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132 Biobehavioral Resilience to Stress

quicker identification of the safety signal and speedier subsequent recovery

from stress anticipation.
There is now preliminary neuroimaging and behavioral evidence to

suggest that nonresilient individuals are more likely to adopt the “better
safe than sorry” orientation in anticipation of an uncertain stressor, whereas
resilient individuals are more likely to adopt the “wait and see” orientation.
Waugh, Wager et al. (2007) reported that when anticipating a possible (0.50)
negative stimulus, nonresilient participants exhibited greater activation of
the LOFC, a brain region associated with the anticipation of punishment
(O’Doherty et al., 2001). When presented with the neutral picture that could
have been aversive, nonresilient participants also demonstrated increased
duration of activation in the insula, a region of the brain associated with core

negative affect. In addition, LOFC activity during the anticipation period
predicted the insula response to these ‘relief’ neutral pictures. Th ese results
suggest that nonresilient people generate a preemptive emotional response
(LOFC)—“better safe than sorry”—which then affects their ability to recover

from the threat (longer affective response to neutral pictures aft er threat).
Resilient participants, on the other hand, exhibit minimal activity—“wait
and see”—during anticipation and thus are better able to recover (neutral
picture, the threat is gone).
In summary, differential recovery when an anticipated stressor does not

occur depends to some extent on individual differences in anticipatory emo-

tion and physiology. If an anticipated stressor is perceived to be very likely
to occur—whether as determined by objective statistics or by individual bias
toward worst outcome certainty—anticipatory stress will be associated with
preemptive emotional and physiological reactivity that serves to prepare the
body for action (Waugh, Wager et al., 2007). If the anticipated stressor then fails
to occur, the heightened anticipatory response will likely require extra time and
energy to downregulate and recover. Alternatively, if an anticipated stressor is
viewed by actual or perceived probability to be unlikely to occur, emotional
and physiological anticipatory responses will be less dramatic, reflecting a “wait

and see” strategy that conserves energy and facilitates faster recovery.
An interesting question for the future research is how the ability to learn
environmental contingencies (Charney, 2004) is related to anticipation and
recovery from stress. It may be that an enhanced ability to learn and thus
assess environmental contingencies supports more appropriate or eff ective
strategy selection. Alternatively, strategy selection may affect learning or

assessment. We propose that the causal relationship between learning and
strategy selection is generally reciprocal, beginning as an initial emphasis
on strategy selection in novel or unfamiliar situations (new environmental
contingencies to be learned) and followed by reference to previously learned
contingencies in the course of subsequent strategy selections.

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