distort a person's memory and a person experiencing stress is more likely to overestimate stressful stimuli they experience
• Hardiness weakness; does not consider other factors in that may make individuals more resistant to stress such as personality type as type Bs are more likely to resist stress