Hardiness

• The word hardy is used to describe people that can cope with stressors and stop them from having a negative impact on their health and their lives.
• The 3 traits Kobasa claimed hardy people have are: Commitment, Challege and Control.
• Commitment - Hardy people are more likely to be involved in what they do and have direction.
• Challenge - Hardy people see life as a challenge and not an obsticle and want to succeed.
• Control - Hardy people see themselves as having control over their lives, if they don't have the skills required they will get them.
• Hardy people are protected against the negative effects of stress because they:

  Use coping strategies effectively

  Use self care

  Use social support
• Kobasa found that hardy business men who were stressed did not suffer illness, whereas ones who werent were more likely to fall ill.
• Bartone found that soldiers with higher hardiness levels were more able to cope with stress from combat and life events and were less likely to suffer from PTSD or depression.
• Sandvik studied 21 Norweigan navy cadets, he took their blood during and after stressful excercise and found the ones with unbalanced characterisics of hardiness had a worse response to stress.
• Madi claims that you need all 3 C's to have the buffering affect to stress.
• Measuring hardiness relies on self reports and therefore suffer from social deireability.
• There are many scales used to measure hardiness making results hard to compare.

  Funk suggests the Dispositional Resiliance Scale as it measure all 3 elements equally.