Hardiness

In the early days of research on hardiness, it was usually defined as a personality structure comprising the three related general dispositions of commitment, control and challenge that functions as a resistance resource in encounters with stressful conditions. The commitment disposition was defined as a tendency to involve oneself in activities in life and as having a genuine interest in and curiosity about the surrounding world (activities, things, other people). The control disposition was defined as a tendency to believe and act as if one can influence the events taking place around oneself through one’s own efforts. Finally, the challenge disposition was defined as the belief that change, rather than stability, is the normal mode of life and constitutes motivating opportunities for personal growth rather than threats to security.

Lately, hardiness has been characterized as a combination of three attitudes (commitment, control, and challenge) that together provide the courage and motivation needed to turn stressful circumstances from potential calamities into opportunities for personal growth. While acknowledging the importance of the three core dimensions, researcher's consider hardiness as something more global than mere attitudes. He conceives of hardiness as a broad personality style or generalized mode of functioning that includes cognitive, emotional, and behavioral qualities. This generalized style of functioning, which incorporates commitment, control, and challenge, is believed to affect how one views oneself and interacts with the world around.

Hardiness is often considered an important factor in psychological resilience or an individual-level pathway leading to resilient outcomes. Since 1979, a fairly extensive body of research has accumulated supporting the notion that hardiness has beneficial effects and buffers the detrimental effect of stress on health and performance. Individuals high in hardiness tend to put stressful circumstances into perspective and interpret them in a less threatening manner. As a consequence of these optimistic appraisals, the impact of the stressful events is reduced and they are less likely to negatively affect the health of the individual.

The coping style most commonly associated with hardiness is transformational coping, an optimistic style of coping that transforms stressful events into less stressful ones. At the cognitive level this involves setting the event into a broader perspective in which it does not seem so terrible after all. At the level of action, individuals high in hardiness are believed to react to stressful events by increasing their interaction with them, trying to turn them into an advantage and opportunity for growth, and in the process achieve greater understanding.