JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Recently, cross-sectional relationships between psycho-social resilience factors (RFs) and resilience, operationalized as an outcome of low reactivity of mental health to stressor exposure (low ‘stressor reactivity’) during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, were reported.

Objective:

Extending these findings, we here examine prospective relationships and weekly dynamics between the same RFs and stressor reactivity in a longitudinal sample during the aftermath of the first wave in several European countries.

Methods:

Over five weeks of app-based assessments, participants weekly reported stressor exposure, mental health problems, RFs, and demographic data, in one of six different languages. As (partly) preregistered, hypotheses were tested cross-sectionally at baseline (N=558) and longitudinally (N=200), using mixed effects models and mediation analyses.

Results:

RFs at baseline, including positive appraisal style (PA), optimism (OPT), self-efficacy (GSE), perceived good stress recovery (REC), and perceived social support (PSS), were negatively associated with stressor reactivity (SR) scores, not only cross-sectionally (baseline SR scores; all P<.001) but also prospectively (average SR scores across subsequent weeks; PA (P=.008), OPT (P<.001), GSE (P=.01), REC (P<.001), PSS (P=.002)). In both analyses, positive appraisal style mediated the effects of perceived social support on SR (cross- sectionally [95% CI: -0.064, -0.013], prospective [95% CI: -0.074, -0.0008]). In the analyses of weekly RF-SR dynamics, RFs positive appraisal (of stressors generally and specifically of the Corona crisis) and general self-efficacy were negatively associated with SR in a contemporaneous (PA (P<.001), PAC (P=.03), and GSE (P<.001)), but not lagged fashion (PA (P=.36); PAC (P=.52); GSE (P=.06)).

Conclusions:

We identify psychological RFs which prospectively predict resilience and co-fluctuate with weekly stressor reactivity within individuals. The prospective results endorse that the previously reported RF-SR associations do not exclusively reflect mood-congruency or other temporal bias effects. We further confirm an important role for positive appraisal in resilience.