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Construing Benefits from Adversity: Adaptotional Significance and Disposltional Underpinnings
Author(s) -
Affleck Glenn,
Tennen Howard
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1996.tb00948.x
Subject(s) - psychology , optimism , coping (psychology) , personality , openness to experience , extraversion and introversion , big five personality traits , cognition , social psychology , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , psychiatry
The discovery of benefits from living with adversity has been implicated in psychological well‐being in numerous investigations, is pivotal to several prominent theories of cognitive adaptation to threat, and can be predicted by personality differences. This article summarizes the prevalence and adaptive significance of finding benefits from major medical problems, locates the place of benefit‐finding in stress and coping theories, and examines how it may be shaped by specific psychological dispositions such as optimism and hope and by broader personality traits such as Extraversion and Openness to Experience. The distinction between beliefs about benefits from adversity (benefit‐ finding ) and the use of such knowledge as a deliberate strategy of coping with the problem (benefit‐ reminding ) is underscored and illustrated by daily process research on coping with chronic pain.