Page 255 - Biobehavioral Resilence to Stress

232 Biobehavioral Resilience to Stress

A recent prospective study has provided intriguing data on the relation-
ships between hardiness, habitual coping style, emotional distress, and qual-
ity of life in a prolonged stressful situation. Eid, Johnsen, Saus, and Risberg
(2005) measured self-reported emotional stress symptoms and quality of life

in a sample of 18 male Norwegian sailors who were confi ned to a disabled
submarine for 1 week as part of a simulated emergency exercise. Sailors who
scored high on a questionnaire measure of personality hardiness (a Nor-
wegian translation of the short form of the Dispositional Resiliency Scale)
reported lower levels of emotional distress (as measured by a questionnaire
measure of posttraumatic symptoms) and improved quality of life (as meas-
ured by a General Health Questionnaire). Most interestingly, although all
crew members experienced a reduction in emotional distress over the course
of the week-long exercise, only hardy individuals also reported an improve-
ment in the quality of life.
In summary, there is a growing body of evidence to support the argument

that flexible appraisal styles (hardiness, optimism) may promote resilience
to stress. However, relatively few studies have specified the emotion self-

regulatory processes that might underlie the observed relationship between
stress resilience and appraisal style. In the following section, we focus on the

role of flexible regulation of emotional expression (expressive fl exibility) in
resilience.

Emotional Flexibility

Emotion self-regulatory processes are implicated in most aspects of the stress
response, in particular physical arousal and psychological distress. Th e ina-
bility to downregulate negative emotions such as anger and fear are likely to
play a key role in the development of stress-related syndromes such as PTSD
(Briere, 1997; Chemtob, Novaco, Hamada & Gross, 1997; Herman, 1992;
Kubany & Watson, 2002; Pelcovitz et al., 1997; Resick, 2001; van der Kolk
et al., 1996; van der Kolk, Roth & Pelcovitz, 1993). One way in which emo-

tion self-regulatory ability may affect vulnerability to PTSD is by infl uenc-
ing the impact emotional states can have on diff erent stages of information
processing such as the encoding, storage, and retrieval of memories associ-
ated with highly stressful events (Foa & Kozak, 1986; Horowitz, 1986; Litz,
1993; McNally, Kaspi, Riemann & Zeitlin, 1991). Although emotion regula-
tion is mentioned frequently in the PTSD literature, few assessment measures
have been developed to operationally define this construct (Price, Monson,

Callahan & Rodriguez, 2006).

Emotion self-regulation has been defined as referring to “the processes

by which we influence which emotions we have, when we have them and
how we experience and express them” (Gross, 1998b, p. 275). Th is model

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