Page 19 - Biobehavioral Resilence to Stress

xviii Introduction

Christian Waugh (Stanford University), Michele Tugade (Vassar College),
and Barbara Fredrickson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) con-
sider the physiology of emotion, with specific attention to stress anticipation

and recovery. Physiologists Col. Karl Friedl (U.S. Army Medical Research
and Materiel Command) and David Penetar (McLean Hospital/Harvard
Medical School) address the plasticity of human responsiveness to extreme
environments, focusing on factors that moderate resilience (versus vulner-
ability) to stress and illness. Finally, biomedical researchers Dewleen Baker

(University of California San Diego; Veterans Affairs Center for Stress and
Mental Health), Victoria Risbrough (University of California San Diego),
and Nicholas Schork (Th e Scripps Research Institute) identify known
genetic and environmental risk factors for vulnerability to PTSD, with spe-

cific attention to factors that may account for resilience to the development
of PTSD.

The third section of this volume is dedicated to the consideration of
various psychosocial aspects of resilience. This section begins with a chapter

by Maren Westphal (Columbia University Teachers College), George
Bonanno (Columbia University Teachers College), and Col. Paul Bartone

(National Defense University), who consider specific “resilient” disposi-
tional coping styles and argue that resilience to trauma is both common
and distinct from trauma recovery. Cognitive psychologists Maj. Mark
Staal (U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command), Amy Bolton ( Strategic
Analysis, Inc.), Rita Yaroush (University of Colorado at Boulder), and Lyle

Bourne Jr. (University of Colorado at Boulder) then review effects of stress on
attention, memory, judgment, and decision making and address the specifi c
moderating factors that promote resilience to stress-related performance
decrements. Finally, sociologist David Rohall (Western Illinois University)
and James Martin (Bryn Mawr College) consider various social structural
conditions and “community capacity” variables that infl uence psychological
responses to stressful events.

This volume concludes with an editorial overview of conclusions and

recommendations offered by contributing authors, highlighting emergent
themes and related issues to advance the science of resilience toward predic-
tive research, theory, and application.

Conclusion

This volume has been assembled to provide multidisciplinary perspective on
the meaning and relevance of human resilience to stress in performance-
critical contexts. Our purpose is to document the state of the art in such a
way that inspires progress toward the state of the possible. Contributors to
this volume share the hope that behavioral, medical, and military scientists

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