In their target article, Kalisch et al. propose an overarching, transdiagnostic framework for the study of resilience that brings together several disciplines, most notably clinical psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. One discipline, however, has escaped the authors' attention: social psychology. Yet social psychology has unique potential for advancing understanding of resilience. An exciting development that illustrates this is the emergence of social-psychological interventions – sometimes called “wise” interventions – that target key mechanisms to yield broad and lasting improvements in health, well-being, and functioning (for overviews, see Cohen & Sherman Reference Cohen and Sherman2014; Walton Reference Walton2014; Wilson Reference Wilson2011; Yeager & Walton Reference Yeager and Walton2011).
What are social-psychological interventions? They are similar to clinical interventions (e.g., cognitive-behavioral therapy) in that they target key mechanisms. They are, however, typically more precise in focus, stealthier in design, and briefer in delivery. Traditional clinical interventions usually target several mechanisms at once, consist of explicit instructions to change how a person thinks or feels, and unfold over weeks or months. By contrast, social-psychological interventions usually target one key mechanism; consist of reading-and-writing exercises that, even as they change how a person thinks or feels, may not be experienced as “interventions”; and take an hour or less to complete. Consistent with Kalisch and colleagues' theorizing, social-psychological interventions often cultivate resilience by changing how people construe adversity – their subjective understanding or appraisal of adverse events (Yeager & Dweck Reference Yeager and Dweck2012; Yeager et al. Reference Yeager, Trzesniewski and Dweck2013). Indeed, subjective construal is a pillar of social psychology (Ross & Nisbett Reference Ross and Nisbett1991). Let us consider two examples.
During the transition to college, students often struggle to make friends and connect with professors. Ethnic-minority students, an underrepresented and negatively stereotyped group in higher education, may view these social adversities as evidence that they do not belong in college. An ethnic-minority first-year student described: “Everyone is going out without me, and they didn't consider me when making their plans. At times like this I feel like I don't belong here” (Walton & Cohen Reference Walton and Cohen2007, p. 90). Such interpretations undermine health, well-being, and academic performance (Mendoza-Denton et al. Reference Mendoza-Denton, Downey, Purdie, Davis and Pietrzak2002). Walton and Cohen (Reference Walton and Cohen2007; Reference Walton and Cohen2011) designed a 1-hour intervention to encourage students to attribute social adversities to the common challenges of the college transition rather than to a fixed lack of belonging on their part or that of their group. Students read stories from upperclassmen indicating that all students worry at first about whether they belong and that these worries decline with time. To help students internalize this message, they were invited to write an essay and deliver a speech about why students come to feel at home in college over time. Over the next three years, the intervention improved ethnic-minority students' health and well-being and cut by half the achievement gap in grades with White students. This achievement boost was mediated by subjective construal: The intervention prevented ethnic-minority students from seeing social adversities on campus as a threat to their belonging.
Another form of adversity is academic failure. When students get poor grades, they can fear that other people will judge them negatively and, hence, feel ashamed, insecure, and worthless (Leary & Baumeister Reference Leary, Baumeister and Zanna2000). Such negative self-feelings, in turn, increase students' risk for later depression and anxiety (Sowislo & Orth Reference Sowislo and Orth2013). Brummelman et al. (Reference Brummelman, Thomaes, Walton, Poorthuis, Overbeek, Orobio de Castro and Bushman2014a) designed a 15-minute intervention to prevent secondary-school students from seeing failure as a threat to their self-worth. Students reflected on times when they were accepted and valued by others unconditionally. One 14-year-old girl wrote: “I was working on a task with a friend of mine, and I made a lot of mistakes. But we are still good friends, and she still values me.” To encourage students to fully reflect on this experience, they were asked to describe it in great detail. Would this exercise imbue students with the feeling of being valued for who they are, even when they perform poorly (Rogers Reference Rogers1961)? Three weeks later, students received the first report card of the school year. Without intervention, students who received poor grades experienced increased negative self-feelings; with it, they did not. Thus, the intervention buffered students' negative self-feelings in the face of distal academic failure.
How do seemingly small interventions yield effects that last weeks, months, or even years? The interventions do not shut people's eyes to adversity. Nor do they simply remain accessible in people's minds: the accessibility of messages wanes over time (Srull & Wyer Reference Srull and Wyer1979). Rather, the interventions set in motion self-sustaining processes, whereby small initial improvements compound over time (Cohen & Sherman Reference Cohen and Sherman2014). When people are more confident about their belonging or their regard from others, they express more welcoming social behavior and thus build better relationships (Walton et al. 2014). These relationships, in turn, reinforce people's confidence in their social standing.
Kalisch and colleagues emphasize the need for longitudinal research on resilience. Mere longitudinal studies are not always sufficient, however. Psychologist Walter Dearborn remarked, “If you want to understand something, try to change it” (in Bronfenbrenner Reference Bronfenbrenner1979, p. 37). Longitudinal field experiments such as those described above go well beyond nonexperimental longitudinal studies. First, they provide a causal test of resilience mechanisms, and they reveal how these mechanisms unfold over time to affect outcomes. Second, they enable researchers to investigate how contextual factors (e.g., timing, setting) moderate intervention effects. Research shows that interventions can be more effective when timed early (Cook et al. Reference Cook, Purdie-Vaughns, Garcia and Cohen2012; Raudenbush Reference Raudenbush1984). Interventions to combat loneliness in school, for example, might be more effective on students' first day of school than several days later, when students' relationships with peers and teachers have become more fixed (Brummelman et al. Reference Brummelman, Thomaes, Walton, Reijntjes, Orobio de Castro and Sedikides2014b).
Researchers and policy makers increasingly recognize the power of brief, stealthy, and psychologically precise interventions to improve people's lives and society at large. Such “wise” interventions do not prevent adversity. Rather, they help people construe adversity in adaptive ways so as to promote growth and improvement. As such, they simultaneously provide a causal test of resilience mechanisms and bring about positive change in people's lives.
If you want to understand something, try to change it.— Walter Dearborn (in Bronfenbrenner Reference Bronfenbrenner1979, p. 37)
In their target article, Kalisch et al. propose an overarching, transdiagnostic framework for the study of resilience that brings together several disciplines, most notably clinical psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. One discipline, however, has escaped the authors' attention: social psychology. Yet social psychology has unique potential for advancing understanding of resilience. An exciting development that illustrates this is the emergence of social-psychological interventions – sometimes called “wise” interventions – that target key mechanisms to yield broad and lasting improvements in health, well-being, and functioning (for overviews, see Cohen & Sherman Reference Cohen and Sherman2014; Walton Reference Walton2014; Wilson Reference Wilson2011; Yeager & Walton Reference Yeager and Walton2011).
What are social-psychological interventions? They are similar to clinical interventions (e.g., cognitive-behavioral therapy) in that they target key mechanisms. They are, however, typically more precise in focus, stealthier in design, and briefer in delivery. Traditional clinical interventions usually target several mechanisms at once, consist of explicit instructions to change how a person thinks or feels, and unfold over weeks or months. By contrast, social-psychological interventions usually target one key mechanism; consist of reading-and-writing exercises that, even as they change how a person thinks or feels, may not be experienced as “interventions”; and take an hour or less to complete. Consistent with Kalisch and colleagues' theorizing, social-psychological interventions often cultivate resilience by changing how people construe adversity – their subjective understanding or appraisal of adverse events (Yeager & Dweck Reference Yeager and Dweck2012; Yeager et al. Reference Yeager, Trzesniewski and Dweck2013). Indeed, subjective construal is a pillar of social psychology (Ross & Nisbett Reference Ross and Nisbett1991). Let us consider two examples.
During the transition to college, students often struggle to make friends and connect with professors. Ethnic-minority students, an underrepresented and negatively stereotyped group in higher education, may view these social adversities as evidence that they do not belong in college. An ethnic-minority first-year student described: “Everyone is going out without me, and they didn't consider me when making their plans. At times like this I feel like I don't belong here” (Walton & Cohen Reference Walton and Cohen2007, p. 90). Such interpretations undermine health, well-being, and academic performance (Mendoza-Denton et al. Reference Mendoza-Denton, Downey, Purdie, Davis and Pietrzak2002). Walton and Cohen (Reference Walton and Cohen2007; Reference Walton and Cohen2011) designed a 1-hour intervention to encourage students to attribute social adversities to the common challenges of the college transition rather than to a fixed lack of belonging on their part or that of their group. Students read stories from upperclassmen indicating that all students worry at first about whether they belong and that these worries decline with time. To help students internalize this message, they were invited to write an essay and deliver a speech about why students come to feel at home in college over time. Over the next three years, the intervention improved ethnic-minority students' health and well-being and cut by half the achievement gap in grades with White students. This achievement boost was mediated by subjective construal: The intervention prevented ethnic-minority students from seeing social adversities on campus as a threat to their belonging.
Another form of adversity is academic failure. When students get poor grades, they can fear that other people will judge them negatively and, hence, feel ashamed, insecure, and worthless (Leary & Baumeister Reference Leary, Baumeister and Zanna2000). Such negative self-feelings, in turn, increase students' risk for later depression and anxiety (Sowislo & Orth Reference Sowislo and Orth2013). Brummelman et al. (Reference Brummelman, Thomaes, Walton, Poorthuis, Overbeek, Orobio de Castro and Bushman2014a) designed a 15-minute intervention to prevent secondary-school students from seeing failure as a threat to their self-worth. Students reflected on times when they were accepted and valued by others unconditionally. One 14-year-old girl wrote: “I was working on a task with a friend of mine, and I made a lot of mistakes. But we are still good friends, and she still values me.” To encourage students to fully reflect on this experience, they were asked to describe it in great detail. Would this exercise imbue students with the feeling of being valued for who they are, even when they perform poorly (Rogers Reference Rogers1961)? Three weeks later, students received the first report card of the school year. Without intervention, students who received poor grades experienced increased negative self-feelings; with it, they did not. Thus, the intervention buffered students' negative self-feelings in the face of distal academic failure.
How do seemingly small interventions yield effects that last weeks, months, or even years? The interventions do not shut people's eyes to adversity. Nor do they simply remain accessible in people's minds: the accessibility of messages wanes over time (Srull & Wyer Reference Srull and Wyer1979). Rather, the interventions set in motion self-sustaining processes, whereby small initial improvements compound over time (Cohen & Sherman Reference Cohen and Sherman2014). When people are more confident about their belonging or their regard from others, they express more welcoming social behavior and thus build better relationships (Walton et al. 2014). These relationships, in turn, reinforce people's confidence in their social standing.
Kalisch and colleagues emphasize the need for longitudinal research on resilience. Mere longitudinal studies are not always sufficient, however. Psychologist Walter Dearborn remarked, “If you want to understand something, try to change it” (in Bronfenbrenner Reference Bronfenbrenner1979, p. 37). Longitudinal field experiments such as those described above go well beyond nonexperimental longitudinal studies. First, they provide a causal test of resilience mechanisms, and they reveal how these mechanisms unfold over time to affect outcomes. Second, they enable researchers to investigate how contextual factors (e.g., timing, setting) moderate intervention effects. Research shows that interventions can be more effective when timed early (Cook et al. Reference Cook, Purdie-Vaughns, Garcia and Cohen2012; Raudenbush Reference Raudenbush1984). Interventions to combat loneliness in school, for example, might be more effective on students' first day of school than several days later, when students' relationships with peers and teachers have become more fixed (Brummelman et al. Reference Brummelman, Thomaes, Walton, Reijntjes, Orobio de Castro and Sedikides2014b).
Researchers and policy makers increasingly recognize the power of brief, stealthy, and psychologically precise interventions to improve people's lives and society at large. Such “wise” interventions do not prevent adversity. Rather, they help people construe adversity in adaptive ways so as to promote growth and improvement. As such, they simultaneously provide a causal test of resilience mechanisms and bring about positive change in people's lives.