Overview and History

Cultural resilience considers how cultural background (i.e., culture, cultural values, language, customs, norms) helps individuals and communities overcome adversity. The notion of cultural resilience suggests that individuals and communities can deal with and overcome adversity not just based on individual characteristics alone, but also from the support of larger sociocultural factors. In 2004, Clauss-Ehlers defined “culturally-focused resilient adaptation” as how culture and the sociocultural context have an effect on resilient outcomes. The question presented by this concept is to consider those larger environmental variables that help individuals overcome the obstacles they face. Culturally-focused resilient adaptation contends that adaptation to adversity is a dynamic rather than static process that includes character traits, a person’s cultural background, values, and supportive aspects of the sociocultural environment (i.e., a relationship with at least one caring adult). A review of the early literature associated with resilience generally provides grounding to understand the trend towards considerations of resilience in a larger sociocultural framework.

The concept of resilience developed out of research in the field of developmental psychopathology. While first interested in studying parents with schizophrenia, for instance, Garmezy ultimately explored what helped the children of such parents thrive and do well. Much of the literature that followed from Garmezy’s 1987 study focused on how individual traits in children helped them become “super kids” and overcome obstacles they faced.

The character-trait approach to resilience focuses on the extent to which youth have certain characteristics that promote resilience. If a child did have these traits, they were thought to explain the youth’s coping ability. If the child did not, the idea was that practitioners, families, and systems were to help develop such individual traits to help him/her become more resilient. In 1999, Kumpfer organized resilience-promoting traits into five main groups: cognitive competence, spiritual/motivational capabilities, social competence, emotional stability, and physical well-being. Two years later, in 2001, Davis reviewed the literature to discern those individual traits found to foster resilience. She identified the following as individual traits that foster resilience: secure attachment, easy temperament, an internal locus of control (i.e., the sense within the individual that he/she can influence or change his/her environment), basic trust, active coping, sense of harmony, sense of meaning and purpose about one’s life, strong language skills, sound reading skills, can make friends, can ask for help, a realistic sense of strengths and weaknesses, and an interest in helping others.

Incorporating Culture

Empirical Studies

Although this important work makes a significant contribution, the trait-based approach to resilience leaves it “way too much up to the individual child.” Questions not answered by the trait-based approach include: How do protective processes interact with the environment? What about those children who are resilient in one situation but not in another? To what extent does resilience maintain itself over time? In other words, could a child show great resilience during the early years but a lack of resilience in young adulthood? These questions aim to explore the notion of context-dependent resilience that states resilience is a more dynamic concept than once imagined. Moreover, the trait-based approach to resilience research must be examined in its own context. Much early resilience research, for instance, was conducted on samples of primarily White participants. As a result, much needs to be learned about how resilience plays out among communities of color.

Research is increasingly exploring how culture and diversity can interact with stress and protective factors at different developmental stages of life, the outcome being resilience. Several studies support the idea that culture can be incorporated into resilience and does, in fact, promote it. A 2000 study conducted by Belgrave et al. for instance, explored the effect of a culture-and gender-specific intervention program on the resiliency of 10- to 12-year-old African American girls. Adversities the girls confronted in their lives included adult responsibilities, early puberty, and being sexually active at an earlier age. The culture- and gender-based intervention was geared to promote the resources and positive relationships in the girls’ lives.

The cultural component of the intervention focused on providing an Africentric worldview associated with the intervention. Thus, harmony, emotional awareness, and balance were some of the values included in the way that resources and relationships were developed. Findings indicated that culture significantly correlated positively with resilience. The intervention group, for instance, scored higher on the Africentric Values Scale, the Children’s Racial Identity Scale, and the Physical Appearance subscale of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale compared with girls in the control group. The authors concluded that having positive emotions about one’s culture helps to decrease the presence of risky behaviors.

In a 2006 study, Clauss-Ehlers et al. found that having strong ethnic and gender identities directly correlated with greater resilience. This study primarily consisted of a college-aged sample of women who reported on their past trauma histories. The women indicated if they had been teased or bullied in school; verbally, physically, or sexually abused; had an unavailable caregiver; and experienced racism or sexism. The study found that having an androgynous gender identity (i.e., a gender identity that incorporates traditional male and female gender roles) and actively learning about one’s ethnicity helped the women respond to and overcome these struggles.

Measurement Scales

In addition to empirical studies that highlight the link between culture and resilience, preliminary research has empirically measured cultural resilience through scale development. Social-science scales aim to measure concepts quantitatively. Scales have been developed to measure countless variables, and resilience is no exception. In 2008, Clauss-Ehlers reviewed several critical resilience measures to determine the extent to which they considered culture in their structure and development.

Scales reviewed included the Hardiness Scale, the Dispositional Resilience Scale, and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Generally, the review found that these scales did not encompass cultural considerations. The Hardiness Scale did not consider possible relationships with sociocultural factors. Similarly, the Dispositional Resilience Scale defined resilience as a concept focused on hardiness and control. Cultural aspects of resilience were not included. Although some considerations were given with the CD-RISC (e.g., gender comparisons and some differences among racial/ethnic groups), such analyses were limited (i.e., comparing all non-White people with White people rather than looking at within- and between-group differences).

To address this measurement gap, Clauss-Ehlers developed a preliminary measure of cultural resilience entitled the Cultural Resilience Measure (CRM). CRM scales include Childhood Stressors, Global Coping, Adaptive Coping, Maladaptive Coping, and Sociocultural Support. These scales reflect the model of culturally-resilient adaptation presented earlier. One item in the measure also asks about when (e.g., at what developmental life stage) the individual gained insight about his or her problem, if he or she did at all. This item is referred to as Insight Timing. Investigation of the CRM indicated that Adaptive Coping was positively associated with Sociocultural Support and Global Coping. A factor analysis found these three scales to result in Factor 1, the “sociocultural aspect of coping.” Factor 2 reflected “negative experiences encountered” (with high loadings for Childhood Stressors and Maladaptive Coping). Factor 3 suggested a possible “confluence among Sociocultural Support, Maladaptive Coping and Insight Timing.”

An unexpected finding was that Insight Timing related to resilience. The earlier the individual was aware or had insight about her difficulty, the more resilience she reported. Finally, a regression analysis indicated the CRM captures cultural components of resilience.

Results also supported the idea that resilience occurs in an ecological context. There were vast differences, for instance, reported by different racial/ethnic groups of women who participated in the study about the stressors they experienced as children. Respondents who self-identified as lower class or lower middle class reported greater overall childhood stress compared with their middle, upper middle, and upper class counterparts. Socioeconomic variables were very much associated with other scales as well. Participants who self-identified as middle, upper middle, and upper class, for instance, reported much more sociocultural support than those who self-identified as being in the lower and lower middle classes.

This study is a first attempt to develop a measure that integrates culture into how resilience is not only empirically investigated, but measured. Additional research can further develop reliability and validity data for the CRM.

See also: Assessment of culturally diverse children ; Educational resilience ; Resilience ; Resilience building prevention programs