Page 248 - Biobehavioral Resilence to Stress

Resilience and Personality 225

Flexible Adaptation and Pragmatic Coping

In the following sections, we describe different personality dimensions that

appear to serve a protective function in the face of PTEs. Bonanno (2005)
recently proposed that these person-centered factors could be cataloged into two

broad categories, flexible adaptation and pragmatic coping (Bonanno, 2005).
Flexible adaptation to adverse circumstances can operate through a
variety of cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal processes, but its com-
mon denominator is the capacity to shape and modify one’s behavior to
meet the demands of a given stressor. Flexible adaptation can be observed
very early in development and appears to result from the dynamic inter-
action of biologically based individual diff erences (e.g., extroversion, emo-

tional reactivity, and affect-intensity) and social interactions, particularly

those involving attachment figures. We distinguish here between two diff er-

ent types of flexible adaptations that we refer to as appraisal-based fl exibil-

ity and expressive flexibility. Appraisal-based flexibility refers to the ability

to reduce the negative impact of potentially stressful events by appraising
them in a way that promotes active engagement and enables individuals to
protect and potentially enhance their sense of self-effi cacy and self-esteem.
Expressive flexibility refers to the ability to foster intrapersonal and inter-

personal adjustment in response to potentially stressful events by regulat-
ing the expression or suppression of emotion in accordance with situational
demands.
Pragmatic coping is a distinct but related construct that represents a
“whatever it takes” response to PTEs that may also be referred to as “cop-
ing ugly” (Bonanno, 2006). Pragmatic coping involves single-minded goal-
directed coping strategies that evoke many of the meanings pragmatic has
in both colloquial language and academic usage, for example, business-like,

efficient, hard-boiled, hardheaded, logical, matter-of-fact, philistine, practi-

cal, realistic, sober, and utilitarian. Unlike flexible adaptation, pragmatic cop-
ing probably does not manifest until adolescence or adulthood and involves
protective factors that reflect learning, cultural influences, and gender diff er-

ences as well as stable personality dispositions associated with approach and
avoidance behaviors, respectively. Although some of their protective com-
ponents are similar (e.g., positive emotions, self-esteem), fl exible adaptation

and pragmatic coping are likely to be diff erentially effective in response to

chronic versus acute stressors. We will argue that flexible adaptation repre-
sents generally salutary personality traits and types of behavior that contrib-
ute to resilience in response to both acute stressful events and chronically
corrosive environments. In contrast, pragmatic coping may promote resil-
ience to extremely aversive events but can carry enduring social costs and
other liabilities as well as have potentially maladaptive consequences when

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