THE PREDICTION POWER OF FAMILY STRUCTURE FOR DIFFERENT SUBTYPES OF RESILIENCE
THE PREDICTION POWER OF FAMILY STRUCTURE FOR DIFFERENT SUBTYPES OF RESILIENCE

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this study was to explore the additional prediction power of older and younger sibling number, and of attachment figures number, on three different types of resilience, above and beyond the characteristics of extraversion and assertiveness, that have up to now been shown time and again to predict general resilience. In contrast to the dominating view that family systems are hard to maneuver into research methodology, we developed three hypotheses proposing that simply measured indicators of family structure add predictive power to personality attributes, later showing the manner in which the latter attributes relate to general resilience. By a cross-sectional survey among 126 undergraduates from different psychology and education sciences study programs, it has been proven that the number of younger siblings is an additional positive predictor for emotional-regulation resilience, the number of older siblings is an additional positive predictor for positive-future-orientation resilience and the number of attachment figures in childhood is an additional negative predictor for novelty-seeking resilience. Furthermore, assertiveness has been shown to mediate between extraversion and global resilience. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

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